Every Saturday, between 11 am and noon a cross-section of the community gets together for an hour-long Laughter Yoga therapy session which combines simple aerobic exercises, laughter, and Yoga breathing.
Laughter Yoga is a simple and profound practice. We are breathing all the time. Why not add laughter to your breath for 20 minutes a day. See for yourself if laughing on purpose is your way to health and happiness. Become a daily laugher for 40 days. Take the challenge and learn if by adding laughter to your life your mind and body responds and feels lighter, freer, happier. If making Laughter Yoga practice helps to put a smile on your face or relieves your loneliness or pain, you are one of the lucky ones. You own a powerful drug that is, arguably, the worlds “best medicine,” laughter. What other medicine or exercise, for that matter, is natural, has no bad side effects, is available 24/7 and is free. Oh, did I say laughing burns calories as it strengthens muscles? Laughing 20 minutes a day helps you lose weight if you want to.
Join us at the Funny Farm Laughter Club to try laughing as exercise. The Laughter Yoga leader demonstrates simple situations that participants duplicate, which, with eye contact helps everyone to laugh. No worry if childlike playfulness doesn’t work for you. Make-believe laughter is just as effective as spontaneous laughter at exercising heart, lungs, diaphragm, core pelvic muscles, and stimulating ‘feel-good hormones,’ endorphins. The mindful, diaphragmatic breathing we do in Laughter Yoga stimulates the flow of lymph through our bodies. We burn calories and tighten muscles when we laugh, the same as rowing. You can ‘fake it ’til you make it’ and it still works. Intentional laughter is fine. There is no wrong way to laugh or breath.
Twenty-five years ago, a medical Dr. living in India, Dr. Madan Kataria, was tasked with editing a health journal in addition to his regular medical practice. He was stressed. Scientific studies he read claimed laughter as medicine, good for lowering stress and blood pressure. Could such a simple therapy work he wondered. He got his wife and three friends together in a park to tell each other jokes to test the research. And laughter worked and the laughter club grew. Now, 25 years later, people practice Laughter Yoga on 6 continents, in more than 100 countries. Jokes turned to improvisational exercises and the routine grew and spread through culture and societies around the world because laughter is contagious. Today there are tens of thousand Laughter Clubs that need no experience, no applications, no fees, or equipment. They are social clubs where anyone can come and laugh.
This unique formula to better health and happiness is so popular that major corporations use Laughter Yoga Leaders and Teachers to conduct sessions at their campuses. Laughter Yoga is a great way to relax, become stress-free and bond with people.
