At Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), we fight cancer using an integrative approach. Our Mind-Body Medicine Department offers supportive options, including laughter therapy, to help you cope as you receive conventional cancer treatments.
Laughter therapy strives to help you use and enjoy laughter as a tool for healing. Dr. Katherine Puckett, National Director of Mind-Body Medicine at CTCA, first introduced laughter therapy to Midwestern Regional Medical Center upon a patient's request.
CTCA offers humor therapy sessions, also known as Laughter Clubs or humor groups, to help cancer patients and their families use and enjoy laughter as a tool for healing. These leader-led groups take patients through a number of laugh-related exercises including fake laughter and laughter greetings.
aughter Club is based not on humor or jokes, but rather on laughter as a physical exercise. One group laughter exercise involves patients standing in a circle, with the leader in the middle. Patients put their fingertips on their cheekbones, chest or lower abdomen and make “ha ha” or “hee hee” sounds until they felt vibrations through their bodies. Dr. Puckett says during these exercises, it is hard for people not to join in because laughter is so contagious.
According to Dr. Puckett, at the end of a laughter therapy session, patients have said things like "I didn't even think about cancer during Laughter Club" and "That felt great! Things have been so hard that we hadn't laughed in months." Dr. Puckett adds that, just recently, the eight-year-old daughter of a CTCA patient who attended Laughter Club said afterwards: "I never thought about laughing everyday, but now I realize I can. Like even when I don't feel happy, I can still laugh and feel better."
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