Laughter Yoga is a type of exercise where a person laughs voluntarily without relying on jokes or humor.

This technique was developed by an Indian physician, Dr.Madan Kataria and is practiced in more than 100 countries as people started to see benefits in laughing and carrying out this form of exercise.

Source: Science Direct

WHO defines health as “physical, mental and social well being and not merely absence of diseases”. Not only is physical health important, psychological and social well being is also an important aspect to lead a good quality life.

People are always on a look out for conventional ways of attaining good health. In this regard, laughter yoga is very significant for the fact that many researches have proven the benefits of laughing and also this yoga is one of the low cost techniques without any serious side effects and is acceptable by all.

Benefits of Laughter Yoga are – 

• Laughter Yoga stimulates deep breathing and improves efficiency of lungs
• It helps to bring down the levels of stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine and increases endorphins.
• It stimulates the immune system
• It has a vasodilatory effect on the veins
• Increases oxygen saturation of the brain

Research carried out to prove the benefits (studies are published in scientific journals) – 

1. A study was conducted on the nurses during covid pandemic to check if laughter yoga helped to bring out their stress levels. It is known that the medical fraternity were stretched out to their maximum during the pandemic and there was a high rate of burnout. 

It was observed that Laughter yoga helped the nurses to cope with their stress levels while bringing down their burnout rate.

1. The findings of Nagendra et al. concerning the efficacy of laughter Yoga on IT professionals to overcome professional stress in India showed that there was a significant improvement in stress parameters including the level of blood cortisol.

1. Shahidi et al.,In their study comparing the effects of laughter Yoga and group sport programs on depressed elderly women, reported that laughter Yoga not only had positive effects similar to sport programs on the reduction of depression but also imposed positive effects on the feeling of life satisfaction among the elderly women.

These research shows that there is no harm in trying out and incorporating Laughter Yoga in our daily lives. With the amount of stress and burnout rate increasing among people, such exercises are the way forward to get a good quality life.