DailyRevolution™

Ann Twork loves to tell secrets. "You just tell somebody something and maybe it is nonsensical, or maybe it is something bad that is going on around you. And then you just laugh as if it is the funniest thing in the world." Why does she do this?

Well, not only is it fun to laugh, but laughter yoga (also known as hasya yoga) can provide many health benefits. Laughter helps to reduce stress. Happy faces and sounds enhance the immune system. Laughing can also strengthen cardiovascular functions. Breathing and other exercises in hasya yogo helps to oxygenate the body by boosting the respiratory system and the practice improves circulation. Laughter yoga will help tone your muscles and is even good for digestion and constipation.

“Ho ho, ha ha ha,” students in a class at the University of Michigan chant while clapping their hands and walking around the room, will stretch their muscles and work on breathing exercises. Then they’ll laugh for 30 minutes, from self-conscious giggles to uninhibited belly laughs.

“Kids laugh about 400 times a day, and adults only about 15,” notes Barb Fisher, a certified laughter yoga leader and the instructor of this class offered by the U-M Health System’s MFit health promotion division. “Laughter is a gift that has been given to us to make us feel better.”

“Studies have shown that 20 seconds of a good, hard belly laugh is worth three minutes on the rowing machine,” Fisher says. “However, that does not mean we want to stop doing all other exercises. It means that incorporating laughter yoga can add to the benefits we see from our regular exercise routine.”

Like more traditional fitness classes, laughter yoga requires a warm-up period. Since students can’t necessarily start a class prepared to break out into deep laughter, they begin with the clapping and chanting mentioned above. Then they perform breathing exercises, followed by stretches and laughing games.

Developed by laughter yoga GURU Madan Kataria, an MD from India, laughing exercises can include many varieties, such as:

Hearty laughter: Laughter by raising both the arms in the sky with the head tilted a little backwards.
Greeting laughter: Joining both the hands and shaking hands with at least four or five people in the group.
Appreciation laughter: Join your pointing finger with the thumb to make a small circle while making gestures as if you are appreciating your group members and laughing simultaneously.
Milk shake laughter: Hold and mix two imaginary glasses of milk or coffee and pour the milk from one glass into the other by chanting “Aeee....,” and then pour it back into the first glass by chanting “Aeee...” Then, everyone laughs while making a gesture as if they are drinking milk.

“The biggest effect that I’ve gotten from laughter yoga is what it’s done for me mentally, and that it has lightened up my day and my week,” says Deborah Slosberg. “I also think it has improved my breathing.”

“It gives me a relaxed feeling, and yet I actually feel like I worked out,” says Twork. “You get back some of the child in you.”