Mind and Body Balance

Gibberish is much more than speaking nonsense. It is a universal language that bypasses the analytical mind, quietens the inner critic and invites us into presence, spontaneity and wholehearted connection.

Having both trained with The Gibberish Professor, Alex Sternick, whose work is deeply inspired by the teachings of Dr Viktor Frankl, Keith Johnstone and Frank Farrelly, I am delighted to be co-facilitating this joyful, therapeutic and deeply playful Gibberish Coach Training, created by Lotte Mikkelsen of UnitedMind.

Stepping Away From the Right Words

This training is a chance to step away from the pressure of having to find the right words. Together we’ll create a safe space where you can play, laugh, connect with others and simply be yourself.

When we let go of the need to find the right words, we often discover a richer, more authentic way of communicating.

What You’ll Explore

Explore how Gibberish can reduce stress, dissolve self-consciousness, increase confidence, spark creativity and strengthen relationships. You’ll discover how letting go of words can open the door to greater confidence, deeper connection and fresh ways of communicating.

Through playful games, improvisation, movement and laughter, you’ll discover how communicating beyond words enhances emotional intelligence, deep listening, empathy and collaboration.

Who It’s For

Whether you’re a therapist, coach, teacher, facilitator or leader, or you’re simply looking to free your mind and enhance your communication skills, this workshop offers practical tools that can enrich both your personal life and your professional practice.

Rediscover the freedom that comes when we stop trying to say the perfect thing and simply allow ourselves to be fully present with one another.

Come and experience how a language of complete nonsense can make perfect sense, and why the most meaningful conversations sometimes happen without words.

Date and Venue

Saturday 14th November 2026
Stanmore, NW London

To enquire or find out about future dates, contact mel_bloch@yahoo.co.uk.

Holistic Laughter Coach Melanie Bloch is a Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Ambassador Meditation and Laughter Teacher, Certified Happiness Coach and Keynote Speaker, with a background in the complementary medicine field spanning over 30 years.

As therapists, counsellors and holistic practitioners, we know that healing doesn’t happen by trying to make difficult feelings disappear. Healing comes from creating a safe, compassionate space where every emotion is welcome.

I completed the Accredited Laughter Therapist Training developed by Lotte Mikkelsen over 10 years ago, and we now co-facilitate this training together.

It is designed for practitioners who would like to add another powerful therapeutic process to the way they work with clients, offering a deeper exploration of therapeutic, cathartic and emotionally integrated laughter.

What Laughter Therapy Is

Laughter Therapy is about recognising that laughter is one of the body’s natural ways of processing emotion. Just like tears, trembling, silence or deep breathing, authentic laughter can be part of a healthy emotional release, arising naturally in a safe therapeutic environment.

This training explores how laughter can sit alongside the therapeutic approaches you already use, supporting emotional expression, nervous system regulation, self-awareness and integration.

The Work Behind the Training

The work is inspired by psychologist Annette Goodheart, whose pioneering research recognised that laughter is a valid emotional response within therapy. Rather than seeing laughter as something that distracts from difficult emotions, she showed that it can become part of the healing process itself, often appearing alongside grief, fear, anger, relief or joy.

We also draw on the creativity and spontaneity of Viola Spolin’s improvisational games, and explore Osho’s Mystic Rose Meditation with its unique journey through movement, laughter, tears and silence. Together, these approaches offer a rich, experiential understanding of emotional processing.

Throughout the training we hold the belief that no emotion is wrong. Joy, sadness, anger, fear, laughter and tears are all welcome. We support people in safely meeting whatever is present, allowing emotions to move naturally through the body and creating a greater sense of peace and wellbeing.

During the Training You Will Explore

• The foundations of therapeutic laughter and the pioneering work of Annette Goodheart.
• The science of laughter and its effects on the brain, body and nervous system.
• Laughter as part of the wider therapeutic process of emotional release and integration.
• How to create a safe, compassionate and non-judgemental environment where authentic expression can unfold.
• An outline for a 6–8 week programme, with enquiry and practical ways of working with therapeutic laughter in both one-to-one sessions and groups.
• Play, creativity and spontaneity as resources for healing.
• Your own relationship with laughter and emotional expression, through experiential learning and self-reflection.

Course Structure

The qualification is completed over several stages, allowing plenty of time for learning, reflection and practical application.

• Two days of experiential training.
• Six to twelve months of case study work, including one individual and one group case study.
• Completion of a reflective dissertation.
• A final half-day session, online or in person, to present your work and complete the qualification.

On successful completion you will receive an Accredited Laughter Therapist Certificate, enabling you to obtain professional insurance to facilitate therapeutic laughter with individuals and groups.

Who the Training Complements

This training complements many existing therapeutic approaches, including counselling, psychotherapy, coaching, bodywork, holistic therapies and Laughter Yoga. It offers an additional way of supporting clients: one that honours the whole person and welcomes every emotion as part of the journey towards healing.

Upcoming Dates

Laughter Therapist Training
Stanmore, NW London

• 10th and 11th October 2026
• 15th and 16th May 2027

For more information and future training dates, contact mel_bloch@yahoo.co.uk.

Holistic Laughter Coach Melanie Bloch is a Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Ambassador Meditation and Laughter Teacher, Certified Happiness Coach and Keynote Speaker, with a background in the complementary medicine field spanning over 30 years.

Laughter from the Inside Out isn’t about forcing laughter or trying to “stay positive.” It’s about meeting our feelings and allowing them to move through us.

Laughter isn’t used to cover pain. It’s welcomed as one of the body’s natural ways of releasing it, creating a safe, compassionate space where every emotion is welcome.

When We Feel Safe, the Body Settles

When we feel safe enough, our nervous system naturally begins to settle. Our breathing slows. Our muscles soften. Our heart becomes steadier. The body moves out of survival mode and into a place where it can rest, restore and heal.

The First Release Is Often Not Laughter at All

As this happens, we don’t have to keep holding everything together. The first release is often not laughter at all.

It’s a sigh. A breath. An exhale.

Signs that the body no longer has to hold on so tightly.

What Happens Inside

Stress hormones decrease and endorphins are released, helping to regulate the nervous system. Each time we experience this, the brain begins to create new pathways through neuroplasticity, making it easier to return to this place of calm in the future and supporting greater resilience, ease and wellbeing.

Finding What Was Always There

As the mind becomes quieter, we often discover something that has been there all along: a deeper sense of peace, ease and connection.

Holistic Laughter Coach Melanie Bloch is a Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Ambassador Meditation and Laughter Teacher, Certified Happiness Coach and Keynote Speaker, with a background in the complementary medicine field spanning over 30 years.

If the Two Day Laughter Yoga Leader Training is where you learn to share laughter, the 5 day Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher Training is where you begin to explore and live it even more deeply.

It’s a natural next step — not because you have to, but because something in you wants to explore further

You begin to notice more clearly how laughter:
Helps you move through stress and emotions
Brings your nervous system back into balance
Shifts your perspective (sometimes when nothing else quite does)
Connects you more honestly with others

And alongside that personal deepening, your ability to hold space for others expands too.

From a science perspective, you’re working with everything we know about neuroplasticity, breath, and the body’s natural capacity to regulate and heal.

The Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher Training also opens another doorway.
It gives you the skills, confidence, and understanding to teach others to become Laughter Yoga Leaders.

You’re no longer just leading sessions — you’re supporting others to step into that role too.

Guiding them to find their own way of sharing laughter, in their own voice, in their own communities.

It’s about creating a safe, non-judgemental space – where all emotions are welcome.

When people arrive – they bring everything.
Stress. Grief. Irritation. Tiredness. Joy. Numbness. Hope. And in this space, none of that needs to be fixed or pushed away.
Instead, it’s gently held.

As a Laughter Yoga Teacher, you learn how to hold that space with care — allowing people to laugh, soften, release, or just quietly be — without pressure or expectation

A Laughter Yoga Leader you train might bring laughter into:
A workplace that’s been running on stress and pressure
A care home where connection and lightness are deeply needed
A school, a community group, a support circle
A family that hasn’t laughed together in a long time

Creating spaces, held with warmth and non-judgement, allow people to feel safe enough to be real – laughter lands differently – connection deepens.

Learning that release of emotion is just old energy moving through the body – you’re offering something many people rarely experience: a place where they don’t have to pretend.

Someone who feels met — not judged — may:
Speak more kindly to a partner
Have more patience with a child
Feel safer expressing themselves
Or simply carry a little more ease into their day
And then that touches someone else.

You see the change in people.
You feel the difference in yourself.
You witness connection happening in real time.

You may never see the full extent of that ripple — but it’s happening

In a world that can feel heavy, rushed, and disconnected…that’s a wonderful thing

Contact Holistic Laughter Coach Mel for more info about the Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher Training

Holistic Laughter Coach Melanie Bloch is a Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Ambassador, Meditation and Laughter Teacher, Certified Happiness Coach, and Keynote Speaker with a background in the Complementary Medicine Field of over 30 years

Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher Dates in Stanmore

Fri 28th – 31st Aug 2026

Fri 27th – 30th Nov 2026

Email: mel_bloch@yahoo.co.uk for more info

Why Laughter Yoga?

The Research

Studies have shown that breath work, laughter exercises and meditation help improve mental health as well as having benefits similar to exercise. All of these are incorporated into Laughter Yoga sessions.

Medical research shows the body doesn’t know the difference between real and simulated laughter. Done with willingness, all the great benefits can be experienced through simulated laughter. A good laugh can help you release stress. A shift in mood takes place and life can be seen from a more positive perspective.

Physical benefits

Laughter yoga activates the body’s feel good hormones and natural painkillers and lowers the stress hormone cortisol. For sufferers of chronic pain, laughing and smiling can be very effective in pain management, for instance.

When you laugh, on the out breath the old air released reduces toxins and stress from the system. The new breath you take in is filled with more oxygen and nutrients that supports brain and body functions. As a result, you will have more energy and a better supported the immune system. In turn, this builds productivity and resilience in the workplace.

Supporting mental health in the workplace

Laughter is the antidote to stress. Supporting mental health in the workplace can be done through laughter. Taking time to have fun helps create balance. Laughter is contagious and can support the process of opening your heart to giving and receiving. It’s easy to laugh when things are going well and you feel good. But if you are feeling stressed or going through a difficult period in your life you may not feel like laughing at all. Smiling and laughing comes naturally but as we transition from child to adult, you can lose this natural joyful expression. You can connect to this innate ability, still within us, by making more room in life for smiling and laughter

A good laugh can help mental health by releasing stress and feelings that may have been held down for a while. If left to build up, this can lead to depletion, burn-out and ‘dis-ease’. Laughing helps you remain in the present moment. When you are laughing you can’t be worried about yesterday or thinking about tomorrow.

Team building in the workplace

Laughter breaks down barriers and supports better communication. Whether with friends, loved ones, family or co-workers. By stepping back and finding a way to laugh, you can more easily get through many life challenges.

The techniques, breath work and meditation practices used in Laughter Yoga help individuals and groups release stress in a therapeutic and fun way which can have a positive impact on health and in all areas of life.

You can liken the ability to laugh to a muscle. Like with any muscle, the more you use it the stronger it becomes. Laughter Yoga can support your ability to smile and laugh more easily and spontaneously, even if you haven’t felt like it for a while.

Wellbeing through Laughter Yoga Sessions provide opportunity to optimise wellness at work through team building, solution-based communication, collaboration and co-operation which can greatly benefit wellbeing in all aspects of life and in the workplace.