Taking yourself lightly, and adding more humor to your daily activities is a big trend in corporate America. Steve Wilson is a fellow speaker friend of mine and ‘Cheerman’ of The Bored of the World Laughter Tour, Inc., and USA Laughter Clubs. He recently sent me this press release about the positive affect of laughter clubs all the way to India! Perhaps you should look at starting your own laughter club.

“Stressed out? Run down? Depressed? For a growing number of people, a daily laughter session is the best medicine for keeping the blues away.

The Laughing Club brings together people of all genders, ages and walks of life once a day for 20 minutes -- to laugh. With more than 450 clubs in India alone, this life affirming movement demonstrates the power of laughter, as members assert that they now live happier, healthier and fuller lives.

Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician from Mumbai, India, had what he calls a "flash" of inspiration after years of observing how his patients’ immune systems improved following bouts of laughter. He developed a new technique of "thought-free" group laughter based on yoga, enlisting friends for the first-ever meeting of his club. Dr. Kataria gradually fine-tuned his daily regimen of laughter exercises to a neuroscience and has since formed hundreds of free Laughing Clubs in Europe, the far east, Australia, and the U.S. as well as India.

In a world of miracle drugs, alternative medicine and self-help literature, the concept of laughter therapy is remarkably simple. According to Karat, "Anyone can participate in group laughter, every day for 15 to 20 minutes, without resorting to jokes. Each laughter session starts with deep breathing and the ho-ho-ha-ha exercise, followed by a variety of stimulated laughter like hearty laughter, silent laughter, medium laughter, lion laughter, swinging laughter, one-meter laughter, cocktail laughter and many other kinds." Because laughter is contagious, group laughter takes on a life of its own.

The parents of a onetime engineering student, who was paralyzed in an accident, say that laughter transformed their son from a bedridden near-vegetable into the active, energetic man he is today.

At a workshop for the blind, Kataria teaches his Laughing Club techniques to a group of blind men and women, who jubilantly concur with their teacher when he implores, "Lift your hands and say, ‘Yes! I’m the happiest person in this world!’ "

Transforming Tomorrow

Ever wonder about all those letters you need to access information on the Internet? What do they mean? What do they do?

Every piece of information on the web including graphics, movies, sound, and text needs an individual structured address. It’s called a URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It must be typed in exactly, or it won’t get you where you are going.

Let’s look at my address: http://www.lamancusa.com/Lamancusa/live.html

1. To the left of the forward slashes is the “protocol.” This tells the net how to transfer the information. http: means “use hyper text transfer protocol.” This is the most frequent protocol on the net.
2. To the right of the double slashes, up to the first forward slash is the domain name. This indicates which computer on the net houses the information.
3. Everything after the first slash is the pathway. This indicates where the information is located within that particular computer.
4. The last element of the domain name indicates what type of organization sponsors the link. The most popular are:

   .com (commercial business)

   .gov (government agencies)

   .edu (colleges and universities)

   .org (non-profit organization

   With new ones coming on-line all the time.

We need to be very explicit in verbal communications, it is also important to be targeted with our written messages. As websites come and go on the web, be sure if you suggest one, it is still there and has been refreshed and renewed. How is your website? Can people find it? Is it valuable?

Published: July 26, 2001

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