Laughter Yoga is Coming to Evergreen!
Laughter Yoga is coming to Evergreen!
Laughter has shown again and again in studies to be extremely good for people. It has been proven to express and relieve stress as well as provide a myriad of physiological and emotional benefits. What Laughter Yoga does is channel this into a structured environment with others where bonding and hilarity will ensue. More and more, Laughter Yoga has become a new device used in offices, retirement homes and birthday parties for stress management and fun.
Laughter Yoga is a relatively new phenomenon, originating in Mumbai, India. In 1995, Dr. Madan Kataria was researching laughter and its effects on people, he felt that starting a laughter club would help improve people’s health. He and his wife started a group in a public park where people would tell jokes. Starting with just five members, the group grew and became extremely popular in a short period of time. However, after a while people couldn’t think up jokes that were as good as the ones they started out with. As a result jokes started to get more hurtful and crude, and lots of people were put off by the kinds of humor they were encountering. The group started to fall apart. Dr. Kataria decided to change things to keep everyone together and decided that they would skip telling jokes and simply try laughing for no reason together. His idea worked and thus Laughter Yoga had officially begun.
But how does Laughter Yoga work? In essence, Laughter Yoga uses structured laughter and yogic breathing exercises in order to stimulate the diaphragm until laughter flows naturally. Even forced laughter causes the same benefits as natural laughter. Exercises people use include ‘handshake laughter’ and ‘laughter meditation’ which provide excuses with others to just start laughing. There’s no deep thinking involved in the process, which may be a bit unnerving at first. “It’s okay to feel awkward, that’s the point!” Kate Benak explains. As a certified Laughter Yoga teacher and co-founder of Olympia Laughter Yoga, she provides authoritative instruction here in the Olympia area on Laughter Yoga. Turnout to Laughter Yoga events on campus this year has been excellent and currently a Laughter Yoga club is in the process of becoming a student group. Common Bread and Laughter Yoga are teaming up on Thursday December 1st at 5:30 in the Rotunda. If you want more information about Laugher Yoga, contact Kate Benak at katymay@hotmail.com.