Lighten Up with Laughter Yoga

Laughter can be the best medicine. It can relieve stress, boost your immune system, reduce pain and even help protect you against a heart attack. Children don’t feel self - conscious about laughing, but older people usually laugh when they see or hear something funny. How would you feel if you saw an adult laughing at nothing? You’d probably think that they were a bit strange and try to avoid them. However, Dr. Madan Kataria from India thought that we should all make more effort to laugh, especially if we don’t really feel like laughing. He discovered that our bodies couldn’t tell the difference between a real laugh and a false one. This means that it’s possible to get all the benefits of genuine laughter just by pretending to laugh. Dr. Kataria then developed Laughter Yoga, a system which combines the breathing techniques of yoga with a series of exercises designed to stimulate the laughter muscles. These activities make the body produce the natural effects of real laughter and have already helped thousands of people of all ages and fitness levels. Laughter Yoga workshop leaders adapt their methods to achieve different aims: team building in companies, improving test results in schools and relief from depression among hospital patients.