DOCTOR-TURNED-SPEAKER JUGGLES TIPS TO RELIEVE STRESS WITH HUMOR

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- When Dr. Steve Allen Jr. juggles, everybody juggles.

"I involve my audience in the juggling act," said Allen, who was in Cape Girardeau this week to speak at the Southeast Missouri Hospital Association's annual dinner, held at the Student Recreation Center on the Southeast Missouri State University campus Thursday night.

Allen, a family physician who gave up his practice last year to concentrate on stress lectures and teaching duties at New York State University Health Science Center at the Syracuse/Clinical Center, appears before hospital groups, corporations, and others.

Allen, son of noted comedian Steve Allen, said he developed his "Stress Management Creative Juggling" program by accident almost a decade ago.

"I had agreed to do a program at Cornell University on employee health issues for middle managers," he said. "I went into the meeting planning to talk about cholesterol, hypertension, exercise, and other things that doctors talk about. But, when I asked the audience what they wanted me to discuss, they all yelled `Stress.'

"So, it became a stress conference," he said. "I had just learned a little about juggling, so I decided to involve the crowd and attempt to juggle their stress away."

Allen said he could tell an immediate difference in the attitude of the crowd.

"I realized that something special had happened by letting ourselves be playful and have fun in a work setting," he said. "So my speech became a stress and play lecture."

Soon after, he took his act on the road, and now appears before 35 to 40 groups a year.

"I've appeared before Nobel prize winners, top-level corporate executives and janitors," he said. "The results have been the same. Juggling relieves stress. It can take peoples's minds off problems for a few minutes."

Allen, a board-certified family physician in Horseheads, N.Y., and an assistant professor at New York's State University, pointed out that a good laugh increases the heart rate, relaxes muscles and relieves stress for hours afterward.

Many of those in attendance at the Student Recreation Center Thursday night would probably agree. A majority of the crowd participated in the juggling acts, using handkerchiefs that had been passed out earlier.

Allen underscored the therapeutic value of laughter by sharing with the audience his "Rx for Health through Creative Silliness" juggling. As dinner guests tossed brightly colored scarves into the air, Allen outlined his world peace plan.

"If each person who is taught to juggle would teach two more people to juggle within one week of learning how, in 39 weeks, five billion people would be making fun, not war."

For those reluctant to do something "silly," Allen noted that the word silly comes from the old English word, "saelig," which means, "happy, prosperous and blessed."

During his presentation, Allen encouraged the audience to incorporate laughter and play into daily living, emphasizing the special value of laughter in not only reducing the body's negative reactions to stress but in preventing those reactions as well.

Allen appears in three performances with his father each year. "One of our father/son programs is entitled `Healing Entertainers/Entertaining Healers,'" he said.

Allen had a family medical practice for 14 years. Allen is an Arizona native. He moved to California at a young age. When his parents separated, he lived with his mother in Southern California and spent summers in New York City with his father.