Laughter Yoga

Laughter Yoga is an exercise and wellness routine that combines fun laughter activities with deep yoga breathing. It was developed in 1995 by Dr. Madan Kataria.  A physician fascinated by medical research demonstrating the positive health benefits of laughter, he decided to start the very first laughter club through an informal “experiment” in which he brought together a group of just five people at a local park in Mumbai, India with just one task: To laugh. They told jokes and funny stories and invited others in the park to join them. Their small group quickly grew to over fifty people! However, Dr. Kataria soon realized being funny was not the best pathway to laughter, as sense of humor is very personal, and offense is as likely to emerge as laughter when jokes are involved.  In his effort to address this challenge, he reviewed laughter research and discovered that the body cannot differentiate between fake and real laughter. We get the same profound health benefits whether we are simulating laughter or engaging in the real deal!

Laughter yoga is based on the principle that anyone can laugh at any time for no reason whatsoever, without relying on humor, jokes, or comedy. Since that first gathering in the park only 16 years ago, laughter yoga has now expanded to over 6000 laughter clubs worldwide.

In laughter yoga, we encourage laughter through simulated body exercises and interactive activities in a group. Using eye contact and childlike playfulness, this “pretend” laughter soon turns into real and contagious laughter. The health benefits from laughter include improved mood, strengthened immune system functioning, decreased stress, lowered blood pressure, and experiences of pain relief. To top it off, laughing is FUN!

For more information on laughter yoga, check out the links below, and enjoy the video of the baby laughing. This baby was born knowing how to laugh. Research has shown that, on average, children laugh approximately 200 times per day, whereas adults laugh only seven times. Laughter yoga helps us reclaim our natural tendency to laugh and helps us learn to take ourselves less seriously. Join Elizabeth Venart on Mondays at 9:30 a.m. at The Resiliency Center for a weekly laughter yoga club. Learn more and RSVP through our Meetup group. 

Laughter yoga can be practiced in groups, done alone, or learned and deepened by working individually with a Laughter Yoga Instructor.  Elizabeth Venart, a Licensed Professional Counselor, and the Founder of The Resiliency Center, gained certification as a Laughter Yoga Instructor in June. Since that time, she has been offering the laughter club and also infusing laughter yoga into her work with individuals and groups.  To learn more about Elizabeth Venart, visit her website or give her a call at 215-542-5004.

Baby Laughing

Introduction to the Steps of Laughter Yoga

Dr. Kataria’s Laughter Yoga Website

Laughter Yoga Program on Discovery Channel

Dr. Kataria, Founder of Laughter Yoga, Laughing Silently at 5:00 am

Yang-Sheng Mind-Body Research Update article

Self-Care is Not Self-Pampering: Republished from Social Work PRN

Self-Care is Not Self-Pampering

Posted: 22 Jul 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Ask anyone what they do for “self-care” and their answers are more likely to sound like “self-pampering” or “self-indulgence,” such as:
“I take a hot bubble-bath. I treat myself to a meal in a nice restaurant or some new shoes. I get a pedicure or a manicure. I get a massage. I have a pizza or drinks with friends when I’m stressed. I do something nice for myself as often as I can afford it.”
Pampering and self-indulgence are fine if you can afford them, but they’re not the things you do to ensure self-care that meets your needs for physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health.
Self-care is personal health maintenance – in other words, it’s anything that restores, improves, maintains, treats or prevents disease. It’s what we do to balance the stressors and demands of our life in a way that benefits our emotional, physical and mental health.
Self-care includes meeting our needs for:

• Physical fitness and exercise and overall health
• Nutrition and medical care, adequate supplements, medicine and treatments
• Hygiene – including a healthy home and work environment and surroundings
• Sleep and relaxation
• Spiritual needs, emotional and mental health needs
• Life Skills such as communication, relationships, assertiveness, boundary setting.

If you’ve felt frustrated after pampering and indulging yourself and still not feeling complete or healthy – chances are that misunderstanding the role of self-care and why we need it is part of the problem.
If you have a client who is unable to find or hold down a job, sustain a healthy and safe relationship, eat healthy foods, give up alcohol, drugs and compulsive behaviors, take responsibility for themselves or their lives, money, health or personal safety, you’re not likely to tell them to “take a bubble bath,” or “buy yourself something nice,” until their most basic self-care needs have been met first.
Self-care for yourself is no different. Social workers who don’t have life skills such as critical decision making, communication, boundary setting, financial literacy, cognitive restructuring, self-soothing, anger management and even parenting skills aren’t going to improve their lives with a manicure, a weekend at the beach or a bubble bath. Those things might distract us from the lack of life skills, or fitness, or spiritual needs – but they won’t meet those needs.
Self-care includes all the health decisions you need to make for yourself in order to get and stay physically and mentally fit. If you’re feeling stressed, burned out, fatigued, exhausted, angry, depressed or anxious some self-pampering might help, but it won’t heal. Self-care is giving yourself the gift of wellness.  Putting yourself first is not selfish. It’s smart. Nurturing yourself and making sure you are 100% fit ensures you’ll be around for a long time to take care of all the people in your life you love and are responsible for. If you can’t evaluate yourself, then find a medical or mental health professional that can.

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?  

Laughter Medicine

I am happiest when I make time to prioritize laughter in my life. Watching a funny movie or spending time with friends who are naturally gifted storytellers are some of my favorite pastimes.  I also love sharing an afternoon with one of several female friends who share my sense of humor and really get the absurdity of life. We can laugh and laugh until our stomachs hurt, often about the same sorts of things that could have us in tears on a different day or in different company.

Finding really good comedies to enjoy can be a challenge. Often I return time and again to the same old favorites. In my estimation, there simply aren’t enough comedic movies starring women. Many films with female casts are too sappy or too stupid.

When several women whose opinions I respect had been raving recently about the new movie Bridesmaids, co-written by Kristin Wiig of Saturday Night Live fame, I was a bit hesitant.  Watching Kristin on SNL, I have admired her ability to transform herself into any number of crazy characters; however, I have found many (if not most) of the female characters she plays a bit painful to watch. The movie trailer for Bridesmaids didn't help, as it made the film look like a female version of Dumb and Dumber. I wanted to laugh, not be annoyed. I wanted a fun ride, not another movie that insulted women more than it really “got” them or their humor. My friends reassured me I would love it.

Well, I am happy to report that Bridesmaids definitely delivered! I went to see the movie last night and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The film provided a healthy dose of laughter. It included great physical humor, silly antics and inside jokes among women, and dialogue and portrayals that made fun of just about everyone but no one in particular (unless perhaps the type of man John Hamm portrays – but that seemed justifiable). 

The movie had some truly over-the-top scenes and moments that were absolutely ridiculous. I adore this in my comedies. I enjoy the opportunity to step outside reality, suspend disbelief, and just enjoy.  The cast was brilliantly expressive, and I still smile to think back on various shenanigans and the actors’ side-splittingly funny emotional reactions. One visual image in particular – seeing Maya Rudolph’s character in her custom-designed wedding dress – still has me giggling.

As a big fan of laughter, I loved the opportunity to giggle, laugh, and even snort at times throughout this film, one that ended up being far sweeter than I had anticipated.  A fun female friendship film, Bridesmaids provided me with many minutes of laughter. I am so grateful! Laughter is definitely one of my very favorite ways to nurture my resiliency. Laughter is medicine – good for our physical and emotional health and fabulous in helping us see new perspectives and gain more appreciation for life.

Today, I encourage you to see a funny film or do whatever else makes you laugh heartily.  I hope you giggle so hard that you snort, your belly aches, and you even have trouble catching your breath.  That’s the good stuff. :-)  Enjoy! 

Discovering your personal bliss

In New Orleans recently, a friend of mine experienced what he described as one of the top ten best moments of his life. We were in Café du Monde in New Orleans during the wee hours of the morning, enjoying beignets and café au lait.  My friend’s wife noticed an employee had rolled the largest mixing bowl we’d ever seen into the room where we sat – and then walked away. It seemed that we hit Café Du Monde at perhaps its quietest hour, and the staff were in the process of cleaning. The mixing bowl seemed next in line.

To say that my friend is a “fan” of raw dough would be an understatement. While we may all enjoy a little raw cookie dough or brownie batter from time to time, he delights in all raw dough.  His eyes absolutely lit up to see this giant bowl before us. Within the bowl remained some of New Orleans classic beignet dough, a pastry favorite in the French Quarter. My friend walked over to the bowl and scraped out a spoonful for his enjoyment. He was absolutely giddy with his discovery and savored every tiny morsel of his find.  He was ecstatic. His joy sprang from the combination of tasting one of his favorite things (pastry dough) and the purely random experience of getting to “steal” it in the middle of the night from a giant bowl the kitchen staff happened to wheel within ten feet of us. He was delirious with joy.

The experiences that create bliss for each person are so unique.  None of the rest of us felt inspired to taste the dough ourselves and may have even been a bit incredulous at his response. However, witnessing him experience so much bliss at this find – and hearing him describe his delight with such emphatic, wide-eyed enthusiasm – had us all smiling and often hysterical with laughter for hours to come.

Watching him giggle about how much fun he had taking the dough and how much pleasure he experienced tasting it, I wondered to myself, “What could I do at this moment in time that could give me the same incredible high? What could delight me to the tips of my toes such that I would dance a jig in celebration?”

I didn’t figure it out that night, nor have I since returning home a few days ago. But the question lingers. In my mind’s eye, I can still see my happy, happy friend giggling and as full of joy as I’ve ever seen another person. And I wonder.  . . What simple act could I do that could bring me so much bliss? And if I knew what it was, if the desire surfaced spontaneously within me in a simple moment of time, could I allow myself to do it? 

Entering each new moment of each new day, may we all discover and embrace whatever opportunities arise to experience our personal bliss. Enjoy!

Wholeness includes both grief and joy

I notice how the world contains both grief and joy, birth and death, lightness and darkness, often so closely situated in time that we are left only with a sense that all are part of the whole. When there is darkness, there will also be light. Feeling joyful, I may also experience great sadness. I see this, and I breathe and I step back, grateful for the vantage point and the fluidity of existence.

I lost two people in my life suddenly in the past few months. One was a beloved friend with whom I’d shared many happy memories in the past and whose love for nature and animals rivaled all others. The other was a client whose wonderful sense of humor and keen insight were a joy and inspiration.

In the midst of the sadness and shock surrounding both losses, I have also experienced great happiness through the celebration of two of my wonderful, forty-something, female friends making the decision to become mothers. Their optimism and joy at welcoming their babies into the world has been heartwarming, inspiring, and contagious.

The juxtaposition of these experiences has awakened me more fully to the wholeness of my life and emotions. It has also encouraged me to reflect on larger meanings, the interconnectedness of all living beings, and the interrelationship of darkness and light. Needless to say, I don’t have it all “figured out” – and I realize that there really is no such thing as “figured out.” What I can do is breathe, open my heart to myself and others, and do my best to see the whole and keep a big picture in mind. In the midst of doing this, I also hope to bring people together more and more in connection and community. When two or more are gathered in pain, the grief is shared and the burden eased. When two or more are gathered in celebration, the happiness can be a ripple that spreads outward to inspire and uplift us all. 

Creativity for Healing, Wellness, & Joy

Every person is innately creative. As children, we naturally express ourselves through art, music, dance, creating stories, and building imaginary worlds. We enjoy the process of creating without criticizing the outcome. However, along the way from childhood to adulthood, many of us receive messages that discourage our natural creativity—such as teacher criticisms of our efforts; parents saying, “What a nice tree” when we draw a crocodile; and adults claiming that pursuing the arts professionally is not a real choice. From these early messages, we may conclude that creative expression is reserved only for the extraordinarily talented. This is simply not true. Everyone has within them the capacity for creativity, and there are unlimited pathways to for creative self-expression. Creative activities can include dancing, singing, drawing cartoons, journaling, knitting, gardening, karaoke, playing the guitar, writing knock-knock jokes, decorating one’s home, making jewelry, and building furniture—to name just a few!

When we play and create, we allow ourselves to feel, to be spontaneous, and to take time out from our busy schedules and our many responsibilities to just be. Creativity is an important part of wellness, and creative expression has been found to reduce stress, promote health, and even improve the functioning of our immune system! Creative forms of expression are so powerful because they can help us tap into parts of ourselves that thinking and talking cannot always access. For example, an individual who is drumming may become so absorbed in the rhythm that he no longer feels anxious, and someone who spends ten minutes scribbling may have feelings of anger surface and then be released through the movement of the crayons.

Tapping into and expressing our creativity is a natural resource for wellness. Creating connects us with our authentic self, provides a healthy outlet for emotions, and provides a vehicle for seeing and experiencing the world differently. Today, I invite you to experience the freedom and joy of creating.