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Laughter yoga

Belly laughs are good for what ails you

Laughter yoga instructor Rachel Amarant.

We’ve all heard the adage “laughter is the best medicine.” However, more often than not, it is used during times of sickness or stress, rather than day-to-day life. Rachel Amarant, instructor for the Vallejo Laughter Club, incorporates laughter as a regularly scheduled part of her week.

Amarant has been teaching yoga since 2005, and was turned on to laughter yoga by one of her students who had seen it featured on Oprah. “I hadn’t heard about it, and I took my yoga very seriously. So I was really skeptical,” Amarant says. It didn’t take her long to become a believer. “After I took my first laughter yoga class, I was hooked.” She has been teaching laughter yoga since July 2007.

Amarant’s job spawned her interest in regular yoga as a means of keeping active. “I work in finance,” she says. “I sit at a desk all day and crunch numbers. I was interested in the therapeutic aspects of yoga, being able to move my body. I’ve found that the community developed in the class setting where the focus is on the mind/body connection and having a good time—it’s really uplifting.” 

Laughter yoga brings laughter out of the body in a very fundamental way. “It is based on the concept that we can laugh for no reason at all, without comedy, jokes or a sense of humor,” Amarant says. “You have to leave that judgmental mind behind and just let your childlike playfulness come out. It is kind of silly.” 

Exercises vary from simple to practical. A simple exercise might involve making eye contact with your classmates while walking around the room saying “ho, ho, ha, ha, ha” to a clapping beat. More practical exercises mimic real-life experiences. “One of them is called Visa Bill Laughter,” Amarant says. “We all pretend to open up our Visa bill, and we look at the totals and laugh.” These Laughter yoga Belly laughs are good for what ails you exercises are intended to help us avoid internalizing and getting overly upset about life’s sometimes sticky situations.

But the question still remains: How is this yoga? “We’re not turning ourselves into pretzel shapes or anything like that,” says Amarant. “A few of the laughter exercises are based on traditional yoga exercises like the Lion’s Pose (see left).” And in between laughter exercises is pranayama—deep breathing practices—used to form a deeper breath so the laughter can energize the body on a much more therapeutic level.

“Laughter is an aerobic exercise,” says Amarant, and has been scientifically proven to result in a number of health benefits, such as oxygenating the body, functioning as a stress-buster and releasing endorphins—our body’s natural painkillers—to name a few. Many exercises begin with simulated laughter that often quickly evolves into the real thing. But even if a participant struggles to achieve true laughter, says Amarant, “the body can’t tell whether the laughter is real or fake—you still get all the same health benefits.”

Amarant’s Vallejo Laughter Club is the only active club of its kind in our tri-county area. “We’ve been meeting every Monday since January and it’s been wonderful,” she says. “This is the perfect forum to allow people to just be silly and have a good time.” Classes generally range from between five and 30 participants, and include ages 5 and up (minors must be accompanied by an adult). And, the best thing of all is that classes are free to the public. “If you charge somebody to laugh,” says Amarant, “it’s not funny.”

The Vallejo Laughter Club meets every Monday from 5:15-6 p.m. Ages five and older are welcome to attend; however, minors must be accompanied by an adult. Norman C. King South Vallejo Community Center, 545 Magazine St., Vallejo (707) 342-5064; yogawithrachel.com. For more information e-mail Rachel Amarant, certified laughter yoga teacher, at ramarant@inbox.com.

 Laughter yoga evolution in a nutshell

In the late 1960s, Dr. William F. Fry, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, studied laughter’s effects on stimulating the body’s major physiological systems. With his research he was able to prove that 20 seconds of intense laughter can double the heart rate for three to five minutes, even if the laughter was artificial. Also, having proven that laughter provides physical exercise, can reduce respiratory infections and can produce endorphins in the body, Fry came to be known as the father of gelotology—the study of humor and laughter. 

In Anatomy of an Illness, published in 1979, Norman Cousins explained that the use of humor helped him overcome a potentially fatal disease. Cousins discovered during his illness that ten minutes of laughter provided him two hours of pain-free sleep.

Inspired by Cousins’ findings, Lee Berk, Ph.D. of Loma Linda University Medical Center and a team of psychoneuroimmunology researchers conducted an experiment dividing heart attack patients into two groups. One group was provided standard medical treatment, while the second group watched humorous videos for thirty minutes every day. A year later, the second group had reported fewer arrhythmias, lower blood pressure, lower levels of stress hormones and required less medication than the first group. The first group had actually reported two and a half times more recurrent heart attacks than the second.

The film Patch Adams, in which Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams was personified by actor Robin Williams, provided one of the first introductions of laughter’s health benefits to the mainstream public. Adams made himself known for incorporating laughter as a regular part of the day in the hospital. He founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971 and currently travels the world conveying his health care philosophy.

It was Dr. Madan Kataria who finally ignited the laughter yoga movement. In March 1995 he wrote a health journal article titled Laughter—The Best Medicine. Inspired by his research on the benefits of laughter on the human mind and body, he decided to try it out for himself. He began the first “laughter club” with four other people; they would simply stand in a circle and take turns telling jokes or funny stories. Within a few days the group evolved to 50 people, but soon found trouble once everyone’s jokes and good stories were already told. Kataria, after reviewing his research, came to the conclusion that the body cannot differentiate between contrived and genuine laughter. Furthermore, he and his wife Madhuri Kataria, both yoga practitioners, found similarities between laughter and pranayama exercises. Thus they developed what is now known as laughter yoga. There are now more than 6,000 laughter yoga clubs in 60 countries worldwide.

 For more information visit laughteryoga.org.

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