This week we had the honor to interview laughter workshop facilitator and humor healer extraordinaire, Joe Hoare.
Mr. Hoare has been helping people make positive change through laughter workshops, seminars, and keynote speaking. He is also the creator of the UK’s Laughter Facilitation course.
What made you decide to be a facilitator of laughter therapy?
It works. It works for me. It works for others.
My first remembered original conscious thought (when I was 16) was that I wanted to help people. My own journey followed (suicide attempts; insomnia and breakdown; spiritual catharsis) until I had sufficiently little ‘unfinished business’ and was able to responsibly help others.
What profession or line of work were you in prior to this?
My previous career was 20 years managing forest operations. However, the last 10 years I was freelance and also started a stress management business which fed directly into Quantum Laughter, my current work.
Can you share any examples in your life (or the life of someone you know) when humor or laughter helped get you (or he/she) through some hard times?
Hi Joe,
I just wanted to let you know how I have been getting on since I came to the last Laughter Club meeting in September. I have been following your instructions to smile first thing every morning and last thing at night. Wonderful!I have to say that I have felt a real change in me. My face seems lighter and I feel more positive.
Last week whilst reading the news on Bristol hospital Radio my fellow news-reader read a funny story and I laughed until I cried and neither of us could finish the news through constant giggling. I do not remember the last time that I laughed that much and I wanted to thank you for giving me courage to laugh out loud again.
(jonathan fifield)
Can you share with us something that makes you laugh?
Schadenfreude — the laughing-at-someone-slipping-on-a-banana-skin syndrome. It’s a reflex, usually inappropriate, and often passes just as quickly as it came. One time I had just finished a university seminar on laughter with student nurses and we had been discussing untimely and inappropriate laughter. As one of the students got up, she dropped all her books, notes and papers, and my first reaction was to laugh out loud – before then commiserating with her and helping her pick them up. I still laugh at that memory.
If you could give a person one tip, strategy, or piece of advice on how to bring more humor or laughter in their lives, what would that be?
Practice smiling more, a genuine good-natured smile. Smile lots. Size doesn’t matter, frequency does. It can be tiny, just the slightest facial softening especially around the eyes and corners of the mouth. The more you smile a genuine, good-natured smile, the more you’ll access and build the open-hearted, good-natured part of your Self.
Also, the more you smile like this, the more others around you will respond, and as they smile, you smile and so on, you transmit and build a circle of good-naturedness.
A good-natured smile is an easy and pleasurable way to lower your pulse, by the way.
Thanks Joe for all the work you do to spread the healing power of humor! We, at My Hyena, solute you!
For more information about Joe, checkout his website at www.joehoare.co.uk or call him at (+44) 7812159943.
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