Davies Laughology

Improve Your Life With the Science of Laughter
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84590-812-6
Verlag: Crown House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

A practical guide to using laughter and humour as a thinking skill to feel better and communicate more effectively. This book will explain simple techniques that will improve the reader's ability to gain a more positive perspective in difficult situations and increase their happiness through adopting the techniques from the Laughology model.The key subjects covered are What is laughter;What is humour; The psychological connection;

Stephanie Davies is recognised as one of the UK's leading voices in the psychology of laughter and humour. She has over ten years' experience of developing interventions that have been applied in a wide variety of settings dealing with complex public and mental health issues and building teams in high profile organisations. She is an award-winning stand up comedian who has worked with world-renowned Dr Patch Adams exploring the relationship between health, humour, community and the arts.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Davies, Stephanie

Leseproben

PROLOGUE

LAUGHOLOGY: A WORKBOOK FOR A NEW MODEL OF LIVING

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

Jean Houston

At 14 I was lucky enough to get the chance to work with one of the greatest comics of the 21st century: the late Norman Wisdom. Norman professed to have had an unhappy childhood. ‘All my boyhood all I ever wanted was to be loved’, he told me. In later life, not only did Norman use humour and laughter to entertain, he also used them as a way to help himself through difficult times. One day on set we were talking about his childhood and I mentioned some difficulties I was going through, as teenagers do. Norman’s words seemed to make more sense to me than any advice I had been given before: ‘Stephanie, laughter truly is the best medicine; if you can laugh and make others laugh you’ll always get by.’

I remember thinking he was right; it was simple, laughter really does lift your spirits. I love laughing; I don’t know anyone who doesn’t (unless you have asthma, in which case laughter isn’t always the best medicine – Ventolin is). It was at this point that I decided I wanted to make people laugh too, much to the disappointment of my teachers. I started to become more aware of my own sense of humour and how laughter made me feel, how I used it and how others used it – family, friends and people on TV. I learnt my humour skills from a variety of places, mainly my dad who was always a joker and managed to create laughter even in the most difficult circumstances. I quickly learned to use laughter as a coping mechanism for the ups and downs of adolescence. My school report read: ‘Stephanie is always the class joker and does well when she has centre stage, though she needs to learn that joking and clowning around is not a career option.’

During my final year of university I started writing and performing comedy. After being offered an open mic spot at a local comedy club, I realised I had found my forte and became a working comedian – making a living ‘joking and clowning around’.

While learning my stage-craft, the words of Norman Wisdom resonated in mind. I realised he was right: laughter and humour are the key to getting by in life. Not only were they providing me with earnings, they were helping me to see life clearly, gain perspective and become a more resilient, confident and happier human being. There is no other place you need to be more resilient than as a woman in a comedy club on a Friday or Saturday night.

As my career as a comedian took off, my sense of humour developed further and I looked to my own life and the world around me for observations I could use to twist and turn into comedy routines. The more I did this the more I found my perspective on life changed, and more often than not a problem would become potential for a routine. Once I had flipped the situation on its head and found the ‘humour perspective’ I would feel better about the issue, and when I felt better it would be easier for me to move forward and solve the problem.

So that is what this book is about: the choices we make that enable us to see life in different ways and the tools and techniques that allow us to do this.

In the past 12 years my comedy career has evolved into a vocation, which is still based in laughter and humour but is now more person-focused. My passion remains laughter and humour but now that passion goes deeper than standing on a stage and hoping people find me funny. Nowadays my work is about helping others to be happy, to achieve more and to think, feel and work better.

Since starting a career in the laughter business in 2001, I’ve been developing ways to help others use laughter and humour as a personal development tool – I call this technique Laughology. It has been built on my understanding of humour and laughter as a comedian and also from a psychology point of view. More recently I have been lucky enough to study for an MA at the University of Chester, making links between humour, laughter, psychology and health, while also practising these techniques in specialist mental health units.

I have been fortunate to work in a variety of settings with individuals and groups with mild to moderate and acute mental health issues. Laughology has been delivered successfully in small and large organisations to encourage thinking skills, positive engagement, organisational development and great leadership, as well as to enhance health and well-being in many different settings – from schools and hospitals to some of the top blue-chip companies in the world.

Some of the greatest comedians have lived with disorders including depression and bipolar. It seems that if you peer behind the laughter and smiles you will sometimes find someone who has faced many challenges in life. Humour, laughter and comedy can be a way to cope with these challenges: they are survival tools that we can all tap into.

It is an ancient truism that ‘laughter is the best medicine’ and for aeons humans have enjoyed a good giggle. The pleasure and joy that a good laugh can bring to individuals and groups is of immeasurable worth, although it can be dismissed too easily as simplistic or not sufficiently scientific to be considered as a tool for coping. Not only is humour quite rightly regarded as a positive emotion – a pleasant thing to share with friends and something you look for in a partner (must have a GSOH) – but its outward manifestation, laughter, is a universal currency. No matter where in the world you are, the slightest hint of a smile can immediately connect strangers, no matter what the language and cultural barriers may be.

Although we are all born with the capacity to process humorous circumstances, it is also a skill that can be improved and honed. We develop and evolve this ability throughout our lives – influenced by family, peers and experience – learning when and how to use it. But can humour be controlled? Can we consciously harness this innate ability and use it whenever we want to improve our communication and relationships, enhance our well-being and bring joy to others? The simple answer is yes – and, using the techniques developed by Laughology, this practical guide is going to show you how.

Laughology is about understanding how we process information from the outside world and then respond and react to these circumstances internally. It uses a flexible cognitive approach that is easy to learn, sustainable and adaptable to many situations. Laughology fundamentals are based in science and psychology but it is not rocket science. While, over the following pages, I will be explaining how humour and laughter affect us on a behavioural and biological level, you don’t need be a doctor or a psychologist to understand Laughology. It is simple and practical. You may even judge that many of the techniques I outline are common sense. You’d be right – they are. However, humour and laughter are often sadly neglected in many people’s lives. If something happens that makes us laugh we enjoy it but, as a rule, few of us are proactive when it comes to finding ways to introduce more laughter and humour into our lives. We might make sure we find time in our busy schedule to spend an hour at the gym every few days (for the record, that is a very good thing to do too), but how many of us take a few minutes each day to think about how we are going to laugh more, be happy and what makes us happy?

But Laughology is much more than just showing you ways to be happier. It provides you with a means to use humour and laughter to enhance thinking skills on every level for positive well-being, resilience and communication. To explain this further we need to think about how laughter and humour can fit into our emotional processing. As we absorb information from our external environment our emotions are affected. This, in turn, dictates our language and behaviour. The way we act and the things we say subsequently influence other’s reactions towards us, which again feeds into the way in which we subsequently behave.

Typically what happens is that an external event is processed through our internal mental mechanisms and we make an (IR) of that event. The IR, combined with the corresponding physiological response, creates a . State is the internal emotional condition of an individual – happy, sad, motivated and so on.

An individual’s IR of a situation can be distorted by previous experience and by how we feel at that time, the other people involved and our personal history. These may cause us to interpret an event either negatively or positively. Our IR of any given situation will include pictures, sounds, dialogue and emotions; for example, whether we feel motivated, challenged, pleased or excited. A given state is the result of the combination of our IR and physiological reactions. Recognising that we communicate, perform and react better in a positive state, where we can engage our rational mind and perspective, enables us to develop a more affirmative methodology for controlling that state. This means we are in a stronger position to obtain the results we desire. Humour can be used as a way to process and change the IR of a situation, therefore gaining a different perspective and state.

This way of processing information is easy to see in some of the greatest comedians, some of whom have used their challenging life...