How To Use Humor Therapy For Stress Video

Using humor is great way to relieve stress. Get advice on reducing and managing stress in this stress management video.

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Move focus out of the negative & into the positive
Close eyes & breathe with a natural rhythm
Imagine inhaling a white breath of freshness
Imagine exhaling a dark breath of toxins

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Debbie Mandell is a Stress Management expert, and author of the book Addicted to Stress. She has a Masters Degreee from NYU, and has worked as a Stress Management expert for over a decade.

DEBBIE MANDEL: Greetings everyone. I'm Debbie Mandel, a stress management specialist and author of "Addicted to Stress." In this clip, we're going to talk about how to use humor therapy to reduce stress. Laughter is free medicine. I call it your inner treadmill so you get the benefits of exercise. It rids the body of stress hormones and releases feel-good chemistry. Now, you don't have to be in a good mood to laugh and I don't have to tell you a joke. You can just laugh and without any stimulus you will feel better. If you need to, watch a comedy or listen to a tape that makes you laugh. I had a client in one of my workshops. It took her eight hours of watching comedies before she laughed. Well, she had a lot of stressors in her life. But once she did, it got easier and the laughs just came along. Laughter will reduce negative perceptions and the way you can do this is by cultivating a comic eye for the incongruities of life. Try to reduce things to their absurd level. The five points to remember that using humor to reduce stress is that laughter is free medicine and don't forget that; number two, just laugh to feel better without any stimulus; number three, watch a comedy, listen to a tape for as long as it takes to laugh and don't forget you could look at cartoons as well, some of us are visual; number four, reduce negative perceptions to their absurd level to make them ridiculous; and number five, develop a comic eye for the absurdities of life.

How to Use Humor Therapy for Stress Video

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