Laughter Yoga

Sometimes, my job is hard.  Sometimes, I deal with situations that are challenging, difficult, emotional, heart-tugging, anger-inducing, stressful or downright ridiculous.  Last night, my job took me to Laughter Yoga.

We have new groups of young people and last night was my first time meeting one of my groups for dinner and an activity.  Their activity of choice?  Laughter Yoga.

If you've never tried it, you should.  You will feel down right silly, and maybe even a little bit awkward at first, but I guarantee, that especially if you go with a friend, you will end up having a really good, belly laugh.

The idea behind laughter yoga is that when you laugh, you feel good.  There is science behind this, as when we laugh, we release hormones that make us feel better.  Apparently, our endocrine system doesn't know the difference between a real laugh and a fake laugh, so those feel-good chemicals start whirling around even when you let out a false chuckle.

Last night's session started with going around the circle with introductions and a silly laugh.  The only rule was that nobody laughs alone.  Sure enough, the fake giggles had turned into real laughs before we were a quarter of the way around the circle.

We did other activities that included mingling and making eye contact and greeting each other with a little laugh, circling the room with new dance moves, forming an inner and outer circle and turning opposite directions while laughing, forming two lines on opposite sides of the room and approaching each other laughing, and the grounding laugh, where you "ho, ho, ha, ha" in rhythm.  All was interspersed with brief deep breathing exercises, reminicent of the type of yoga you might be more familiar with.  To end, we did a laughter meditation, where everyone lied down, heads toward the centre of the circle, and started laughing.  This went on for several minutes, and as cheesy as it sounds, I found my laughter was uncontrollable, and a full body laugh.

If it sounds silly, that's because it is.  I mean, it's ridiculous really - a room of adults, moving around a room, laughing for no good reason.  But that's the point.  You can't help but laugh!

I've been to laughter yoga a few times, with a few different groups that I've worked with.  My experience has often been the same, one or two minutes of feeling awkward, followed by 45 minutes of hard laughter and a rush of energy afterwards.  I have been and felt that I really needed that laugh, that it had been a long time since I had laughed so hard.  Last night I realized that I have been laughing a lot lately, and that made me feel even better.  :)

If you're interested in learning more or finding laughter yoga near you, check out www.laughteryoga.org

Have you ever tried laughter yoga?  When is the last time you had a really good laugh?