Laughter Yoga
What is Laughter Yoga?
Laughter yoga is a practice that requires voluntarily laughter. When an individual laughs, it provides the same physiological and psychological benefits as spontaneous laughter.
When we are stressed, our body and muscles tighten, we have low energy, an increased amount of headaches or insomnia.
Laughter yoga is a fun and engaging routine to help reduce stress, stimulate energy, and increase your energy level. Laughter yoga requires the participant to voluntarily laugh while doing exercises without any jokes or comedy. During our group routines, we voluntarily laugh, but it becomes a real and contagious laughter resulting in everyone genuinely laughing and exercising.
Our Peer-Led senior volunteers leads the routine first through clapping, yoga breathing, greetings, childlike playfulness and laughing.
Laughter yoga originally started in 1995 by a medical doctor name Madan Kataria from India. Now laughter yoga is being practiced in over 60 countries.
Some benefits for Laughter Yoga:
- Laughter helps create a positive mental state to deal with negative situations
- Reduce stress and strengthens the immune system
- Laughter yoga is an aerobic exercise (cardio workout) to bring more oxygen to the body and brain
- It can change your mood within minutes because when we laugh or exercise, we release endorphins (Endorphins helps us feel good)
Our Peer Leader, Kesh Kumar leading Laughing Yoga with our seniors. One element of Laughter Yoga is clapping and laughing.
This may be your first time hearing about what Laughter Yoga is. The first idea that comes to mind with Laughter Yoga is people doing yoga stances while laughing. After attending one class, you can see how our seniors can get a good abdominal workout from all the laughter,and also socialize and meet new friends. No matter how silly it may feel at first, once people start laughing it is infectious!
At Malvern Family Resource Centre, laughter yoga is offered in our seniors department every
Thursday morning from 10 a.m to 11 a.m.
For more information contact Lisa Persaud at 416-284-4184 ext.242
Information Source: www.laughteryoga.org