Saturday, April 4, 2015

Laughter Yoga by Danny Singh - Report

A very informative and happy workshop from Danny Singh, who introduced us to a very innovative lesson. Laughter Yoga is in his words, “the most important tool in my lesson”, it makes students more open to all kinds of creative and dynamic learning styles. In the beginning we started with some breathing techniques and he then introduced us to different kinds of laughter. We tried the: -Welcome laugh - Three variations of the milkshake laugh (which is his favourite) - The bee laugh - The bear laugh The Elephant laugh

In order for laughter to be beneficial to the body, we need at least 15-20 minutes of laughing. A child laughs about 300 times a day while an adult only about 10 times. Danny described how he found out about Laughter Yoga and what its benefits are. As we laugh for no reason, with no jokes or humour, there are no language, cultural, religious or political barriers to laughing. It reduces stress, we get warmed up and it improves the mood of both the students and the teacher. Laughing reduces inhibitions, so after the laughter exercises, the teacher could ask students to do any task he/she wants. Laughing also improves group dynamics and improves relations between students. Another important thing is that you can insert vocabulary while you are giving instructions for the laughs and students learn without even noticing it. The session ended practicing two more laughs and two other physical activities: - The word formation: We were divided into groups and had to form a word, either presenting letters with our bodies or making an image of the word we were representing. - Write on somebody’s back, practicing verbs – Student number one writes the infinitive of the verb, student number 2 has to understand the word and write the past tense of the verb on his/her partner’s back. - The car wash (pretending to go under a car-wash) - The swing laugh, where we formed a circle and came closer looking at the sky laughing.

You can find more information on Danny Singh’s page: www.laughnlearn.net
www.laughnlearn.net


By Theodora Papapanagiotou


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