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LAUGH, AND THE WHOLE WORLD LAUGHS WITH YOU
by Phil Weber
The Quincy Herald Whig, February 3, 2001
Students at St. Peter School spent much of one afternoon this week laughing, like, well, children. And their teachers couldn't have been happier for them.
As a certified laughter leader, Bobbe White brought an assembly to students on laughing's value. "When children are young, they laugh freely. As adults, we often lose that, so we want to teach them the value of laughing early," explained White. If they keep laughing throughout their lives, they'll be a lot healthier."
The Laughter Club was founded six years ago by Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician from India, who found that his patients recovered faster and had fewer health problems when they laughed regularly. The therapy method borrows some ideas from yoga. There are 400 laughter clubs in India with 40,000 to 50,000 members.
During her time with the students, White had the children work on several different laughs inducing techniques, such as the greeting laughter, the argumentative laugh and the vowel laugh. What began as self-induced laughter soon laughed completely on their own.
White said, "A 15 percent increase in morale, nets a 40% increase in productivity.... And that is a substantial return on your investment for improving morale!"
