Laughter - and Developing a New Habit

Last weekend I attended a laughter yoga leader training. It was marvelous fun. We engaged in laughing exercises, practiced deep yoga breathing exercises, and learned about the tremendous health benefits of laughter. At the end of the training, the teacher encouraged all of us to cultivate a new habit of daily laughter yoga. The health benefits take effect with even 15-20 minutes of laughter daily. When laughter exercises are combined with yoga breathing for a daily yoga laughter practice of 45 minutes, the resulting boost to physical and emotional health is significant! After only a weekend’s practice of 2 laughter yoga sessions each day, I was amazed at how good I felt.  A woman in the class who struggled with fibromyalgia reported being pain-free for the first time in years as a result of the exercises in this training.

Tonight, as I reflected on this past week, I give myself credit for my intentional introduction of at least 15 minutes of daily laughter. I used driving my car as a prompt for remembering to laugh and to practice the sitting laughter yoga exercises. It has made my drive to work far more enjoyable. Reflecting over the week, I also note that I fell short in integrating a solid 45 minutes of laughter yoga practice into my daily routine. Cultivating a new health habit requires motivation, discipline, and planning. I believe it also highlights any current habits that may impede our ability to be successful. Introducing laughter into my drive was not difficult because I didn’t have any current driving practices besides driving and listening to music. Adding laughter to that is easy to do. But introducing a 45-minute laughter yoga practice, well, that takes some planning and requires a bit of schedule and priority reorganizing.  Ideally, I’d practice in the morning – so I would get the benefits of laughter throughout the entire day. This requires getting up earlier. Getting up earlier requires going to sleep earlier. Going to sleep earlier requires skipping The Daily Show and Colbert Report – or taping them. There is a whole chain of things that need to change to put this new routine in place. While the changes I need to make aren’t particularly elaborate, sometimes cultivating a new health habit demands many different adjustments simultaneously.   

Changing many things at once, replacing old behaviors with new ones, letting go of the habits we currently have, well, this is tough stuff!  Research varies on the amount of days necessary to establish a new habit – from 21 days to 90 days depending on whom you ask. I wonder how much of the challenge in adopting a new habit is really a reflection of our difficulty letting go of whatever habits we currently have. Even if we know that jogging is better for us than watching “The Bachelorette,” we may continue succumbing to our desire to watch the show. Maybe we enjoy seeing the places they travel on their dates and imagining ourselves visiting there, or we find ourselves hooked on the adrenalin rush we get from screaming at the television set as if it we were on the sidelines at a boxing match and had some input into the decision-making.  We human beings are often more emotional than we are rational, and struggles with habit change really illustrate this.

Is there a new habit you want to begin in your life? Is there something that continues to get in your way? I encourage you to be gentle with yourself, remember all the positive reasons you want to do this new thing, and then find a way to start – even if you start small at first. Find a way to make it easy for yourself. Laughing in the car works for me. I also bought a Laughter Yoga DVD that I can follow (rather than having to create my own routine each time – which can be challenging as a newbie). A friend of mine has wanted to focus more on his physical health for a while now and decided to hire a personal trainer. Great move! This professional has created a nutrition and exercise plan to help him reach his goals – and offers support through every step of the process. Support makes a big difference. I am fortunate because my sister also attended the Laughter Yoga Leader Training – so we’ve been checking in with each other about it. It also helps that once we begin a new health habit, the tangible benefits we experience often reinforce our commitment to the new behavior. This is definitely true for me with laughter yoga. I LOVE laughing, and I feel great when I do it.

What have you found really helps you stick with a new positive behavior? What do you know about how you can best support yourself and get support for yourself in creating the positive changes you desire?