What is Laughter Yoga?
3 Aug 2023 HYN Himalayan Yoga Academy
Laughter Yoga is a wonderful practice & discipline based on the revolutionary idea – simple and profound – that anyone can laugh unconditionally, without relying on humor, jokes, or comedy. Laughter is simulated as a body exercise in a group: with eye contact and childlike playfulness, it soon turns into real and contagious laughter. It is based on the scientific fact that the body cannot differentiate between fake and real laughter. One gets the same physiological and psychological benefits, which are many.
We have dedicated the first Happiness Shot of our Happiness Contribution™ Show to the Benefits of Laughter in the business world.
Why: The Benefits of Laughter Yoga
Laughter yoga gives the maximum health benefits because it is:
- Sustained (10-15 minutes)
- Deep (diaphragm)
- Unconditional
The benefits are so many that one can wonder why we don’t all just laugh daily like we shower and brush our teeth. Here are just a few benefits of laughter yoga in 5 main areas :
- Mood: better mood and less anxiety & depression, because of the production of serotonin & endorphins, and better oxygenation
- Health: Increased oxygenation: stronger respiratory system and increased oxygenation, hence more concentration, attention, and better performances
- Health Improvements: reduced stress & related illnesses, because Laughter activates our parasympathetic system & reduces cortisol production
- better digestion, because the movement of abdominal muscles & diaphragm provides a gentle massage to all digestive organs, functioning as internal jogging
- healthy heart and better circulatory system
- stronger immune system and less sickness because of the increased number of natural killer (NK) cells and interferon-gamma (IFN)
- Performance and work: Increased creativity and innovation because of the playfulness and right brain activation; increased energy because of oxygenation
- Social connectors: people who laugh together bond together and work better together; the laughter clubs become real supportive networks for their members
- Copying mechanism in challenging times: A quote from the founder Dr. Kataria which I love and has become the motto of the movement is “I don’t laugh because I’m happy, I’m happy because I laugh”
These benefits make laughter yoga a remarkable fun and inexpensive solution for many current business problems:
- Stress management
- Burn-out prevention
- Reduce sickness, absenteeism, and turnover
- Increase productivity, creativity, innovation, and team bonding
- Creating a happy, healthy, and energetic workforce
How it started and continues
Laughter Yoga is the brainchild of Dr. Madan Kataria, an Indian physician from Mumbai who started the first laughter club in a park on 13th March 1995, with just 5 people.
While the saying “laughter is the best medicine” is believed to have originated from Proverbs 17.22 of the King James Bible, and already in the 1300s, Henri de Mondeville, a professor of surgery, propagated post-operative therapy with humor, the basis of Laughter Yoga is to be found in the 1979 book “Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing” by Norman Cousins.
Cousins was a journalist and a professor, who did research on the biochemistry of human emotions, which he long believed were the key to human beings’ success in fighting illness. When in 1964 he suffered from a very painful ankylosing spondylitis and was told that he had one chance in 500 of recovering, he developed his own “treatment,” based on mood elevation through laughter. According to Cousins, ten minutes of laughter resulted in two hours of pain-free sleep.
Many studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of laughter, thanks to the release of endorphins and other happiness chemicals, and increased oxygenation.
Dr. Madan Kataria, an Indian physician from Mumbai, was researching how to support better some of his patients when he stumbled upon the research from Cousins and, on 13th March 1995, he had the intuition to start the first laughter club in a park, with just 5 people. It started with participants telling each other funny jokes and when they run out of jokes, it continued as an intentional practice and discipline based on the simple yet revolutionary idea that anyone can laugh for no reason, without relying on humor, jokes, or comedy. Laughter is simulated as a body exercise in a group and with eye contact and childlike playfulness, it soon turns into real and contagious laughter.
There are five secrets (or principles) for unconditional laughter:
- It doesn’t need humor. It does need us to ignore any inhibition or pre-conception coming from our past or upbringing.
- Motion creates emotion: if we bring our body to laugh, the mind will follow. Just like Amy Cuddy’s research on postures shows, if we change our actions and posture, our thoughts and emotions will change too
- We laugh as a choice: we can choose to laugh also if we don’t feel happy. We can “fake it” till we become the laughter because our mind cannot distinguish between real and fake laughter (as long as intentional)
- Nurture the inner child with playfulness
- Just train the mind and body to laugh till it comes naturally to laugh: “Know laughter, do laughter, be laughter”
A laughter session can be done virtually or in person and can be as brief as 10-15 minutes (the minimum amount of time we need for our body to produce the joy cocktail), or range between 30 minutes and 1 hour. Till 2015, a laughter yoga session included only laughter; since 2015, it includes also the other three elements of joy: play, singing, and dancing.
Every LY facilitator develops his/her own style, though the most common format used during a 50-60 minute Laughter Club session is the following:
- Warm-up movements and breathing: 10 minutes
- Games & laughter exercises: 10-20 minutes
- Laughter meditation: 10-15 minutes
- Grounding closing meditation: humming, breathing, or yoga nidra.
Today, it has become a worldwide phenomenon and there are thousands of social laughter clubs in more than 101 countries, an international organization (Laughter Yoga International), and an Academy with complete training programs and certifications. There are 4 levels of training:
- Basic Learning Course is designed to learn LY for yourself
- Certified LY Leader is designed for you to become an LY facilitator
- Certified LY Teacher Training you will learn how to train LY Leaders
- Certified LY Master Trainer you will learn how to train LY Teachers
NEW: Laughter Yoga at Himalayan Yoga Academy
At Himalayan Yoga Academy, we are constantly looking to bring you the best knowledge and practices to nurture your well-being and spirituality, and we are now very excited to start offering the very first Laughter Yoga Leader Certification entirely online, Live via Zoom with Laughter Yoga Teacher – Rosaria Cirillo – that has trained directly with the founder Dr. Kataria and holds also three certifications from our own Himalayan Yoga Academy:
Rosaria will the teacher leading the official Laughter Yoga Leader Training to help you become a LY facilitator. Find out more and sign up sending an email to hya@wownow.eu .
She also offers a FREE weekly LaugherZoom where you can get to know her better and experience her style. If you don’t want to become an LY facilitator yourself, but simply want to learn more Laughter Yoga and Happiness practices, Rosaria has also created her own “Stress Buster and Joy Blaster” combining her learnings from Laughter Yoga, Heart Coherence, Qigong, the Happiness Studies Academy and the classes from Himalayan Yoga Academy. All her courses are available on-demand as in-company programs, while the “Stress Buster and Joy Blaster” is also available as an open program.
PS. Part of this post was originally published at https://wownow.eu/the-power-of-laughter-yoga-world-laughter-day/
Guest post by Rosaria Cirillo, Certified 200hr Yoga Teacher by HYA.