The Laughter Ambassador From Hong Kong

Dick Yu, Hong Kong: This great honor and encouragement was in appreciation of his years of promoting Laughter Yoga. He has worked relentlessly to set up Laughter Clubs in Hong Kong and oversee their progress. The clubs, now 20 in number, are led by laughter leaders and help to spread laughter exercises all around. He also conducts laughter leader training workshops twice a year.

Dick lead groups of elderly people to play Laughter Yoga in elderly centre and elderly home, some of them are physically disable. Some centers have already set up regular clubs and some are planning to do so. He visits their clubs from time to time. Some elderly centers are interested to do a research on elderly people as to find out whether Laughter Yoga can prevent the elderly from suffering dementia or Parkinson disease or could it slow down the speed of deterioration.

He has even done laughter sessions for the blind elderly home as well as for the mentally disabled. Participants laughed in a group and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Yu is also planning to start telephone Laughter Clubs for them so that they can enjoy laughter without any limitation.

Last but not least, Dick launched training sessions of volunteers in hospitals and hopefully Laughter Clubs could be set up for patients with chronic diseases, especially those with emotional problems. In future, the hospital is planning to place the volunteer group to do laughter sessions in a ward of patients suffering from serious brain injuries. The patients are immobile, only have slight reactions or even with no response. The hospital is interested to do a research to find out whether the sound of laughter could stimulate the patients to react.

Over the past few months, several media interviews in newspapers and television have generated a lot of awareness about Laughter Yoga and its activities. As more people get to know about it, they come and join the Laughter Clubs.