Created by Dr Madan Kataria in 1995 with 5 students, laughter yoga is a practice which builds an ability to laugh as a form of exercise for health and healing. It is designed to strengthen the body/mind connection and builds a way of utilising laughter to strengthen the immune system, the body and provide mental resilience to stress.

Have you ever wondered how an actor can cry on demand? How do they create the internal conditions to cry on command for a piece of work which is performative?

Just like learning to cry on command, the same thing can be done with laughter!

Laughter can be taught and learned as a form of exercise to enable numerous benefits to the bodymind.

In laughter yoga we learn to laugh for no reason. In other words without the use of jokes, humour or comedy. We create an internal self-generated laughter which enables us to access our laughter muscles whenever we might need it.

Usually laughter yoga is done in a group and by holding eye contact and generating a sense of childlike playfulness, we can create a sense of joy which enables us to transmute any negative state which may have come over us.

When you are talking (also when you are laughing) you are breathing out. By using laughter as an exercise, we create the conditions to expel large amounts of air from our lungs and hence the laughter yoga exercises work as breath exercises, expelling more air than we usually would. This allows the body to refill with fresh air and oxygenates the blood. It brings a sense of vitality and well-being through the human organism. The effect is more internal energy and a sense of joyfulness which changes whatever negative state we may have been experiencing.

Research has demonstrated the health benefits of laughter already. However with laughter yoga we are doing the exercise mindfully and with purpose. Laughter has been shown to have physical and physiological health benefits. By utilising this activity deliberately, we can start to create positive changes in ourselves with volition.

The bodymind frequently cannot distinguish between real and fake emotions happening in the body – and by starting to laugh deliberately – by forcing laughter, we can quickly find that it turns into real laughter – especially if we are in a group and establishing eye contact and childlike playfulness. Laughter can start as fake but soon turns real through the contagion of others influence.

Have a look at a baby laughing You might notice that for babies and children, laughter comes from deep inside and is a bodily response. As adults we may feel that we need to see /hear /think something funny in order to have a good laugh. However it can also be reversed by training the body to laugh – and then afterwards we find things in the world to actually laugh at. This is what laughter yoga seeks to do – to create the internal conditions to self generate laughter – consistently and persistently to enable the human organism to lighten up. Laughter gives us an internal workout, cheaply and efficiently, to create a positive enabling state.

In contrast, when we have a negative thought we might then feel a negative emotion in the body, causing us to have another negative thought. This further negative thought may make us feel another negative emotion. It becomes a cycle of negativity, eventually making us feel habitually in a low mood as this pattern of thoughts and feelings becomes ingrained. Laughter is one effective way of breaking this cycle through enabling the body to feel something different, which then causes the brain to think something different. We can start to change what we think by changing what we are feeling.

You may have noticed that these last couple of years haven’t really been years which most people have considered as a good laugh(!) That’s even more reason to utilize this self generated, internal skill for its numerous health benefits.