Health
20-Minute Vacations: Quick, Affordable, and Fun “Getaways” from the Stress of Everyday Life by Judith Sachs
You’re in for more than 100 relaxing, invigorating, and just-plain-fun getaways that really can be enjoyed in just 20 minutes or less— everything from desk dreaming to gourmet getaways to romantic respites to pampering yourself. These vacations take you far away from the pressure and stress of daily life. The best part is that they are totally affordable in terms of both time and money… yet they offer you the respite you need to go back to your life and work with renewed zest. Just reading this book will be like a vacation for you.
50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save Your Life by the Faculty of the UCLA School of Public Health
Here’s a book full of good news– 50 simple but not simplistic ways to make positive lifestyle changes. This entertaining and informative guide includes nurturing your laugh life as one of the top 50 things to save your life. Laughter may add years to your life– and life to your years!
57 Reasons Not To Light Up by M.M. Kirsch
If a picture is worth a thousand words, you’ll get at least 57,000 words worth in this book. It’s a colorful collection of cartoons identifying 57 reasons to stop smoking. This would make a great gift for someone who wants to give up the addiction of lighting up– by taking up the addiction of lightening up with humor.
201 Things to Do While You’re Getting Better (at Home or in the Hospital): How to Successfully Cope with Boredom and Pain Without Losing Your Sanity by Erica Levy Klein
Here’s a unique self-help guide and activity book rolled up in one– for everyone recovering from an illness or surgery (and even those who are not). Filled with amusing activities, cartoons, and other diversions, this resource presents important and oftentimes entertaining proven techniques for reducing pain and dealing with sadness. You’ll especially enjoy “the best boredom busters of all time”– great ways to make time fly when all the minutes seem to want to do is crawl.
300 Incredible Things for Self-Help & Wellness on the Internet by Ed Rubenstein and Ken Leebow
300 Incredible Things for Health, Fitness & Diet on the Internet by Peter Lupus with Ken Leebow
Here’s to your health… your most valuable asset. Specifically, here is an amazing array of 600 of the best Web sites that contain something valuable for everyone interested in their health and wellness. These fun, easy-to-read, and educational books are the perfect gift for family, friends, and associates. They will shorten your learning curve dramatically in using the Internet as a powerful tool to help you take better care of your body and mind, manage stress, improve relationships, eat smarter, breathe deeper, sleep sounder, age gracefully, and exercise more effectively. For those who are feeling challenged by the day-to-day issues of life, these books can help you use the Net to become better informed about your mental health, self-improvement, and wellness choices. This dynamic duo is the ultimate health/wellness search engine.
365 Health and Happiness Boosters by M.J. Ryan
There are three unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you are pursuing happiness, this book will help you find it… every day! You will discover 365 happiness shots-in-the-arm: concrete things you can do, just for today, to experience happiness. Some of the suggestions are serious… some are light-hearted: Call in Well, Hold a Pity Party, Do a Good Deed for Someone You Know, Be King or Queen for an Hour. They all will help you make a ha-ha-habit of ha-ha-happiness! Jest remember— life is short… this book can help you make it sweet!
1,001 Great Gifts by Jane Brody et al
Gift-giving can be healthy… for both the giver and the receiver. Peppered throughout this book are real-life anecdotes of extraordinary, ingenious, original, practical, fun, wild, inexpensive, fabulous, helpful, friendly, off-the-wall, delicious, gorgeous, and outrageous gift-giving ideas. Besides learning the answer to the age-old question “What do I get for someone who has everything?”, you’ll have a lot of fun going through such chapters as: “Presents to Please Even the Pickiest Parents,” “Kid Stuff: Giving Great Things to Small Packages,” “Hot Gifts for Cool Teens,” “Truly Engaging Gifts for Your Sweetheart,” “I Gave at the Office!: Gift Ideas for Co-Workers.” Give yourself the gift of this book!
ACT NOW! by Dale Anderson, M.D.
Announcing the alternative medicine of the 21st Century… There’s now a medically sound way to start a dramatic turn of events in your life– from health to relationships to wealth. By learning to act healthy and vital, even when you don’t feel that way, you can change your body’s chemistry and begin to feel the way you act. Using “acting” as a metaphor, this innovative guide helps you get into the act by teaching you how to produce the neuropeptides (such as endorphins) that promote well-being and bolster the immune system. This book discloses the secrets successful performers use to trigger a healthy, healing chemistry as well as the 9-step prescription for adding laughter to your life. Act Now… buy this book!
Advances In Humor And Psychotherapy edited by William Fry, Jr., M.D., and Waleed Salameh
This new book presents compelling evidence for using humor with a wide range of clients. It provides both a theoretical and a practical understanding of the universal applications of humor in clinical practice. The book is filled with examples, case histories, techniques, and suggestions for integrating humor into therapy sessions with adults, children, and families. Chapters include: “An Adlerian Approach to Humor and Psychotherapy,” “Humor and Spirituality in Psychotherapy,” “Humor in Substance Abuse Treatment,” “The Role of Humor in a College Mental Health Program,” “The Function of Humor with Adolescents,” and much more. As icing on the cake, the book also includes a comprehensive research bibliography on humor and psychotherapy (1964-1991).
Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient by Norman Cousins
This best-selling “Bible of the humor field” has been the most important book to legitimize humor in healing. It documents how Cousins recovered from a crippling disease by tapping the power of laughter and the positive emotions.
And How Are We Feeling Today? The Impatient Patient’s Hospital Survival Guide by Kathryn Hammer
You’ll laugh while learning plenty about hospital policies (rules made up under the influence of nitrous oxide), your medical team (a.k.a. captors), hospital food (an oxymoron), procedures and tests (your life as a lab mouse), hospital fashion (how to avoid looking like something the dog coughed up), and more. Most important, this irreverent guide will make you feel as if you have some small smidgen of control over your experience. Highly recommended as an empathy trainer for health care professionals.
Are You Having Fun Yet?: How To Bring The Art Of Play Into Your Recovery by Carmen Renee Berry
“If I’m in recovery, why am I miserable?” “If I’m better, then why don’t I feel better?” “Is it possible to enjoy life again?” If you ask yourself any of these questions, then let make room for a love living and laughter! This inspirational book shows you how to experience the renewed sense of joy that you hoped for when you began your recovery. Chapters suggest you “Rekindle Your Hope in the Possibility of Play,” “Open Yourself to Your Inner Child,” “Invent New Ways to Enjoy Life as an Adult,” and much more. Full recovery includes embracing life with passion and joy-‑ this book will help show you the way.
Best of Medical Humor, edit4ed by Howard Bennett, M.D.
Get ready fro some smiles of recognition as well as deep bellows of laughter. This is a fantastic collection of articles, essays, poetry, and letters published in medical literature. It will help everyone involved in health care – professionals and patients – to see the humor in and value of humor in medical settings. This book reinforces Josh Billings’ notion that “There ain’t much fun in medicine, but there’s a heck of a lot of medicine in fun.
The Best of Nursing Humor: A Collection of Articles, Essays, and Poetry Published in the Nursing Literature by Colleen Kenefick and Amy Young
“Take a big breath, hold it, and…burst out laughing” is one of the articles in this hilarious book, and it captures the mood of the whole collection. Dozens of essays reveal the funny side of nursing, from surviving school to getting a job, dealing with patients, and coping with interns. Dictation fragments (“On the second day, her knee was better and on the third day, it completely disappeared”), comments nurses could live without (“Would you like to work a double shift?”), Mother Goose Nursing Rhymes, and more make it a must for health‑care providers.
The Big Book of Stress-Relief Games: Quick, Fun Activities for Feeling Better by Robert Epstein
These quick exercises are designed to reduce stress wherever and whenever it strikes— in meetings, in front of the computer, during the morning commute or when dealing with difficult people. Psychology Today Editor-in-Chief Robert Epstein has created fifty 1-3 minute games based on STRESS-PROOFING: an original system derived from scientific research that makes stress reduction effortless, effective, and even fun! For everyone from deskbound office workers to managers in meetings to hurried/harried parents, this book is packed with activities and techniques for both individuals and groups who are “all stressed up with no place to go.” You deserve a (stress) break today… you deserve this book!
The Caring Clowns: How Humor, Smiles And Laughter Overcome Pain, Suffering And Loneliness by Richard Snowberg
Here is a sensitive book that explores the positive effects of humor on individuals who are hospitalized, in nursing homes, grieving, or in some way suffering. For anyone interested in understanding and spreading the benefits of therapeutic humor, it details the use of techniques such as magic, puppets, storytelling, and music in a variety of real‑life health care settings. Also included are descriptions of several hospital-based humor programs. Read this and you’ll agree that T.L.C. (Tender Loving Clowning) is part of the cure!
The Courage to Laugh: Humor, Hope, and Healing in the Face of Death and Dying by Allen Klein
With heartwarming and frequently hilarious stories, this book can help anyone dealing with loss (caregivers, families, and patients) to triumph over tragedy. Allen shows that this book is a matter of laugh or death… this book is really about life and living as it addresses such topics as: is death too serious for humor, helpful vs. hurtful humor, what’s so funny about HAspitals, hospice– serious but not solemn, creatively conquering cancer, AIDS ain’t funny– or is it, great wisdom from small fry, mirth and mourning, etc. Jack Canfield: “The Courage to Laugh is a powerful testament, which gives an honorable nod to humor’s place in life’s final passage.”
Don’t Get Mad, Get Funny!: A Light-Hearted Approach to Stress Management by Leigh Anne Jasheway
Laugh in the face of adversity! Respond to stress-filled days with the transforming power of laughter. You’ll enjoy this captivating book in which humor is both the medium and the message with chapters like “Help! I’m Under So Much Stress, My Inner Child Wants to be Adopted!” Learn about the benefits of humor, complete your own Laughter Profile, and laugh at unforgettable stories of humor in action. You’ll be able to find the funny in life as you discover 14 steps for replacing stress with laughter. This playful, practical book will help you to manage stress… before it mismanages you. Don’t get mad… get this book!
Freudulent Encounters (For The Jung At Heart): Still More Readings From The Journal Of Polymorphous Perversity edited by Glenn Ellenbogen
Aiming for a direct assault on “the stuffy, the stodgy, and the stoic,” this irreverent, satirical lampoon of psychology will entertain both the people who practice and who benefit from the mental health field. Freudulent Encounters is humor that heals – not a broadside attack, but an invitation to take a break from the challenges of modern psychotherapy in a troubled world and try the cure of laughter. Even Freud might have approved!
From Stress to Success: Simple Ways to Laugh It Off, Lighten Up and Conquer the World by Michael Podolinsky
These two audiocassettes (87 minutes) with the accompanying 28-page guidebook will give you the secrets to making stress work for you instead of against you. Whether you’re stuck in traffic, trapped on the treadmill or (dare we say) sitting back and relaxing, you’ll learn to: use your stress productively, develop unfailing support systems, enrich your life with the 5 F’s, increase your stress tolerance, use risk to your advantage, re-energize yourself in minutes, make family life more rewarding, see laughter as internal jogging, and add 6 to 12 years to your life. For the time of your life… take the time to listen to these tapes.
From Victim To Victor by Harold Benjamin
In this book for cancer patients and their families (and for others facing life challenges), Harold Benjamin outlines methods used in his pioneering The Wellness Community (of which Gilda Radner was a part) to replace depression and despair with hope and the will to live. Laughter and humor are integral parts of this support system and in the recovery process. As noted by one of the participants in The Wellness Community, “I found that laughter isn’t just fun– it’s essential!”
Gesundheit!: Bringing Good Health to You, the Medical System, and Society through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor, and Joy by Patch Adams, M.D., with Maureen Mylander
Here is the book that inspired the Patch Adams movie starring Robin Williams. This is the incredible story of one man’s vision to bring a peaceful revolution to the health care industry through the development of The Gesundheit Institute, an ongoing mission in ho-ho-holistic care since 1971. Can you imagine a medical practice that sees more than 15,000 people without billing them, without malpractice insurance, and without formal facilities? Patch Adams not only imagined it, he made it a reality, based on the philosophy that healing should be a loving, creative, humorous human interchange, not a business transaction. If you’re a professional in the health care field, here is a story that is nothing to sneeze at!
God Grant Me The Laughter: A Treasury Of Twelve Step Humor by Ed F.
This is a great collection of cartoons, quotes, and quips that honor the role of humor in recovery from alcoholism or other drug dependency. The author notes, “We know that jokes about alcoholics intended as casual amusement for the general population aren’t funny. But we, the sober ones, can laugh, because we’re laughing at ourselves– ours is the kind of humor that springs from relief. We count on it to help us stay sober. And laughter helps us celebrate our recovery.”
God Knows You’re Stressed: Simple Ways to Restore Your Balance by Sr. Anne Bryan Smollin
If you find yourself all stressed up with nowhere to go… then go to this book! This uplifting book spells out 12 proven ways to maintain control over potentially stressful situations and to handle all of life’s little trials and larger tribulations. You’ll learn how stress can be transformed: you can manage stress before it manages you. Sr. Anne (who is the closing keynote speaker at our April international conference— see page 22) draws on her wealth of powerful principles and touching and hilarious anecdotes to help you like yourself better, treat yourself with more kindness, laugh and play more, breathe more deeply, hold hurts more loosely, and rest more soundly.
Haha And Aha: The Role Of Humor In Psychotherapy by Harold Mosak
Written for professionals in the psychotherapy field, this book analyzes the role that humor plays in establishing a relationship, diagnosis, interpretation, and termination of a client relationship. Chapters include “What Makes Things Funny?”, “The Structure of the Joke,” and “Theories of Humor.” There is also a special section that includes l50 jokes that can be used in psychotherapy. This is a chance to enjoy the humor in therapy and to understand the therapy of humor.
The Handbook of Humor: Clinical Applications in Psychotherapy by Elcha Shain Buckman
This work is meant to be a practical handbook and an easily-referenced anthology on humor as a psychotherapeutic tool. With a fine review of literature and a very extensive bibliography, this book includes chapters on humor: in psychotherapy with children, as an invaluable technique with adolescents, as a communication facilitator in couples’ therapy, in family therapy, in the mental health of the elderly, and in the treatment of people with cancer.
Head First: The Biology of Hope by Norman Cousins
His best-selling Anatomy of an Illness posed the big questions. Here are the answers. Norman Cousins’ last book is now available on this provocative and enjoyable two-cassette, two-hour audiotape. Lend an ear as Norman shares the growing scientific evidence in psychoneuroimmunology on how the positive emotions (laughter, love, faith, hope, will to live) give us the ability to make ourselves well. These tapes provide a special opportunity for you to hear one of the pioneers in the field of humor therapy.
The Healing Heart By Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins utilized his trust in the power of positive emotions to overcome panic and survive a massive heart attack. Rather than being a passive victim of his illness, Cousins describes how he was able to tap his body’s powerful healing abilities and rediscover living. He offers specific ways we can tap our own emotional strength and positive emotions. This is a very thoughtful and thought-provoking book which we heartily recommend.
The Healing Power Of Humor by Allen Klein
For trying times, try humor! This is an ideal book for anyone who needs techniques for getting through loss, setbacks, upsets, disappointments, trials and tribulations. Specific techniques include joke-jitsu, laughing while the irony is hot, and making molehills out of mountains.
Health Care-Toons Journal by Ed Fischer and Jeff Haebig
This spiral-bound journal is a unique blend of cartoons, quotes, health information, and do-able suggestions to help you feel great and to uplift others. Improve the quality of your life and enhance your physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being by responding to the questions posed in the journal. This has been a best-seller at national wellness conferences.
Health Care-Toons Journal by Ed Fischer and Jeff Haebig
This spiral-bound journal is a unique blend of cartoons, quotes, health information, and do-able suggestions to help you feel great and to uplift others. Improve the quality of your life and enhance your physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being by responding to the questions posed in the journal. This has been a best-seller at national wellness conferences.
Health, Healing and the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training by Paul McGhee
This second edition is a synthesis of two of Dr. McGhee’s earlier books: How to Develop Your Sense of Humor and Humor Log: For the 8-Step Humor Development Training Program. If you suffer from Acquired Amusement Deficiency Syndrome or Terminal Seriousness, this book will help you can discover the basic skills needed to use humor to cope with daily stress. After analyzing your own sense of humor, you will learn how to: redevelop the playful side of yourself, develop skills in joke-telling and spontaneous humor, find humor in everyday life situations, and laugh at yourself.
Heart, Humor & Healing edited by Patty Wooten, R.N.
We know from the Bible that “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” This book doeth good like a medicine, and helps to heal the spirit of patients, their families, and caregivers. Patty has compiled a delightful collection of inspiring, fun-filled, and laughter-provoking quips and quotes. Dr. Bernie Siegel: “This book is good for more than your heart… it will help heal your life and body.” Take two doses of this treasury… and you may not need to call your doctor in the morning!
House Calls: How We Can All Heal the World One Visit at a Time by Patch Adams
This is the latest book from Patch Adams, whose mirthful medicine is featured in the powerful movie starring Robin Williams (who wrote the Foreword). With lots of fun tips and zany cartoons, this book is chuckle-full of warmth, great ideas, and resources. Larry Dossey, M.D.: “Dr. Patch Adams knows the inner side of healing. House Calls is a reminder that some of the most important factors in healing are not high-tech marvels but ordinary factors such as love, compassion, friendship, and hope.” Indeed, this book will help you experience the healing power of laughter and love and will give you the prescription for delightful techniques to help yourself and others feel healthier and happier.
Humor And Aging edited by Lucille Nahemow, Kathleen McCluskey-Fawcett, and Paul McGhee
A pioneering textbook that represents a comprehensive study of humor and aging. Sixteen essays cover a broad range of theoretical, research-oriented, and applied topics. Includes: identifying humor across the life span, attitudes toward aging as shown by humor, reflections on age-theme greeting cards, the role of Hopi ritual clowns in the dying process, humor and aging as they appear in children’s books, and the best summary-to-date of the research on the physiology of humor and laughter.
Humor And The Health Professions (Second Edition) by Vera Robinson
Founding member of the NFL (Nurses For Laughter) and “Fairy Godmother of Humor,” Dr. Robinson focuses on the physiological, social, and psychological functions of humor in health care and provides many anecdotes of humor-in-action in health care settings. She illustrates how humor can be healthy and healing for both patients and health care professionals.
I Want To Grow Hair, I Want To Grow Up, I Want To Go To Boise by Erma Bombeck
A heartwarming book about children surviving cancer. Filled with humorous, sensitive, and insightful stories of children who have every hope of beating the odds and living to drive their parents crazy. As one of the chapter titles suggests, “Never Take a Pessimistic View–You’ll Probably Be Wrong Anyway.” Erma shares the gutsiness of kids and their families as they live through the most difficult of times… with grace, dignity, and laughter. This inspiring book honors the innocence and innersense of humor of children. Erma is donating her royalties to cancer research.
Illness and the Art of Creative Self-Expression: Stories and Exercises from the Arts for Those with Chronic Illness by John Graham-Pole, M.D.
Dr. Graham-Pole has sought to humanize the care of patients by introducing the arts— music, dance, painting, theater, writing, puppetry, clowning, and magic— into the hospital setting. Through an array of inspiring stories and terrific techniques, this book is a fluid blend of the art and science of healing. It illustrates how patients engaging in the arts respond better to illness and challenges. Includes a fantastic chapter on “Laughter and Play” that is worth the price of admission alone. Robert Ivker (past president of the American Holistic Medical Association): “This book is a valuable resource for both the lay person and physician alike, and is also fun to read.”
The Immune Power Personality: 7 Traits You Can Develop to Stay Healthy by Henry Dreher
Joan Borysenko calls this “one of the finest books on health and healing ever written.” Based on the latest cutting-edge research, Dreher reveals that the key to mind-body health is not avoiding stress but developing personal strengths for coping with hard times. Learn how to increase your own personal resilience and decrease the risk of illness by: enlivening immune responses, developing the “hardiness” factor (commitment, control, challenge), increasing your capacity for love, and encouraging altruism (healthy helping). This book will give you a healthy helping of food for thought.
It’s Always Something by Gilda Radner
This is a moving story of Gilda Radner’s life told with all the spunk, irreverence and personality that made her America’s favorite late-night comedienne as an original member of “Saturday Night Live.” Brave, funny and painfully honest, she describes her struggle against cancer, her treatments, her support systems, and her determination to keep laughing in the midst of it all. This truly inspiring story has been on the best-seller lists for many months.
The Jester Has Lost His Jingle by David Saltzman
This full-color, beautifully-illustrated book was created by a young man who faced cancer with amusing grace. His spirit lives on in this most precious, charming tale about the Jester’s journey to return laughter to the world. It would make a wonderful gift for you and the people you care about– especially anyone facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The applause will tell you a lot: Carol Burnett: “This is a magical story that captures the healing power of laughter.” Art Ulene, M.D., NBC Today Show: “Laughter is always the best medicine and this book is the perfect prescription for all of us, children and adults alike.” Erma Bombeck: “I defy you to read the ending without a smile crossing your face. I should leave such a legacy.” We fell in love with this book at first sight, and we know you will, too.
Jiggle Your Heart and Tickle Your Soul: The Uses of Joy and Laughter in Attaining Health and Happiness by Anne Bryan Smollin
This book is a wonderful blend of stories, wisdom, and practical tips to tickle you and help you tackle such issues as: finding joy in life, rediscovering your sense of humor, transforming negative self-talk and worry, balancing life, letting go of anger, managing stress before it manages you, coping with grief, nurturing relationships. Learn dozens of ways to put a smile on your face and in your heart.
Keeping Your Boat Afloat When the Big One Hits: A Practical Crisis Survival Guide by Kim Hupp
This book is just what the doctor ordered! Kim provides a powerful, playful prescription for tackling personal strife, tragedies, crises, or simply the everyday stresses of life! Kim is a living inspiration… and she walks her talk as she shows you how to: transform upheaval into opportunity, regain your perspective, get back on an even keel, and discover hidden talents and strengths. It includes a great balance of humorous and creative quotes and anecdotes, thought-provoking questions, and tested tips and insights for surviving and thriving in life. Drawing on her own personal experience of transforming can-cer into a can-do attitude, Kim’s empowering spirit is contagious.
Laugh After Laugh: The Healing Power of Humor by Raymond Moody
This is one of the earliest books in the “humor movement.” Written by an M.D. (medical doctor – and mirth doctor), this book addresses the medical implications of laughter and the sense of humor. Dr. Moody provides historical perspective on laughter and humor with examples of humor as a healing aid. He suggests that he/she who laughs, lasts! His informal yet informative style leaves you with the feeling that you’ve just had a living room chat with a pioneering thinker.
Laugh! I Thought I’d Die (If I Didn’t): Daily Meditations On Healing Through Humor by Anne Wilson Schaef
There is no denying that recovery is hard work. At these times, letting go and laughing at ourselves can be the most healing gift of all. Here is a daily meditation book that shows how humor can be a great way to tease ourselves into new awareness that allows a full range of emotions in our lives, especially joy and laughter. The author admits that “humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.” C-06-02, $9.00
Laugh It Off: The Hew “Humor Strategy” Of Weight Loss by Jane Thomas Noland
The caption for the opening cartoon sets the stage: “When you dance, do parts of you go off dancing by themselves?” Do you want to lighten up while you lighten up? This book is for all those diet-hards: people who find it hard to lose weight, and who want to add some levity to the gravity of dieting. Honest, witty, and fun-to-read, this book outlines all sorts of ways to do it– self-quizzes, word games, rhymes, and even a scale with clever, flip-page animation
Levity for Longevity and Medical Mirth: How to Create Humor, Laughter and Creativity Programs in Geriatric Medical Settings by Betty O’Malley and
Laughter for Longevity: Guidelines and Sourcebook for Humor, Laughter and Creativity in Geriatric Settings And Medical Mirth: How to Create Humor, Laughter and Creativity Programs in Geriatric Medical Settings by Betty O’Malley
This two-booklet set contains a wealth of very practical information on how to inject humor into geriatrics programs. Initially funded by a grant from The HUMOR Project, these spiral-bound resource guides include specific, detailed information on: humor program ideas that work, planning humor rooms and laughter carts, selecting and training staff, funding sources, applications of clowning, geriatric humor preferences, the value of intergenerational fun, and more! Each booklet includes an extensive bibliography and list of resources for geriatric humor programs.
Laughter – the Universal Language: a “Hands On” Workbook by Leslie Gibson
Leslie guides you in looking at the nature and nurture of humor in your life and in health-care settings. This book is also the easiest way to catch up on Continuing Education Units – this home study course is approved for ten CEU contact hours by the Florida Board of Nursing and the states which share reciprocity, You read the book at your own pace, complete the discussion questions, then take the exam on the computerized work sheet, which is enclosed.
A Laughing Place: The Art and Psychology of Positive Humor in Love and Adversity by Christian Hageseth, M.D.
This is a thoughtfully-written book that will teach you why and how to incorporate “positive” humor into your life. It approaches the problems of life, illness, and adversity by teaching you how a good-natured sense of humor will leave you flexible enough to enjoy love and spiritual growth. The style is informal and conversational, like a fireside chat. If you have ever been a parent or a child (that should include most of us), you will find “A Laughing Place” to be a warm and comforting place.
Light Dances: Illuminating Families with Laughter & Love by Shirley Trout
Being a parent can be both a source of incredible joy… and quite a test of our mental health. This light and lively book will help you to learn useful ideas to leave your children with a legacy of laughter as you dance through such chapters as: “Envision Your Home as a Haven for Humor,” “Where Does a Parent Start?,” “Let Stories Put Problems in Perspective,” “Build In Rituals,” “Appropriate Versus Inappropriate Humor.” This book provides common sense and rich insight into what humor can contribute to a richer and funnier family life.
Lighten Up: Survival Skills for People Under Pressure by C.W. Metcalf and Roma Felible
Based on the latest scientific data on the benefits of laughter, this book teaches specific humor skills and Humaerobic TM exercises you can use to be more relaxed, resilient, healthy, productive, and creative. You’ll learn to use humor as an antidote for terminal professionalism to help you develop a new outlook on life‑‑ even when the budget’s overdue or someone just dented your fender. “Far and away the finest self‑management book of the decade.”‑‑ Denis Waitley, Ph.D., author of The Psychology of Winning.
Love, Laughter & A High Disregard for Statistics: Surviving Breast Cancer with Your Sense of Humor and Sexuality Intact by Sue Buchanan
The title alone should sell you on this book. With heart and humor, Sue shares her personal experience of breast cancer that will encourage and inspire people with chronic conditions or life-threatening illnesses. It gives readers a sound foundation to make decisions, to be treated both medically and emotionally, and to carry on with a life of pride, humor, and happiness. Also a great help to the support team of family and friends. You’ll hold this book in high regard.
Love, Medicine and Miracles by Bernie Siegel, M.D.
In this empowering best-seller, Bernie tells how exceptional patients work to heal themselves. Through his experience as a surgeon who truly listens to his patients, Bernie learned that love does heal and that we all have this healing potential within ourselves. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross calls it “a wonderful book – if we follow Bernie Siegel’s advice, we may all stay younger and healthier for many more years.”
The Magic of Humor in Caregiving by James Sherman
This is a wonderful book for support groups, health care professionals, and family members who are in the position of caregiver. Dr. Sherman offers many tangible tools on how you can build your own Humortorium. This book is loaded with ideas on how humor can lighten the load– for both caregiver and care-receiver. With this magical book, you can keep the faith, keep perspective, and keep on truckin’.
Medical Wit and Wisdom: The Best Medical Quotations from Hippocrates to Sophie Tucker by Jess Braillier
From the serious to the silly, this intriguing new collection contains more than 1000 quotations on medicine, health, and well-being. Grouped into subject areas from health to hypochondria to surgery and beyond, this exceptional compendium offers wise and witty diagnoses of the human condition by medical authorities, writers, and other observers– including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Spock, Dorothy Parker, and Norman Cousins. This book is a must for medical professionals, a humorous “shot in the arm” for patients.
Minding The Body, Mending The Mind by Joan Borysenko
Using a unique blend of mental and physical exercises, this practical best-seller teaches how to tap the mind’s powerful relaxation response to boost your immune system, overcome chronic pain and alleviate the symptoms of a host of stress-related illnesses. A classic in the field of mind/body medicine, this book also explores such topics as mind-traps, breaking the anxiety cycle, healing the emotions, and the art of reframing through humor.
Mindrobics: How to Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life by Steve Simms
This book is an exercise program for your mind. 21 chapters include: “10 Myths About Happiness,” “7 Benefits of a Happy Attitude,” “The 21-Day Principle,” “At the Keyboard of Your Mind,” “Anticipation, Not Anxiety,” “Enjoy Yourself While You’re at It,” “Being Positive in a Negative World,” “Happiness in the Workplace,” “It’s Your Party… and You’ll Laugh If You Want To!” Zig Ziglar: “If examples, one-liners, stories, parables, illustrations, humor, and plain common sense are of interest and value to you, you will love this book. Here is a book that really does have something for everybody.”
NEVER Act Your Age: Play the Happy Childlike Role Well at Every Age by Dale Anderson, M.D.
The witty, whimsical Dr. Anderson is a surgeon who keeps you in stitches as he prescribes laughter to turn on your body’s upbeat chemistry— those “drugs” dispensed from your inner pharmacy that make you happy, healthy, and feeling years younger. Using humor, fun, and creative method acting techniques, this book identifies how to have a natural high as you catch and spread a contagious HAPPYdemic. You’ll learn ways to: re-experience a childlike perspective, become an inner-tainer, and move from elderly to WELLderly. In the long run, you’ll see that method acting is the ho-ho-holistic medicine of the 21st Century, that happiness and laughter are learned skills, and that VP’s (Vintage People) should never act their age.
The New Game Plan for Recovery: Rediscovering the Positive Power of Play by Tobin Quereau and Tom Zimmermann
Learning to play can motivate recovering persons (anyone, in fact) to choose a lifestyle of health and well‑being. Play alleviates stress, improves relationships, revitalizes spirits, and reminds us that life can be its own reward. This book teaches a variety of New Games that bring people together in cooperation. The book will help you develop a new game plan for your life, too– one which helps you recover your sense of self, sense of wonder, and sense of humor. “This profound, joyful book proves that it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”‑‑ Tom Ferguson, M.D.
Nursing Perspectives on Humor by Karyn Buxman & Anne LeMoine
Humor in medicine is no joke! 23 nurse researchers, practitioners, and clinicians have come together to share their expertise on how humor can benefit patients as well as health care professionals. This hot-off-the-press collection is the best of its kind anywhere! Includes chapters on humor in quality improvement, hospital humor rooms, humor and aging, humor and mental illness, humor and recovery for substance abusers, survivor humor and disaster nursing, humor’s role in terminal illness, children and humor, humor in the E.R., and much more.
Peace, Love And Healing by Bernie Siegel, M.D.
In this second best-seller, Bernie continues his exploration of the unity between mind and body. He specifically explores how to listen to our bodies, talk to our inner selves, and give ourselves healing messages. Again drawing from the work of Carl Jung, Milton Erickson, and Woody Allen, Bernie believes that “love, laughter, and peace of mind are physiologic” and that there is no such thing as “false hope.” Whether we are ill or well, this book is, as Ashley Montagu states, “a healing experience.”
The Power of 5: Hundreds of 5-Second to 5-Minute Scientific Shortcuts to Ignite Your Energy, Burn Fat, Stop Aging and Revitalize Your Love Life by Harold Bloomfield & Robert Cooper
Research shows that 5 seconds to 5 minutes is an ideal time-frame to learn and apply life-changing strategies (including humor as an energy-activator). The hundreds of 5-second choices and 5-minute techniques in this book are easy to use anywhere and any time. Deepak Choprah, M.D.: “Brilliant. The first self-help book that improves all of your life without wasting any of your time. The ultimate one-stop source for effective health and longevity advice.” Our advice: buy this book!
The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence, and Personal Strength in Your Life by Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein
This breakthrough guide shows how to nurture the power of resilience in dealing with every-day stresses as well as overwhelming obstacles. Using real-life, moving stories along with worksheets for resilient living, the authors provide profound, powerful, and practical insights into how you can: transform negative scripts into a positive mindset, develop a foundation of emotional strength to see you through tough times, and fortify your “stress hardiness.” This new book is the best we’ve seen for raising your resilience and bounce-back-ability. Rx: buy this book for the health of it!
Stitches: Off-the-Wall Tales from the Doctor’s Office, Hospital, and Operating Room by John Cocker, M.D.
Symptoms: inertia, apathy, generally down in the dumps. Diagnosis: displaced funny bone, diminished sense of humor. Prescription: the droll, witty, outrageous frivolity of this book, which packs enough chuckles per page to revive even the most terminal case of depression. Culled from the pages of Stitches (the journal of medical humor), the hilarious cartoons, anecdotes, shaggy spleen stories, and whimsical nonsense found here will give you a transfusion of good cheer. This is a wonderful book for all health care professionals, for patients, and for people who have no patience.
Stress Management for Busy People by Carol Turkington
In less time than it takes to get another gray hair, this book can help you identify the causes of your stress, learn how to relax, and ease anxiety and anger. Filled with practical advice and hundreds of stress-busting techniques you can use now, this fun and very colorful book teaches you effective, quick, and simple ways to reduce stress at work, at home or at school. With this book, you’ll be stressed for success as you learn how to make stress work for you.
Take One as Needed: 50 Capsules of Humor for Temporary Relief of Misery Due to Low‑Fat Diets, Safe Sex, and Aerobic Exercise by Oscar London, M.D.
Ranging from tongue-in-cheek to hilarious, each of these 50 essays is an antidote to the aggravation of our everyday lives. Dr. London will tickle your funny bone with “A Hospital Bill to Die Over,” “Zen and the Art of Lotto,” “One Man’s Reclining Ovation,” “Rust in Peace,” ” Anxiety is the Best Treatment for Depression,” etc. “Oscar London not only makes me laugh‑‑ he makes life seem delightful.”‑‑ Victor Cohn, The Washington Post.
Toon Ups: Self-Health Humorx by Ed Fischer & Jeff Haebig
Cheer up! Shape up! Laugh it up! This self-health humor book inspires you to do all three by combining especially funny cartoons with straight-forward health suggestions about optimism, nutrition, physical fitness, and medical self-care. You’ll be whistling a happy, healthy tune as this book puts you on the right track… the light track… the laugh track in life.
A Treasury of Medical Humor by James Myers
Here’s laughter therapy for doctors, nurses, dentists, other health care professionals, and patients– in short, for every person in or out of hospitals. It’s a great collection of medical jokes, stories, bloopers, and cartoons guaranteed to pump those endorphins and deflate that stress! Take one dose of this treasury… and you may not need to call your doctor in the morning!
Wellness Activities for Youth, Volume I by Sandy Queen
How can you interest children, teenagers (and adults) in a wellness lifestyle? Sandy listened to kids and found out what really works: a whole person approach to wellness, a “no put-down” rule, and most of all, an emphasis on FUN. Sandy herself is a fun-loving facilitator who has compiled 40 awe-inspiring, attention-getting, retention-building activities designed for easy use. You’ll find that each exercise is described completely with goals, group size, time frame, materials needed, step-by-step process instructions, and variations. Includes reproducible worksheets for your educational/training activities.
The Wellness Book: The Comprehensive Guide To Maintaining Health And Treating Stress-Related Illness by Herbert Benson and Eileen Stuart
Here’s a valuable resource for anyone looking to achieve or maintain a healthy lifestyle. Many important subjects are covered, including exercise, nutrition, stress management, and the mind/body connection. This book also includes a special chapter on the role that humor plays in contributing to personal health and wellness. As current as today’s headlines, this is massive compendium ( pages) is a “health bible” for the ’90s.
When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Lighten Up!: How to Be Happy in Spite of It All by Terry Braverman
Are you under 85 and overwhelmed? This book shows you how to: lighten up and revitalize your spirit, boost your amuse system, make mirth with your mate, get funny with your money, travel “lightly”, succeed in business without really frying, and change negative patterns of behavior immediately. This book issues a warning: Humor may be hazardous to your ailments. Rx: Buy two copies of this book (one for yourself, one for someone you care about)… and call us in the morning.
You Don’t Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted: The Energy Engineering Approach by Ann McGee-Cooper with Duane Trammell and Barbara Lau
Based on the formula, “Energy equals work plus play,” this new edition is chock-full of healthy hints on how you can be more productive while leading a balanced life. You’ll learn how to: put passion, power and joy into work and play, reclaim your kid spirit, and build a nest for organizational innovation. This book takes a humorous look at the energy traps we fall into– then gives specific techniques to help us climb out. Suggestions are easy-to-follow and, readers report, they work.