Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Benefits of Laughter Yoga in the Workplace

• Stress Management: Laughter Yoga has been shown to be effective in reducing stress in the work place. It’s effects are immediate, significant results can be achieved in a single session and it is very cost effective.

• Team Building: LY brings people together in a mutually trusting group. It develops within a staff a more positive outlook, more optimistic, greater ease among members of a team, greater goodwill. It helps in the building of friendships, improving communication and ultimately the productivity of a group.

• Physical Exercise: For cardio-pulmonary endurance, 10 minutes hearty laughter is the equivalent of 30 minutes on a rowing machine (Dr Williams Fry Stanford Univ.). It stimulates heart rate, increases efficiency of circulation and waste removal.

• Happy Working Environment: Laughter is an escape valve for worries and strains; to quote Milton Birle, “Laugher is an instant vacation”; a vacation in a life that’s too busy to take a vacation. Quality of life improves with laughter, and happy employees are always tops with customers.

• Personnel Development: Managers and staff develop personal emotional skills through laughter yoga. The activities bring a more child-like appreciation of our emotions. The activities encountered during LY, help unlock years of self-restraint and negativity, and the adult fear of being different and creative.

• Atmosphere: LY lifts the mood of the workplace, not in the fleeting way of a shared joke, but in a more lasting way as it raises the whole sense of well-being of a staff, the shared experience of having laughed long and hard and heartily together.

Increased productivity, greater trust, better communications, greater motivation, reduced stress, more goodwill, improved health, a happier staff. These are the benefits of Laughter Yoga and these give rise to increased profitability.