Laughter Yoga - by Maria Rainier

Since discovering Moymoypalaboy (see October and November 2010 posts) I have been playing and replaying their videos almost every day for a dose of laughter. Not only do I laugh, but I am delighted, rejuvenated and encouraged. We know laughter has this effect on us, so why don’t we do it more? Maria Rainier tells us more about the effects of laughter and how one doctor has made it into a Yoga form. Here is her guest post for Healing Philosophy.

A child laughs 400 times a day; an adult laughs 15 times a day.  What gives?

This is the entire premise of laughter yoga—restoring laughter to those who have forgotten or lost reason to laugh.  

Dr. Kataria and Hasyayoga 

Medical physician Dr. Madan Kataria began his research into laughter after reading the findings of Norman Cousins, an American journalist who purportedly cured his degenerative heart disease with massive doses of Vitamin C and by training himself to laugh.  Inspired, Kataria began encouraging his family members and friends to laugh by telling jokes, but as the jokes ran out, Kataria resorted to psychosocial and playful techniques to arouse laughter.  He then discovered hasyayoga (laughter yoga), which he made popular in 1995 from Mumbai across the entire globe.  Today, 60 countries together boast over 6,000 Social Laughter Clubs.

What is Laughter Yoga?

Laughter yoga combines unconditional laughter (laughing for no reason: no jokes, no comedy, no innuendo, merely joy) with yogic breathing (pranayama).  Laughter yoga is exercised in a group of people who, with eye contact and childlike playfulness, turn little giggles into laughter from the belly.

What Are Its Benefits?

Other than it being fun, the benefits of laughter yoga are many.  Clinical research from University of Graz in Austria; Bangalore, India; and in the US indicate that laughing—even fake laughter, which the human body cannot differentiate from real laughter—lowers stress hormones like epinephrine and cortisol in blood.  Regular reminders to laugh also allow individuals to deal with stress more productively by putting stressful situations into perspective with the rest of one’s life: what’s a burned pancake in view of one’s overall health?

Who Benefits?

In fact, the benefits of laughter yoga have been recognized to the extent that many schools of Surat, Baroda, and Bangalore (India) have introduced it into their curriculum.  Schedules include ten minutes of hasyayoga in the morning assembly and five minutes of hasyayoga at both the beginning and end of each day in classrooms.  Students’ grades as well as theirs and teachers’ moods have improved; they work better together with more positive attitudes and improved communication, discipline, and attendance.  American college students at Ithaca College are quickly catching on to the trend.

If children and young adults can stand to gain from laughter yoga, so can businesspeople.  Humor is a common tool in the office to break tension and keep workers going through the day; laughter yoga is a reliable and effective method that allows even adults to laugh wholeheartedly for 15 to 20 minutes with short breaks of yogic breathing.  India, Denmark, and many business environments in the U.S. show benefits of reduced stress and improved productivity after only three weeks of laughter sessions.

Seniors, medically ill patients, and patients with physical and mental challenges also benefit from laughter yoga.  Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease make it difficult to comprehend humor, but with hasyayoga, no humor is needed to laugh, exercise, and feel pure joy.  Coping with pain and trauma becomes easier for cancer patients such as those who perform laughter yoga during chemotherapy sessions in the Swedish Cancer Hospital in Chicago.  Children with mental and physical handicaps enjoy improved motor and expressive skills and health.  

Laughter yoga has even been introduced to the prison system.  British actor John Cleese visited Mumbai Prison in 2001 and found that prisons—concentrated hotbeds of negative emotions and thoughts—of all places could use laughter yoga.  Reduced violence and improved moods and prisoner/staff relations have ensued in several prisons in India, Europe, and the U.S. with regular practice of laughter yoga.

Watch this clip from BBC’s Human Expressions, which explores the benefits of laughter yoga.

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, where recently she's been researching online music degree programs and blogging about student life. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

How to be alone

Well shipmates, you are in for a little treat. You know the music vid, now know the poem vid. A beautiful, refreshing little video called ‘How to be Alone’ by Tanya Davis. My blog has a contractual obligation to post anything called ‘How to be Alone’.

I will not spoil the surprise for you by making any other comments, but you can trust me, its great.

Acceptance - the truest kinship with humanity

Reading the following quotes about acceptance, one can only wonder that it is not common knowledge, that we seem to have no current expressions about acceptance (apart from the put-down ‘get over it’.) My grandparents had the expression ‘what cannot be cured must be endured’. It seemed to my youthful self at the time to be a poor, tired, defeatist expression. Perhaps their grandparents had a few more expressions which they did not pass down, as I have not passed down their expression to my children.
Acceptance is not part of our vocabulary. But it is so important to a healthy attitude. Humility, gratitude, patience, sincerity, love, acceptance – how little we think of them on a daily basis, yet how impoverished our thoughts and actions are throughout the day that are not based in them. All of them are ‘companions of wisdom,’ their invisible power is always there, waiting to be tapped by us on demand, yet we rarely do.

The power of spiritual forces in the Universe – how active it is everywhere! Invisible to the eyes, and impalpable to the senses, it is inherent in all things, and nothing can escape its operation.

Nothing can escape its operation, especially not us, the only reasoning animals on the planet, with one foot on earth and one foot on heaven.

Reading these quotes I feel a kind of shame for my irritation with small things, my unreasonable, unaccepting anger with what life brings me, my ignorance of the necessity of acceptance, and my lack of grace in adapting to what is required of me by life. I am resolved to change my attitude. Thank God I decided to write this blog, I might never have discovered acceptance.

Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity. G. K. Chesterton

Happiness can exist only in acceptance. Denis De Rougement

Happiness is a function of accepting what is. Werner Erhard

Listening is a form of accepting. Stella Terrill Mann

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances. David Hume

Contentment, and indeed usefulness, comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great humilities-of not trying to conform to some dramatized version of ourselves. David Grayson

Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers. Johann von Goethe

Happiness comes from within a man, from some curious adjustment to life. Hugh Walpole

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings. Okakura Kakuzo

Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself. Michel de Montaigne

We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could. Walter Savage Landor

If one has to submit, it is wasteful not to do so with the best grace possible. Winston Churchill

There is no quality of human nature so nearly royal as the ability to yield gracefully. Charles Conrad

What you can't get out of, get into wholeheartedly. Mignon McLaughlin

If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is. Wayne Dyer

Give love and unconditional acceptance to those you encounter, and notice what happens. Wayne Dyer

You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes. Moses Maimonides

Our entire life consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are. Jean Anouilh

A man must live in the world and make the best of it, such as it is. Michel de Montaigne

Trouble will come soon enough, and when he does come receive him as pleasantly as possible ... the more amiably you greet him, the sooner he will go away. Artemus Ward

I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. Sara Teasdale

To succeed, it is necessary to accept the world as it is – and rise above it. Michael Korda

We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it, including the thorns. Orison Swett Marden

The most popular persons are those who take the world as it is, who find the least fault. Charles Dudley Warner

We must accept life for what it actually is -- a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature. Ida R. Wylie

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension. Joshua L. Liebman

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give. Eleanor Roosevelt

It is almost more important how a person takes his fate than what it is. Wilhelm von Humboldt

God asks no man whether he will accept life. This is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how. Henry Ward Beecher

You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it. German proverb

The Story of Stuff, with Annie Leonard

Today I discovered the following video ‘The Story of Stuff’ with Annie Leonard. Here you have the malaise and yes, the tragedy of our time in a simple yet powerful 21-minute media message. Since the 1950’s we have increasingly been brainwashed into accepting as normal a consumer-driven culture and since the 1950’s, strangely enough, personal happiness has been in decline. We live in a world where to live frugally and simply is to be a maverick and something of an eccentric. We spend money we don’t have, to buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.
I have a cellular phone that I bought about 5 years ago. I don’t use it much and it still looks like new. No one I know (or don’t know) still has one like it. Everyone else seems to have a new thin flip phone or Blackberry-type. I find myself thinking I should buy a new one. But only for a moment. I suppose I am becoming eccentric in my old age.
Watch the video, see through the brainwashing and get off the consumer merry-go-round.

The soul's kisses

I was sitting in my car at a red light on the way home from work. I felt darn tired and miserable. A red 4x4 was crossing the intersection to take the road I had come. As he passed the driver smiled at me. I recognised him at once. It was that guy at work who always smiles at me and everyone else. You hardly know him, but he smiles at you as though you and he won a million dollars in a lottery together. A twinkling, open, sun-like smile. I am tempted to say conspiratorial, but there is no guile whatsoever in his smile.
I sat there realising that I must have looked like a miserable sod to him when he spotted me, but he still smiled as though I were his best friend. I sat there realising that this guy always smiles at me, even though we have hardly exchanged three phrases in all the years I have known him. I sat there (by now the light had changed and I was half-way home) wondering if he even knows that he is smiling at people. Is it possible for someone to feel so well and positive and happy all the time that they spontaneously smile at everyone they meet out of a sheer gladness and benevolence of heart? When I see his smile, I think it is.

The man of superior virtue is not conscious of his virtue,
And in this way he really possesses virtue.
The man of inferior virtue never loses sight of his virtue,
And in this way he loses his virtue....
Therefore, only when Tao is lost does the doctrine of virtue arise.
When virtue is lost, only then does the doctrine of humanity arise.
When humanity is lost, only then does the doctrine of righteousness arise.
When righteousness is lost, only then arise rules of propriety.
Now, propriety is a superficial expression of loyalty and faithfulness, and the beginning of disorder.

Tao Te Ching 38

My scheming cynical rational mind offers other explanations: he is naïve, he has never experienced suffering, he has passed through life so far unscathed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Yes, that’s it. Isn’t it?
The next time I meet him, I’m going to have a word with him.

Flowers are God’s way of smiling. Proverb

A smile is the universal welcome. Max Eastman

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness. William Arthur Ward

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. Mother Theresa

Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. Mother Theresa

Peace begins with a smile. Mother Theresa

The robb’d that smiles, steals something from the thief. Shake-speare (De Vere)

He who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger. Japanese proverb

Smiles are the soul’s kisses. Minna Thomas Antrim

Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. Charles Reade

Because of your smile you make life more beautiful. Thich Nhat Hanh

Don’t open a shop unless you know how to smile. Jewish proverb

People worry and God smiles. Jewish proverb

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. Thich Nhat Hanh

Smile, it is the key that fits the lock of everybody’s heart. Anthony J. D’Angelo

Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror. Rabindranath Tagore

Gratitude - the fairest blossom

Since my first posts on gratitude, I have noticed many visits to the site by people searching for quotes or prayers about gratitude. This is no doubt linked to the Thanksgiving holiday, which was a wholly fortuitous coincidence with regard to my posts since I do not have any great notion of the public holidays or even, I am ashamed to say, of the religious holidays. My thoughts started turning to gratitude for a very different reason (read my post Gratitude – the forgotten virtue).
Be that as it may, I will perhaps make an exception for Thanksgiving in the future as a result of these posts on gratitude and my growing awareness of the essentiality of gratitude in the heart of him that would be happy. It seems to me now a very noble and worthy reason for a holiday. And another example of the wisdom of the old ways.
I wish all our American cousins a very happy Thanksgiving.

Gratitude is the memory of the heart. Jean-Baptiste Massieu

Gratitude is the moral memory of mankind. Georg Simmel

Gratitude is the least of the virtues, but ingratitude is the worst of vices. Thomas Fuller

Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies. Charles E. Jefferson

Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy. Jacques Maritain

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation. You do not find it among gross people. Samuel Johnson

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. Nietzsche

The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. John E. Southard

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. G.K.Chesterton

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. G.K.Chesterton

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving. W.T. Purkiser

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. Henry Ward Beecher

Money and happiness

Money is good. Money is not the root of all evil. As long as you think like that you will never have any. Greed is the root of all evil. Money is just a convenient form of storing energy, products, valuable ideas, work done, services rendered. It is more convenient than carrying livestock or produce around to barter with. (‘Do you have change for a sheep?’) We all need some money on a daily basis to live comfortably and to store away for a time when we can no longer work. And there is plenty of it in the world. So with that in mind here are some interesting quotes:

If you would know the value of money, go and borrow some. Benjamin Franklin

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Ayn Rand

Money can’t buy you love, but it can put you in a good bargaining position

Money can’t buy you happiness but you can be miserable in comfort

Money is better than poverty if only for financial reasons. Woody Allen

There are few ills in this world where a good income is of no avail

If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning. Aristotle Onassis

If you are struggling with debt, I highly recommend Jon Hanson’s book ‘Good debt, bad debt’. In it he opens your eyes to the ‘consumerati’ life-style many of us are living, shows you the pitfalls, and helps you to work toward the light at the end of the tunnel. This book can change your financial life.
For a more spiritual approach to money, I recommend ‘The Feng Shui of Abundance’ by Suzan Hilton.
Also, be sure to read ‘The Power of your Subconscious Mind’ by Dr. Joseph Murphy for improving all aspects of your life. Here is an affirmation for attracting money from his book :

‘I like money. I use it wisely, constructively and judiciously. I release it with joy, and it returns to me a thousandfold’.