What is Laughter Yoga And Why Should I Care?

What is Laughter Yoga, And What’s In It for Me?

Imagine a baby-easy exercise to feel good for no reason at all, and to improve your immune system. Science believes stress is the major cause of most diseases, and laughter stomps out stress.

Key Element: your body cannot differentiate between make-believe, pretend, and FAKE laughter, and the genuine article. So what? You get the same physical and psychological benefits from phony laughing, as from watching a Broadway Comedy where the audience is falling in the aisle hysterically.

But So What

It means you can choose to feel good any time you desire. If you fake laughing for even thirty (30) seconds, your body takes your behavior and turns it into genuine, authentic, real laughter. Remember when you were a kid and looked into the eyes of your best friend, made a funny face and fell-down in a fit of giggles?

Sometimes it kept up for what seemed like an hour. What happened after that? You felt s-o-o great you wanted to do it all over again, right? What really happened was a flood of brain cells called Endorphins (neuropeptides), entered your mind-body connection. It contains a blueprint to give great pleasure to your body, and you feel happy and delighted for up to 120-minutes AFTER a bout of laughter.

Oxygen

Did you know that laughter increases your net supply of Oxygen? Each time you laugh you improve your energy level, and suck up more oxygen. Our brain uses 25% of the entire oxygen supply for our body. Laugh and you are invigorating your body and enhance your Attention Span.

If your career requires persuading others, sales meetings, and making presentations, you want your brain acuity - to be sharp, focused and concentrated. Scientific research indicates concentrations levels flop after the first twenty-minutes of a meeting. Laughter raises your state-of-mind for concentration up to 60-minutes. Then what? Laugh again.

Cortisol

The stress hormone is called Cortisol and it registers in our saliva. When we lose our emotional balance and go ballistic, it is stress and in particular, Cortisol. Guess what? Five-seconds of laughter, false or real, and your body and brain begin balancing. In sixty-seconds stress is yesterday’s news. No side effects from this medicine.

Mental Movies

Humans can create mental movies during the day. We call it Daydreaming, creative imagination, or lost-in-thought. A sense of playfulness stimulates our Right Hemisphere, which is your seat of creativity. It allows us to be open to hunches, gut-reactions, and intuition. It is the trigger for new ideas and novel products.

Secret of Laughter

Ho-Ho-Ho, Ha-Ha-Ha, and He-He-He make us giggle and snort in just 5-10 seconds. It is the sound of the vowels. The sounds of A-E-I-O-U tickle our Primary Auditory Cortex. If you show your teeth and crinkle your eyes into a smile, and give yourself permission to laugh, you are learning the secret code of healthy Yoga laughter. A smile turns into a giggle, and soon you are snorting laughs from your nose non-stop.

Laughter becomes contagious when you see how silly you look, or even better, someone else looking goofy. Start by faking your first smile; now give a little giggle (like a child), & intentionally do a slow laugh. Remember, you control your laughter from a single “Ha” to a flood of “Ho-Ho-Ho”, by choosing to raise your tempo and volume. Don’t be afraid to fake it until you make it - real.

It’s S-O-O Easy And Fun

Get the sound of the “A” in “hat” – “E” in “he”. Next is “I” in “hiccup”. Now do the “O” in “Otto”, and end up with ”U” in “soul“. Whisper to yourself it is OK to break-up laughing, it is not just OK, but great for your mind-body connection. Healing and repair by your leukocytes, phagocytes and lymphocytes improve with laughter and deep relaxation.

How Do We Feel After Laughter

“Light-as-a-feather”, “ready to apply for the Santa Claus job.” And? “I feel totally relaxed, calm, vibrant, new-as-a-baby, joyous, warm, and fresh.”

Three Laughing Myths

1. You have to have a good reason to laugh. We have been taught that laughing people are somehow suspect of not being serious or diligent. The most successful executives give themselves permission to laugh at almost anything. They know it feels good and keeps them healthy, and in the flow. Follow their example.
2. You and I do need to be HAPPY to laugh. No, we can instantaneously laugh on command. We live in a FEAR and in a RULE based society that hates seeing folks happy. We usually laugh at other people’s mistakes or accidents. How funny, she slipped on a banana peel and broke her hip. Now learn to laugh for the sake of feeling good and being healthy.
3. You and I do require a sense-of-humor to have a belly-laugh. Not! Just use your will-power and decide you want to feel good this minute, and stress disintegrates and your life improves.

Laughing is about our INTENTION to feel good. We already know how to diaphragmatically (belly) breathe through our nose, and release our exhalation from our mouth. Now decide to do it for the benefit of your mind and body.

Google: Laughteryogaamerica.com and watch the teaching laughter video.

Students

When students from sixth grade to graduate school (law school) take an exam, they automatically stress out. Their hearts are beating excessively, blood pressure is high, and their state of mind is negative. It is called fear and causes our Central Nervous System to shift to our Sympathetic Nervous System. Adrenaline pours out and we are ready for the Fight-or-Flight reaction.

The balancing nervous system we really require is our Parasympathetic Nervous system because it relaxes our mind-body connection by the neurotransmitter – acetylcholine. A peaceful, non-emotional mind tests much better than the emotional Sympathetic Nervous System. So? Go somewhere private and spend 2-3 minutes practicing how to laugh. It will permit you to ace the exam.

Gamblers

What if you are about to play Poker in the Bellagio casino in Vegas? What would be your winning mindset? The more emotional you are in attempting to win, the worse your decision-making power. Do you need to be comatose? Play to win, but without emotionalizing it. Wait – there are strategies.

Snapping Strategy

The secret of winning is deep relaxation with a powerful INTENTION to reach your goals. So?

Mentally imagine sitting with your cards in front of you, and now close your eyes and mentally visualize playing out each hand. Tiger Wood does just that before his golf tournaments. See yourself throwing in hands that suck, and winning the jackpots when you hold strong hands.

Now make a snapping sound with the fingers of each hand, as you bring them up to your ears. Do one set of three snaps, left-ear, right-ear, left-ear, right ear, left-ear, right-ear. Do another set, and a final set. This activity triggers your nervous system for attention and deep concentration. Takes 60-seconds.

Second Act, Tapping

Keep your eyes closed; this entire strategy requires only 60-seconds. Now, still mentally visualizing the poker game process, with you winning the jackpot, TAP your left-hand to your left-ear, and right-hand to your right ear, simultaneously. Do a set of three, and second set of three, and a third set of Tapping.

Now take a deep diaphragmatic inhalation through your nose, and exhale slowly through your mouth.

When the time comes to play in the actual tournament, you will feel totally relaxed using self-control to pick and choose which hands to play and which to fold. The secret of winning is a powerful INTENTION and following your intuitions and gut-instinct.

One last thing – it is a secret. It is called the BAGHA, keep the tip of your tongue touching and pointing to the roof of your mouth. Why? It keeps you focused and in-the-flow. When? Answer, during the entire tournament. This strategy comes to us by “Mad-Mike, Casino Poker Tournament Boot Camp” ™

Endwords

Laughter releases your stress, and Snapping and Tapping maintain your Parasympathetic Nervous System in deep relaxation. Does it really work? Do a Mind Experiment and find out.

See ya,

Copyright © H. Bernard Wechsler P.S. Ask us about our free Speed Reading report, it helps triple (3x) your learning speed and double (2x) your long-term memory. -----------------------------------------------------