34 body & soul
are you having a laugh?
Beccy Golding is getting merry with Joe Hoare and his laughter workshops
T
imes are hard. And when times are
hard, you gotta laugh, else you’ll
cry. With this in mind I sought out
laughter specialist Joe Hoare. Joe developed
Natural Laughter Skills (NLS) “to impart the
skills to generate your own laughter.” This is
in contrast to Laughter Yoga, which works
from the outside in, using exercises to create
physical laughter, “I’m a big fan of Laughter
Yoga,” he assures me “ and I incorporate
some of their exercises, but I do understand
it may alienate some people. We have a
cultural resistance to it (in the UK).”
“People are often resistant to the idea of
laughing as a yoga-style practice” Joe adds,
“feeling that its about ‘having to force a
laugh’ but I have looked for gentler ways
in, from the inside out. It’s about loosening
up, getting our attention into the body and
the head; a willingness to laugh, a lightheartedness. The key is to start gently and
invite the playfulness and creativity.”
Joe’s life hasn’t all been full of laughs. “I
hit the rails a number of times,” he explains.
“in my early 20s I was suicidal and in my
mid-30s I had a mild breakdown caused by
a year of insomnia, which was hell. I didn’t
know how to relax or discharge tension from
my system. When I emerged I vowed that
there had to be a better way of living. I had
a ‘healing wake-up’ – KAPOW! - my life
became all about ‘The Healing Power Of..’. I
became voraciously interested in the healing
world. I trained as a healer, started a daily
Chi Gung practice, learnt to breathe properly
using (Buddhist meditation practice) za-zen,
but I still had to find my own modality. Then
I did voice work with Chris James and started
teaching ‘Free Your Natural Voice’ sessions. I
found there was lots of natural laughter – to
free the voice you must relax the body and
you often start to laugh.
“My job is not to make people laugh, but
to help them get back in touch with their
own laugh. The benefits of laughter come
from the act itself. In the West we have the
mindset that laughter comes from an external
stimulus – a joke or something funny – so
what do you do if nothing external makes
you laugh?”
The benefits are, simply, that a good old
belly laugh makes you feel better – it’s a
psychological release, but it is proven to have
positive physical effects on the cardiovascular
“My job is not to make
people laugh, but to help
them get back in touch
with their own laugh. The
benefits come from the act
itself. In the West we have
the mindset that laughter
comes from an external
stimulus – so what do you
do if nothing external makes
you laugh?”
and pulmonary systems – it oxygenates
the blood and improves circulation which
energises us and helps us think better, and
it releases seratonin. Two years ago The
Royal Society released research showing that
laughter increases pain thresholds. Laughter
has also been found to be good for psoriasis
and diabetes. “In mind body spirit terms,”
Joe adds “laughter is liberating; people
become more intuitive, more present – living
‘here’ in their bodies, with a whole-body
consciousness, not distracted.”
Now he’s found laughter (and never has
insomnia) Joe uses it in a range of settings.
He runs stress management courses for NHS
staff and team-building and conferences for
corporate clients; he’s developing sessions for
the Thomas Pocklington Trust, who work
with people with sight loss, with the working
title of Natural Laughter Skills for Mindful
Resilience. “It’s about helping people get in
touch with their inner resources; an antidote
to the increasing issue of loneliness and
depression.” Joe offers one-to-one coaching,
“I always bring levity to the sessions.” He
runs laughter retreats, laughter facilitation
skills courses and laughter workshops at
festivals. In 2013 Joe published his own book
Awakening The Laughing Buddha Within
(co-written with his pal Stephen Russell, the
Barefoot Doctor). His Bristol Laughter Club
is “almost certainly the longest running series
of laughter workshops outside India”. Dr
Kataria, a practising GP, cardiologist and the
founder of Laughter Yoga, who Joe studied
with in the early 2000s, suggested the idea
of the Laughter Club and it has now been
running every month for ten years.
www.joehoare.co.uk
www.bristollaughterclub.com
Royal Society research into laughter & pain
thresholds: bit.ly/GZ9vd6
www.laughteryoga.org - for laughter clubs,
events & training internationally
other laughter practitioners in Sparkland
include:
Neely Good: Laughter evenings, parties &
workshops 0772 207 2279
agoodfeeling.yolasite.com
Sue Holmes, who runs ‘Laughter Medicine’
evening workshops at The Bell Inn, Bath, and
is touring the UK this autumn with ‘the
world’s first Chocolate Laughter Ceremony’,
a day of laughter, healing and celebration
including a drink of ‘magical healing’ raw
cacao from Guatemala.
07786 291967 www.thehomehealer.co.uk
Luke Andreski, happiness guru, author and poet
who has created the Maxus Irie religion-free
cult: 07445 542631 www.captivatingcult.com
www.lukeandreski.com
below: Joe Hoare (centre)
news
• Huge congratulations to Paula
Rainey-Croft of Heaven on Earth,
the bespoke green funeral directors
based in Bristol, who won the
Lifetime Achievement Award at the
Good Funeral Awards in September.
Established in 1995, Heaven on
Earth is also a Natural Death Centre,
specialising in helping families plan a
personal, individual celebration of the
life of the person who has died.
www.heavenonearthfunerals.co.uk
• Reading Well Books on
Prescription is a new scheme, piloted
around the country but available
nationally since June 2013, providing
access to self-help books for people
experiencing a range of common
mental health issues including anxiety,
depression, phobias and some eating
disorders. 30 books are available, all
with some form of CBT (Cognitive
Behaviour Therapy) angle. The books
can be recommended by GPs or other
health professionals and are available
to be borrowed from your local library
for free.
For full book list see www.
booksonprescription.org.uk
http://readingagency.org.uk/adults/quickguides/reading-well
• The Friends of Arnos Vale
Cemetery, formed as a campaigning
group in response to the south Bristol
cemetery’s threat of closure and
potential redevelopment, celebrated 25
years of achievements in rescuing and
rejuvenating what is now a beautiful
green space, with a cafe and music/
theatre venue, as well as still being
a working cemetery. Sadly many of
the graves had become invisible,
unreadable or hard to reach. As part
of the celebrations the Remembered
Graves project was launched to find
and mark the graves of people of
local or national significance. Those
honoured so far include pioneering
physician William Budd, prison and
education reformer Mary Carpenter
and graves belonging to ‘babies who
died at birth or shortly after.’
www.arnosvale.org.uk
• A new outdoor gym has been
installed at Ladies Mile on The Downs
in Bristol. It consists of five stations,
providing a range of exercises for both
gentle new-to-it exercisers and more
sporty-types, to help improve physical
health, fitness and well-being.
• If you are interested in psychic
and clairvoyant self-development the
new Heaven Sent Spiritual Centre,
based at Wapley Stables near Yate
runs courses and circles as well as
classes in Shamanic, Reiki and horse
communication work.
www.heavensentspiritualcentre.co.uk
photo: Simon Chapman