Energise your workplace with Laughter Yoga!
Imagine a fun, UNIQUE workplace session which generates Team Building, Team Rewards and Team Strengthening and is memorable!
Sam, author of Laugh More, a seaoned workplace teacher
delivers her signature session of Laughter Yoga
The POWER of laughter in the workplace:
Laughter is a universal language and contagious... It brings people together from all levels and backgrounds.
When people are in environments that support positive emotions, they’re free to be productive, collaborative and creative.
Laughter gets employees and teams energised and enthusiastic and builds on positive experience...more connection, communication and cooperation.
Laughter is a social language. It creates bonding and maximum audience participation which is maintained and remembered.
A fun, happy session moves people to a mindset ready to listen, learn and participate.
Laughter Yoga an uplifting session with zero jokes is unexpected, relatively rare, and consequently, people participate and remember the event with positivity.
Natural laughter usually lasts 3-5 seconds. But 50 years of medical and scientific research shows that people get proven health benefits when laughter occurs continuously for 15 minutes. Laughter Yoga at the workplace aids stress management, provides uplifting playfulness and assists with creating a positive mental attitude. Lenghened laughter promotes mental and physical health.
Laughter Yoga Case Study:
Organisation
Background
Initiative: Laughter Well-being Session
Resources
Challenges
Factors for success
Outcomes
Post Session
Key Words
Based in the UK, Parfitt Cresswell has 100 employees who provide specialist legal advice with a first class client service.
Two teams of 35 junior and senior lawyers were to meet for the first time. This introductory meeting was important, as Parfitt Cresswell had recently acquired another law firm and were keen for the new team to feel part of the organisation and that this was their new ‘work home’.
The bespoke Laughter Well-being session focused on team building and team strengthening, with science-based relaxation techniques in-between the laughter. According to research, ‘Laughter sessions in the workplace show significant stress reductions and a sharp increase in work effectiveness’ and ‘Laughter sessions are an effective tool to improve workplace performance.'
Sam Rehan, a Well-being corporate trainer and Professional Laughter Facilitator, was booked to run a short session at the start of the meeting: a 'Well-being Warm-up’. Zero equipment was needed.
The nature of the employee's work meant that an assumption was made; that most people attending would be 'left-brained' and perhaps needing more time to access the creative right-side brain for fun team-building. Some expected apprehension as laughter is not part of the daily work for the group of lawyers.
A primary factor was engagement; this could include softening and smiling alongside laughter. Laughter was invited, but it was made clear that participation was not required and attendees could simply watch, as that would benefit them too. Communication about the benefits of the session (mental and physical health and social connections) was pivotal and needed to be short with simple science. How the participants felt during and post-session was crucial to successful outcomes.
"What we witnessed and experienced as Sam guided us through the exercises was a tangible sense of us all opening up from being rather reserved and feeling a little self-conscious to embracing and owning our commonality of laughter. The invisible barriers that had been in place at the start of the meeting were lowered (and in many cases removed altogether) allowing relationships to develop and the foundation of the new larger team was formed. In the workplace, building great teams is essential to the success of a business and laughter helped us take a big leap forward in creating this new team." – Teresa Cresswell, Manager Partner of Parfitt Cresswell
Such was the success of the laughter well-being session that the Manager Partner of Parfitt Cresswell, Teresa Cresswell, wrote about the successful outcomes in the foreword of Sam Rehan's well-being book, Laugh More: Soar in your Health, Career and Relationships.
Healthy communication, stress management, connection, collaboration, mental and physical health, relaxation, teambuilding, stronger teams, common goals, creativity, performance, productivity.
'The workplace needs laughter. According to research from institutions as serious as Wharton, MIT, and London Business School, every chuckle or guffaw brings with it a host of business benefits. Laughter relieves stress and boredom, boosts engagement and well-being, and spurs not only creativity and collaboration but also analytic precision and productivity' - Harvard Business Review