Is Laughter Yoga Real?

When you hear the word yoga, breathing and movement exercises come to your mind. You figure yourself sitting on a mat and taking some movements while controlling your breathing. Despite being a yoga enthusiast, you have never heard about laughter yoga. You must be wondering, is laughter yoga real?

You are not alone. Many people do not understand the concept behind this type of yoga. They wonder whether it is a real aspect or a hullabaloo thing. The fact of this concept is that it focuses on stimulating laughter.

In other words, the participants will have fake laughter. Instead of humor and jokes, this yoga involves some activities that trigger laughing among the participants. Hence, the laughter yoga is real, but the laughter in it is fake. To answer the question, is laughter yoga real? Here are four significant steps that can help you stimulate laughter:

Rhythmic clapping

Clapping is the first step in the laughter yoga session. The club members meet with the yoga coach or instructor who guides them through the activity. Usually, the session will begin with rhythmic clapping. 

The participants will clap in a certain rhythm like 1-2, 1-2-3. As they clap, they introduce a rhythm sound that aligns with laughter such as Ho-Ho, Ha-Ha-Ha. The participant takes the activity in 3 series. This way, it starts to instill a peal of laughter.  

Deep-breathing 

The next activity in laughter yoga is deep breathing. Like other yoga exercises, the participants engage in inhalation and exhalation. You breathe in through the nose and exhale through the month. Also, ensure you feel your belly breathing. The laughter yoga experts encourage having longer exhalation and shorter inhalations. 

But how does the breathing exercise stimulate laughter? Certainly, this is the question in your mind. The technique involves the introduction of intentional laughter. What you do is that you inhale and laugh down as you exhale. The faked laughter results in a feeling-good experience which triggers your body to realize high levels of endorphins hormone.

Childlike playfulness

As people grow up, leaving childlike practices is essential. But, some of the practices were crucial to keeping your life happy. A good example is the childhood chants. The chanting practices made you have a burst of great laughter that enhanced your health.

In laughter yoga, the goal is to bring out that child inside you. One of the ways to do this is engaging you in childlike playfulness sessions. Here, you engage in chants such as “very good. Very good. Yay!” You say chant this way with a clap and lift your hands up when saying “yay!” The chanting exercise stimulates inner joy and brings out the child in you. 

Laughter  

The objective of laughter yoga is to ensure the participants laugh without sharing any joke or humor. As such, it is the fourth and last step in this yoga technique. The step involves walking around the group and greeting everyone with a laugh. This means you need to fake it even if you do not feel like laughing. 

Since the body cannot differentiate between a burst of fake and genuine laughter, the faked laughter generates a real one. By the end of the exercises, everyone in the room will be showing a peal of real laughter.

Wrapping up

Laughing yoga practice involves stimulating the body into laughter. While laughing is a natural experience, the exercises, and activities involved in this technique trigger laughter. Participants start to laugh without a specific joke or funny trigger. So, the laughter in this technique starts as fake but graduates into a genuine one. 

Are you now convinced that laughter yoga is real? Find out  more.