The author presents "the healing power of humor," including anecdotes and conversations with Nancy Nurse and Nurse Kindheart.

Could you use a good laugh? This definitive guide by the founder of the worldwide laughter yoga movement will show you how to giggle your way to good health! Bring laughter into your life at any time of day--no special equipment needed, no new wardrobe, no expensive classes, not even a sense of humor! Laughter yoga is all about voluntary laughter--how you can learn to laugh even in the absence of humorous stimuli, and reap the extraordinary, scientifically proven benefits, which include stress reduction, pain relief, weight loss, heightened immunity, and, especially, enhanced mood: If you act happy, you'll become happy--your body can't tell the difference! Children laugh more than 300 times a day, adults fewer than fifteen. But it's easy to start laughing again. The exercises in this book combine voluntary laughter with yogic breathing to give you a full body-mind workout. And it turns out that laughter is the fastest way to reduce stress and the best kind of cardio: Ten minutes of hearty laughter is equal to thirty minutes on the rowing machine. With Laughter Yoga, join the growing worldwide movement and discover how laughter really is the best medicine. A PENGUIN LIFE TITLE

How can teachers make their literacy classrooms a place of joy? Fun, caring, and passion are the keys to a shame-free, healthy classroom that nurtures students in mind, body, and spirit. Full of simple strategies and activities for building community, this practical book is committed to promoting strong literacy skills. It illustrates concrete ways to build mindful classrooms where students are free to speak with compassion, write with conviction, and read with joy.

Nurses are increasingly aware of the need to blend technology, mind, and spirit in creating optimal circumstances for healing. The American Holistic Nurses Association, with Barbara Dossey, a pioneer and leader in the field, has created a core curriculum that will provide a blueprint for what it means to be a holistic nurse. This text can also serve as a study guide for the AHNCC exam. Core Curriculum for Holistic Nursing has a broad appeal to nurses new to holistic concepts as well as those who are already experts.

Leadership has for too long been treated as a function and not as a relationship. Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone argue that successful leadership must be based on love (altruism and empathy) and laughter (positive emotions and joy). Science tells us that humans are deeply wired for empathy and compassion and that our emotional selves help us make better decisions and motivate others. However, the tactics we use to train leaders bear little reflection of these advancements; we're still creating competent but emotionally distant leaders who “manage human assets” and lead by setting goals, deadlines, and deliverables. Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone hope to flip a light switch and illuminate, above all else, that leadership begins with heart and soul. Too many training programs reduce leadership to an equation, matrix, or acronym. But leadership is a relationship. It's one human helping another. The most successful leaders show they genuinely care about their employees and are, well, fun. It's just like any relationship. In seven succinct chapters, the authors show that people lead best when they tap into their genetically driven human nature to love and nurture, connect and trust. Leading with love and laughter offers powerful dividends: tighter teams, stronger performance, improved morale, greater trust, more creativity, and even better health. While Sutch and Malone cite the science and offer examples, tips, and practices, their larger purpose is to reintroduce the warmth of human interaction and emotion as the foundation of what leadership is all about.

This volume provides a unique and valuable contribution to our understanding of the impact of stressful life events and mass trauma on the person, the culture and society in the course of the life span. It provides a comprehensive look at our psychological state of affairs at the beginning of the twenty-first century. There are several volumes that address some or most of these areas indivi- ally but this volume is unique in that it has brought together theoreticians, researchers and clinicians who address critical challenges in our lives. But we are now several months into the global financial crisis requiring a transition, not only for the western world but for the third world. How on earth do families in trauma zones – from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan, New Orleans to Gaza – cope with similar declining older relatives, with added traumas and zero medical resources attempt to survive? In news reports, politicians and financiers denying the inevitable and struggling for solutions that cannot be relevant to the new reality that they have yet to discover.

The book Suffering the Slings and Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune: International Perspectives on Stress, Laughter and Depression highlights topics covered at an inaugural inter-disciplinary conference Making Sense of Stress Humour and Healing held in Budapest in May 2005. The chapters provide a truly international and inter-disciplinary perspective on the subject. Contributors to this volume come not only from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds but also from many parts of the globe. They speak of universal truths and of site-specific concerns. They do not all speak with one voice and some of their points diverge one from the other but each sheds their own light on the topics, allowing readers to form a richer picture of the issues than might otherwise be possible.