Humor and Healing the Research

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Humor and Healing the Research General Purpose: To inform Specific Purpose: To inform my listeners about the benefits of laughter & how to incorporate it in their daily life Central Idea: Humor incorporated in your daily life promotes emotional, mental, and physiological healing INTRODUCTION I. Attention Device & Rapport Building (Self-Disclosure) A. Humor [Infomercial]. 1. Different types of humor- this product is authentic. Not like all those copycats………. 2. Positive Effects of humor B. Humor [PowerPoint slide will be shown]. 1. Research studies a) A recent research showed that pre-school-aged children laugh up to 400 times a day, but by the time we reach adulthood, we laugh a mere 17 times per day on average! b) According to some recent research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, elderly optimistic people, those who expected good things to happen (rather than bad things), were less likely to die than pessimists. c) Among the 65-85 year-old study participants, those who were most optimistic were 55 percent less likely to die from all causes than the most pessimistic people. What’s more, after researchers adjusted the results for age, smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity and other measures of health, the optimists were 71 percent less likely to die than the pessimists! d) It has been calculated that 100 laughs equal ten minutes on a rowing machine. It is called "inner jogging." 2. Diagrams a) Charts from Humor The psychology of living buoyantly II. Orienting Material & Preview A. Laughter can be implemented easily without it being time consuming and expensive like therapy, so what’s stopping you from taking some time to humor yourself B. Humor i... ... middle of paper ... ...erPoint) Poster showing I. Graphic designs displaying humor Works Cited Lefcourt, H. M. (2000). Experiencing Humor in Everyday Life, Sense of Humor and Physiological Stress Responses. Humor: the psychology of living buoyantly (pp. 28,141). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Moody, R. A. (1980). Natural History of Laughter. Laugh after laugh the healing power of humor (p. 28). Washington, D.C.: NLS. Mora-Ripoll, R. (2010). The Therapeutic Value of Laughter in Medicine. Alternative Therapies in Health & Medicine, 16(6), 59. Peter, D. L. (1982). Health, Wealth and Happiness The Best Medicine. The Laughter Prescription: the Tools of Humor and How to Use Them (pp. 8,9). New York: New York: Ballantine. Provine, R. R. (2000). Contagious Laughter and the Brain. Laughter: a scientific investigation (pp. 129-151). New York: Viking.

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