Humour or humor is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours, controlled human health and emotion.
Milton Hyland Erickson was an American psychiatrist and psychologist specializing in medical hypnosis and family therapy. He was founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis and a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychopathological Association. He is noted for his approach to the unconscious mind as creative and solution-generating. He is also noted for influencing brief therapy, strategic family therapy, family systems therapy, solution focused brief therapy, and neuro-linguistic programming.
Laughter is a physical reaction in humans consisting usually of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system resulting most commonly in forms of "hee-hee" or "ha-ha". It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter can arise from such activities as being tickled, or from humorous stories or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered a auditory expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness, relief, etc. On some occasions, however, it may be caused by contrary emotional states such as embarrassment, surprise, or confusion such as nervous laughter or courtesy laugh. Age, gender, education, language, and culture are all indicators as to whether a person will experience laughter in a given situation. Some other species of primate show laughter-like vocalizations in response to physical contact such as wrestling, play chasing or tickling.
Psychological trauma is damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience. Trauma may result from a single distressing experience or recurring events of being overwhelmed that can be precipitated in weeks, years, or even decades as the person struggles to cope with the immediate circumstances, eventually leading to serious, long-term negative consequences.
Coping means to invest one's own conscious effort, to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimize or tolerate stress and conflict.
Art therapy is a distinct discipline that incorporates creative methods of expression through visual art media. Art therapy, as a creative arts therapy profession, originated in the fields of art and psychotherapy and may vary in definition.
Roy Masters is the host of a talk radio counseling show Advice Line. He is an author and creator of a type of mindfulness meditation exercise, which has appeared in his books and recordings. Masters is the founder of the Oregon non-profit organization, the Foundation of Human Understanding.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhist teachers such as Philip Kapleau, Thich Nhat Hanh and Seung Sahn and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of yoga and studies with Buddhist teachers led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. He teaches mindfulness, which he says can help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness. The stress reduction program created by Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), is offered by medical centers, hospitals, and health maintenance organizations, and is described in his book Full Catastrophe Living.
The New Thought movement is a spiritual movement that developed in the United States in the 19th century, considered by many to have been derived from the unpublished writings of Phineas Quimby. There are numerous smaller groups, most of which are incorporated in the International New Thought Alliance. The contemporary New Thought movement is a loosely allied group of religious denominations, authors, philosophers, and individuals who share a set of beliefs concerning metaphysics, positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power.
Louise Lynn Hay was an American motivational author and the founder of Hay House. She authored several New Thought self-help books, including the 1984 book, You Can Heal Your Life.
Gelotology is the study of laughter and its effects on the body, from a psychological and physiological perspective. Its proponents often advocate induction of laughter on therapeutic grounds in alternative medicine. The field of study was pioneered by William F. Fry of Stanford University.
Grief counseling is a form of psychotherapy that aims to help people cope with the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and cognitive responses to loss. These experiences are commonly thought to be brought on by a loved person's death, but may more broadly be understood as shaped by any significant life-altering loss.
Crying is the shedding of tears in response to an emotional state, pain or a physical irritation of the eye. Emotions that can lead to crying include anger, happiness, or sadness. The act of crying has been defined as "a complex secretomotor phenomenon characterized by the shedding of tears from the lacrimal apparatus, without any irritation of the ocular structures", instead, giving a relief which protects from conjunctivitis. A related medical term is lacrimation, which also refers to non-emotional shedding of tears. Various forms of crying are known as sobbing, weeping, wailing, whimpering, bawling, and blubbering.
Healing Words: Poetry and Medicine is a sixty-minute documentary (ISBN 978-0-7936-9468-6) filmed in 2008 primarily at Shands at the University of Florida. The production portrays individuals in personal quest to recover psychologically and physically from illnesses that have dramatically changed their lives. This film validates expressive art in medical settings can build doctor–patient relationships and be a supportive companion in the healing process.
Richard C. Miller is a clinical psychologist, author, researcher and yogic scholar. He is the founding president of the Integrative Restoration Institute (IRI), co-founder of The International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) and founding editor of the professional Journal of IAYT. He is also a founding member and past president of the Institute for Spirituality and Psychology, Senior Advisor to the Baumann Institute, and was the founding president of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Marin School of Yoga.
The Habit of Happiness is a 1916 American silent comedy film directed by Allan Dwan and filmed by cinematographer Victor Fleming. The film was written by Allan Dwan and Shannon Fife from a suggestion by D. W. Griffith and stars Douglas Fairbanks. A 16mm print of the film is preserved in a private collection.
Cinema therapy or movie therapy is a form of expressive therapy - like art, music and dance therapy - for medical and mental health issues. It is also used as a form of self-help. Cinematherapy was created and popularized by Dr. Gary Solomon, the first to write on using movies as therapy. The movement started to catch up again in 2019 with the featured documentary "Calypsonians" by director Anghelo Taylor, unlike the creation of Dr. Gary Solomon, Anghelo Taylor wrote the CinemaTherapy Manifesto, that starts with one simple principle "In order for cinema therapy truly exist the filmmaker must have an internal search, question or problem to solve inside himself but that relates with the rest of humanity or with specific community. Once the filmmaker and his crew engage in the process of filmmaking, they start healing by the revelation and situations that happen along the process of making a film. In the end, the result of that process will be a medicine for all the viewers as human beings. But everything starts with the deep intention that the filmmaker has when making the film"
Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University who is known for her work in the field of 'science help' which focuses on translating insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support health and well-being. Mainstream media articles about inner-conflict-related aspects of modern lifestyles regularly quote her. A longtime advocate of self-compassion and mindfulness as stress-coping strategies, McGonigal has lately altered her focus on the problematic aspects of stress; in a talk at the TEDGlobal 2013, she emphasized the importance of an individual's subjective belief in themselves as someone who is able to cope successfully as being a crucial factor in their actual response to stress.
Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life (2015) is a book written by Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and Naval Officer, that consists of a series of letters written to a friend struggling with life after military service. The letters serve a guidebook for his friend, Zach Walker, and draw on Greitens’ personal experiences and knowledge of ancient and modern philosophers.
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness is a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, first published in 1990, which describes the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center's Stress Reduction Clinic. In addition to describing the content and background of MBSR in detail, Kabat-Zinn describes scientific research showing the medical benefits of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), and lays out an approach to mind-body medicine emphasizing the depth of the interconnections between physical and mental health. The book has been called "one of the great classics of mind/body medicine", and has been seen as a landmark in the development of the secular mindfulness movement in the United States and internationally.
