Madan Kataria, the Indian founder of the laughter yoga movement that has spread all over the world, will visit Taiwan next month to promote the idea, his local sponsor said yesterday.
"We have invited Dr Kataria to visit to promote the laughter yoga movement and meet members of local laughter clubs," said Chen Ta-cheng (陳達誠), director of the Taiwan Laughter Yoga Club.
He will arrive on Dec. 4 and give two speeches during his week-long visit, Chen said.
The club also plans to arrange a discussion on the benefits of laughter with Kataria and medical personnel, he said.
There are 12 laughter yoga clubs in Taiwan, whose members meet every day to practice laughter yoga — a routine of simulated laughter starting with "Ha Ha Ha, Ho Ho Ho."
A former physician in Mumbai, Katarai hit upon the idea of treating patients with laughter in 1995 and founded the first laughter yoga club.
His laughter exercise became so popular that it became known as the laughter yoga movement and there are some 6,000 clubs in about 60 countries.
While some people find Kataria’s laughter exercise embarrassing or stupid, others believe it has physical and psychological benefits.
In 1998, Kataria designated the first Sunday of May each year as International Laughter Day.
Kataria now divides his time between running his company Laughter Yoga International from Bangalore, and traveling abroad to promote the practice.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching