Saturday July 11, 2009
Laughing off fear
By CHRISTINA KOH
Look fear in the eye and laugh — that’s how an adventure company is approaching climbing.
Imagine laughing your fears away just minutes before scaling up the side of a precarious cliff. Laughter therapy may not be anything new, but an adventure company is taking the unusual step of combining laughter therapy with recreational climbing.
Nomad Adventure’s director Chan Yuen Li, playfully known as “Fearless Leader” in her name card, says laughter therapy is an excellent way of helping people to overcome their jitters and embrace a new challenge.
Participants laughing while pretending to pour tea at Nomad Adventure’s Mountain School in Gopeng, Perak A certified laughter therapy instructor, Chan came upon the idea of merging the two activities when it dawned on her one day that the two were linked.
“Laughter therapy, I think, enhances your emotional intelligence. Along with the climbing, what we are doing is all about mastering your emotions and not letting fear get the best of you. You learn not to stop being afraid, but to manage your fear,” she enthuses.
Chan, 42, invited a group of people, some from Singapore, to make the 3km journey from Gopeng town to Nomad’s Mountain School recently to demonstrate the idea.
A shady clearing surrounded by swaying durian trees and roped-lined limestone cliffs greet the visitors that Tuesday afternoon. As it turns out, a few aren’t even aware that laughter therapy is going to be part of the plan. Chan tells them that the therapy, developed years ago by India’s Dr Madan Kataria, has inspired 6,000 laughter clubs in over 60 countries.
The health benefits, she says, are enormous. Muscles get exercised and the body is flushed with feel-good endorphins and oxygen.
“I know some people would rather be stabbed in the heart than laugh, but the fact is that we tend to take ourselves too seriously. We do need to learn to laugh a bit,” Chan coaxes.
Taking the Leap of Faith challenge. “Did you know that scientific studies show that children and babies can laugh up to 400 times a day? And yet most adults laugh only four times a day? What we want to do is ask you to step out of your comfort zone!”
The idea, Chan explains, is to fake it until you make it because the human body cannot apparently tell the difference between real and fake laughter. She runs a brief series of exercises for the group, who sportingly mime pouring teh tarik on each other, waggle their tongues, widen their eyes and stretch their arms behind them, hooting all the while.
“See how far you can stretch your arms the second time? Just when you thought it was impossible to go further? All you needed was to give yourself permission to try,” Chan encourages in full personal motivator-mode.
It’s all silly fun, but the approach seems to work when the time finally comes for the cheerful looking group of strangers to take on the cliffs. The school has three main rope courses.
The basic and intermediate ones involve tackling rope and plank bridges, and edging up and down rocky surfaces using safety lines. The hardest course challenges the more daring among participants to scale up and across several dauntingly tall trees, to finish somewhat spectacularly by zipping to the ground via flying fox from a 15m-high platform.
Sharing a laugh But the participants first have to gear themselves up in safety equipment and learn how to negotiate the obstacles by manipulating two safety lines known as “cow’s tail”. It may sound complicated, but doing it is surprisingly easy.
The group takes on the challenge in stride, with one 74-year-old Singaporean putting many to shame by tackling first the intermediate rope course, and then the hardest, dubbed The Point of No Return.
“I thought the laughter therapy was a very good exercise. It loosened the muscles in my stomach and body before the climb,” says landscape consultant Richard Tan, a founding member of the Singapore Institute of Landscape Architects.
Singaporean landscape consultant Richard Tan, 74, doing the Flying Fox. — ZABIDI TUSIN/The Star “It’s a good way to distract from the fear of what you have to do. We will always have to face some form of fear in our life, and I say that we must tackle it head on!”
Nature lover Loo Jia-Ling, 25, thinks laughing is natural for her even as she is getting ready to tackle her first rope climbing experience.
“It’s good. I don’t think Malaysians laugh enough. If they do laugh, it’s usually at others’ misfortune. Some may take some time to warm up.”
Other participants think the laughter exercises are a good way of breaking the ice between strangers.
Afterwards, Chan says the “laughter gym” would be a new addition to the company’s climbing and whitewater rafting team-building programmes, which are popular with corporate and youth groups. An outdoors enthusiast since the 16, Chan points out that Perak is blessed with a wealth of caves, hills and jungles.
“Last year, we had the place inspected by international safety consultants who specialise in rope courses and who have seen the courses in India, Spain and other countries. They tell us our courses may not be the highest, but it has the most unique environment,” she adds.
> For more details, call (03) 79585152, Connie at 016-5114798 or visit www.nomadadventure.com
Source:
RSS
