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What People Are Saying
“I was not able to come to the last class but I wish I had. When I got the notice from my insurance company that they cancelled my home owner’s insurance I would have hahahaha-ed.”
Sharon Sanders, Carmichael CA
“I’ve used this periodically off and on and it’s great. Even down at work I’ve been helping train some new staff and one of the girls says, “I really messed up,” and I say, “well, laugh about it.” And we feel better. It does work. Wonderful.”
Liana Matranga, Carmichael CA
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ULaugh Media
Laughter, the Best Medicine
ABC News 10, Sacramento, KXTV
Written by George Warren, Reporter
Monday, April 28th, 2008
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CARMICHAEL, CA - From asthma to depression, research shows a good laugh goes a long way toward making you feel better - even if you're just faking it.
  "Laugh coach" Erin Cote says a forced laugh will soon turn genuine and results in feel-good hormones being released by the brain.
Cote spoke to News10 while leading a laugh class she calls "Laughysema" for Mercy San Juan pulmonary rehab patients. She says deep laughter helps people with breathing problems exhale more completely.
It also results in a general feeling of well-being, said asthma sufferer Leonard Wellings.
“It takes my mind off of my condition,” he said.
Cote encourages patients to use laughter anytime they feel burdened by stress or physical pain.
“It's like being a kid again,” she said
read more...
Maybe it Really is the Best Medicine
The Sacramento Bee
Written by Sam McManis
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
View the original article here
Talk turned serious – painfully so, at times – during the two hours of a Proactive Pain Solutions class at Sacramento's Mercy Midtown Medical Building.
Dr. Topher Stephenson, sitting ramrod-straight in the physician's archetypal white coat, knitted his brows and focused his empathetic brown eyes on three patients, one using a cane and another wearing a back brace. Chronic pain not only can affect the physical, the patients explained, it can decimate quality of life.
At one point, patient Eric Haynes couldn't help but cry.
"I'm just trying to deal with the pain and keep going," he told the group. "I don't want to do anything. … But I don't want to give up on life, either."
On it went, sad stories of lives turned upside down, while Stephenson and Mercy behavioral health coordinator Pat Hanson offered soothing words and concrete coping skills. But near the end of the session, Stephenson looked at his watch and decided what everybody needed was a good laugh.
Seriously.
Stephenson, who specializes in physical medicine and runs the spine program at Mercy in Sacramento, also has become something of an adherent to a trend in integrative medicine known as laughter yoga, which promises to do for the psyche what bikram yoga does for muscles.
So he tells the group members to gird for a brief but restorative session of mirth. He has them extend an imaginary string with both hands across their mouths and says to raise it a bit and laugh.
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha …"
"OK, that was a nice and easy warm-up," Stephenson said. "I don't want to hear belly laughs yet. Just keep your teeth closed and do two more."
"Ha-ha-ha …"
"Now, I want you to really let it rip, OK?"
"HA-HA-HA-HA-WHOA-HA-HA-HA …"
Laughter reigned. The whole vibe of the room changed from sorrow to joy, at least for a minute. Everyone was smiling and chuckling after Stephenson finished and dismissed the group.
"This has really helped me," said Haynes, who is unable to work because of a chronic back condition. "And it's fun to do."
read the rest of part 1...
Body of research growing
Sure, a good belly laugh or two might temporarily distract chronic pain patients. But, skeptics might ask, what good could it really do?
Research looking at the connection between mind and body suggests that repeated doses of laughter can indeed lead to positive physical changes. Building on the lay research by 1970s best-selling author Norman Cousins, who eased his autoimmune disease by watching "Candid Camera" episodes, doctors at Loma Linda University in Southern California have documented the effects of laughter in double-blind studies.
In a paper presented at last month's meeting of the American Physiological Society, they found that the hormones beta-endorphins (which elevate mood) and human growth hormone (which builds immunity) increased significantly in patients exposed to "mirthful laughter."
Another study by the same doctors found that laughter reduced three key stress hormones – cortisol, epinephrine and dopac – by 38 percent to 70 percent. Significantly high levels of those three hormones have long been linked to compromised immune systems.
Stephenson was won over even before he became familiar with the scientific literature. In a break before starting medical school in the late 1990s, he attended clown college (Mooseburger University in Oklahoma) and graduated with honors. Using his alter ego, Bobo Doodlemeyer, Stephenson started a clown-care unit at the University of New Mexico Children's Hospital.
Bobo usually stays incognito as Stephenson goes about his day-to-day practice dealing with back- and neck- pain patients. But the laughter remains part of his prescription.
"I've found humor is a good tool," Stephenson said. "There are a whole lot of people with chronic pain who haven't laughed in a long time.
"When you get down to it, laughter promotes all kinds of good endorphins, which helps reduce pains and promotes deep breathing. A lot of these folks who are hurt just don't breathe well. Their breathing pattern is (shallow). Laughter gives you little squirts of dopamine, the feel-good reward chemical in the brain."
read part 2
Laughter Clubs evolve
That laughter-as-therapy has found its way into clinical settings isn't a surprise to non-medical advocates of the practice, which began in the early 1990s by Dr. Madan Kataria in Mumbai, India.
Using laughter exercises, making people "fake laugh" until it infectiously turns real, Kataria started Laughter Clubs that have spread to 5,000 worldwide. (Davis' club recently disbanded; a Sacramento woman, Lisa Caldon, says she is trying to start one here.) There even is an American School of Laughter Yoga in Los Angeles, which trains mirthful practitioners.
Erin Cote and Shannon Plaster, a Sacramento couple who attended the school, recently launched a business. It's called ULaugh, and it offers classes and workshops at local hospitals, businesses and even has a weekly telephone laughter therapy session.
They've made the rounds at places such as Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, Mercy San Juan Pulmonary Rehab Center in Carmichael, the California Department of Health and American Lung Association of California. (Their next public event is June 23 at the Fair Oaks Library.)
"We considered a Laughter Club," Plaster said. "But we thought it'd be more advantageous to the community if we took ourselves to existing organizations, like businesses and hospitals."
When they worked with respiratory patients at Mercy San Juan, Cote and Plaster said they could see a noticeable change in the mood and look of patients after the session.
"People, when they walk in, are in the mode of their chronic illness," Plaster said. "They look a little tired, rundown, their energy is low. By the end of the class, they are beaming."
Then he paused and smiled. "Plus, we teach them to make themselves younger with the 'face-lift' laugh," he added, stretching the sides of his face with his hands and guffawing.
Cote says skeptics sometimes infiltrate their laughter sessions. Mostly, she said, they win the skeptics over.
"I find that when there's tension in the air, laughter relieves it," she said.
Outside of a medical setting is a different dynamic for the couple. They've done sessions with company human-resources departments – a tough crowd to crack up.
So, aside from helping people with chronic pain, does laughter help with work stress or other psychic worries?
"We stress the habit of noticing and laughing with it or at the situation," Plaster said. "I wouldn't promote sarcasm, but we do promote laughing at yourself. Don't take yourself so damn seriously.
"How are you going to find a solution to your problems from a state of stress? Your options are limited. You're not relaxed enough to think creatively. If you laugh at it, it allows you to create some distance from the problem."
read part 3
'Too many' aggravations
tephenson gave specific examples of that theory to patients at his Proactive Pain class.
Everyday petty annoyances, he told the group, can manifest themselves in physical pains.
"Say you just got cut off in traffic – 'ha, ha, ha' – laugh," he said. "You'll realize you'll reach that pit in the bottom of your stomach and totally change the reaction."
Patient Jody Plotner nodded but seemed unsure.
"It's hard when you're shy," she told Stephenson. "And I've got too many things that aggravate me."
Stephenson gave her a homework assignment: "Pick one thing that stresses you out and replace that worry with a big belly laugh."
The practitioners are quick to take their own advice. Stephenson said he laughs when he rides his bicycle to work.
"People think I'm really crazy," he said.
Cote and Plaster seem to spend half their time cracking each other up. But there are times when they, too, must work hard to laugh in the face of stress.
"The dog mauled our garden, and we wanted to yell at it," Plaster admitted. "It took us about a day to laugh about it. I guess I forgot the method on that one."
read part 4
'Laughysema' for Respiratory Therapy
Capital Public Radio, Morning Edition, KXJZ
Written by Kelley Weiss
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
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CARMICHAEL, CA - We all know laughing is good for us – it makes us happy and it can relieve stress. But at the Mercy San Juan Pulmonary Rehab Center in Carmichael laughing is part of respiratory therapy. That deep belly laugh plays a key role in improving breathing.
 About seventeen elderly people with chronic respiratory disease are sitting in a half circle – many of them have brought along oxygen tanks. They’re following the instruction of two Laughter Leaders. Shannon Plaster is one of the teachers. He starts the class out with a few warm ups.
Plaster: “The first element of good pulmonary rehab is the breath. And we have combined laughter with some of the breath exercises that you do in pulmonary rehab. And the first one that we’re going to do is called the humming laugh.”
Barbara Rife is a respiratory therapist at Mercy San Juan Pulmonary Rehab Center. She says laughing circulates air.
Rife: “And what happens when you’re laughing is it forces everything in your abdomen to wiggle, to move, and your abdominal muscles, your organs, they all, as you’re laughing...they push up on the diaphragm which helps to push the lungs, to help push the air out. So that’s a huge medical benefit for them because the more of that carbon dioxide they can get out the more oxygen they can get in for that next breath.”
She says patients enjoy rehab more when laughing is one of their exercises.
Rife: “Because it does release the serotonin it releases endorphins, it reduces pain and a lot of our folks definitely have pain they’ve got other conditions besides the COPD or emphysema, they may have arthritis and they actually tell us when they work on their laughter they don’t hurt as much.”
After the group goes through several techniques Erin Cote, the other laughter leader, explains another benefit.
Cote: “Interestingly enough, one minute of laughter, now this is really good belly laughter, is equivalent to 10 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, which is pretty amazing.”
Laughing improves breathing…and it can make conflicts easier. Like the day after a laughysema session it helped Ann Haines, of Citrus Heights.
Haines: “I look down and I’m feeling good I just got back from this laughysema and all of the sudden there was an envelope from the bank and I open it up and insufficient funds, I look at it and said one little cuss word and all the sudden it just beeped in, laughter, and immediately I just kept laughing…all the way to the bank 5 miles down the road. But it worked.”
And to end the class it’s time for a little dancing…and don’t forget the laughs.
“Alright, do the laughter twist…”
With the popularity of the classes for patients and therapists Mercy plans to include laughter exercises in daily respiratory therapy programs.
read more...
World Laughter Day is Sunday, May 3rd
Sacramento Holistic Health Examiner
Written by Lisa Chapman-Sorci
Friday, May 1st, 2009
View the original article here
A Sacramento company called ULaugh is hosting a free laughter phone session this Sunday in celebration of World Laughter Day.
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World Laughter Day was created by the founder of Laughter Yoga, Dr. Madan Kataria. Laughter is the language that transcends nationality, religion and race to unite people. Since being founded in 1998 the popularity of Laughter Yoga has spread to five continents and the laughter clubs number in the thousands.
Among those trained to lead laughter classes, by the American School of Laughter Yoga in Los Angeles, are Sacramento residents and founders of ULaugh, Erin Cote and Shannon Plaster.
Erin’s background is in psychology, but laughter has played a large part in her life. While in school, Erin interned with a humor speaker that formerly wrote for Saturday Night Live.
Shannon is earning his Masters degree in special education and always uses humor in his teaching. When they began dating (oh, yeah, it’s a multi level partnership) according to Erin, they had “wild, wacky, fun dates“. So, when they learned about Laughter Yoga, Erin says,” We just knew it was something that we wanted to do.”
Besides just making you feel good, laughter relieves stress and stress related symptoms. It also helps strengthen your immune system, helps with pain management and can help you to lose weight. That’s right. You burn a lot more calories laughing than you can sitting here at your computer. Don’t rush off yet...you can have the best of both worlds. Erin and Shannon offer weekly laughter sessions by phone. In addition, they use laughter in their life coaching practice called U In Joy. It seems that laughter can be used as a tool to help get past those blockages that keep us from reaching our true potential.
This funny duo can help your company, group or team with customized sessions, presentations and workshops, using the funny bone as the key to abundant health, wealth and happiness.
Join in the hilarious fun this Sunday with a free laughter call. The first ‘yuck’ is the hardest, but watch out, Erin warns, “the more you laugh…the more you laugh”.
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