Laughter is The Best Medicine

With Katie Rose White

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Laughter is… The Best Medicine

and this is the name of the project that Katie Rose White is fully engaged in right now.

Katie went to Art school and got a BA with a dissertation about “moments of play and how it informs creativity in performance art”.

How to spread moments of rapturous joy and laughter? How to design moments and create installations and performances that invite people into memorable play?
How to find ways to light peoples spirit?

Katie was holding laughter workshops and one day she tried her own medicine out on herself and found laughter was her best medicine for managing her regular panic attacks that she’d have when driving!
After this she dived in even deeper as she saw the depth of laughter as a therapy.

Panic and excitement are on the same frequency, through laughter we change the body’s interpretation.

After this experience Katie heard about this work here:

‘How Stress Makes Us Sharper’ shows us the psychology behind stress, and how we can harness it to improve our cognitive abilities. Ian is an eminent neuroscientist and founder of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. He has authored many books based on the pressures of everyday life – his most recent book, The Stress Test, has been sold widely across the world. Ian contributes regularly to Nature and the Journal of Neuroscience.

Katie enjoys sharing her work with teachers and carers and loves to see the immediate benefits of the strategies to calm kids, get them to interact while building self-esteem.

“When we laugh we are signaling to other people that we like them and that we agree with them”.

Laughing in a relationship helps to keep the couple together. Laughter brings an element of perspective. Celebrating the things that go wrong. For example:

“So fabulous that the jam has just spilled all over the floor…!” This shifts the energy and helps us to laugh at the drama. The more we do this the better we become.

We can also look for playful prompts in our lives: for Katie this meaning when she’s overtaking on the motor to pretend she’s riding a roller coaster, screaming at the top of her lungs! (Even with passengers!)
We talked about brushing your teeth and playing with the mundane!

We also see some tips on RUNNING A LAUGHTER WORKSHOP