The Best Medicine: Laughter Yoga

Did you know that young children laugh spontaneously hundreds of times per day, while adults are lucky if they laugh just fifteen times in a day? Or that fifty years ago, adults laughed for approximately 18 minutes per day, but now we laugh, on average, only six minutes per day?

Laughter is important. Research shows that it helps to relieve stress, boredom, insomnia and depression, triggers the release of ‘happy chemicals’ or endorphins, regulates physical processes including breathing and digestion, and increases levels of happiness and quality of life. We’ve all heard that ‘laughter is the best medicine’, but how often do we think to treat ourselves to a good laugh? Mostly we perceive laughter as spontaneously occurring as a response to humour – but to wait for something funny to happen before we laugh, is to miss opportunities to integrate the therapeutic benefits of laughter into our lives every day. This is where laughter yoga comes in.

Lotte Mikkelsen, UnitedMind

Last week at Gokula Vegetarian Cafe in Watford, Happiness Collective members tried an introductory laughter yoga workshop, led by Happiness Hero Lotte Mikkelsen of UnitedMind. Lotte is a laughter yoga master trainer and laughter coach, plus one of the happiest people I have ever met! It was fantastic speaking to her about her work and trying out laughter yoga exercises, which had us all crying with laughter and leaving feeling fantastic. We’d all like to send a huge thank you to Lotte for her brilliant workshop. Details about her upcoming events are at the bottom of this page.

What is laughter yoga?

To understand what laughter yoga is, we must first understand more about laughter. Lotte says “let’s clear up a few misconceptions about laughter: you must have a sense of humour to laugh, you have to have a reason to laugh, and you need to be happy to laugh”. In actual fact, you need none of those things to laugh!

“It is important to note that ‘laughing for no reason’ is different from laughing with humour.  We are not born with a sense of humour but we are born with a pre-loaded ability to laugh” – Lotte Mikkelsen

Research has shown that the body cannot tell the difference between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ laughter, so simulating laughter brings about all of the same beneficial effects as genuine laughter. Laughter yoga is based on the principle of ‘acting happiness’; in other words, fake it until you make it! Laughter is contagious, and once you start laughing, even though it may be ‘fake’ at first, it soon becomes genuine!

During laughter clubs or workshops, the facilitator usually guides the group through different games, activities and exercises which emphasise fun, playfulness and openness within the group, to get everyone comfortable with each other and laughing freely. Seeing everyone else around you laughing so much is infectious and at our workshop, we all laughed non-stop for an hour! Breathing exercises are also included to deepen the benefits of laughter, and at the end of our workshop, we did a humming exercise to ground ourselves (some of us were feeling light-headed from all the laughter!)

Admittedly it did feel strange at first – you have to be willing to let go of inhibitions and look very silly! But in a safe, welcoming space, this is very liberating and highlights how little room we have for playfulness in our everyday lives.

What is the history of laughter yoga?

The first laughter club was started by Dr Madan Kataria in Mumbia in 1997. Interested in research into the healing effects of laughter, Dr Kataria started the first club with only five members, who would meet in a public park in the morning and tell jokes and stories to make each other laugh. The laughter was contagious and within three days, there were over 50 participants. Once the funny stories and jokes had started to run out, Dr Kataria realised that a different approach was needed to stimulate laughter and returned to his research. Finding that the body cannot tell the different between simulated and genuine laughter, he tried out some new laughing exercises with the group, which was the beginning of the laughter yoga now practised all over the world. He continued to develop these techniques, incorporating aspects of Pranayama yoga, to maximise the benefits of laughing. The popularity of laughter yoga quickly spread, and laughter clubs now run all over the world. In fact Lotte, who runs UnitedMind, trained with Dr Kataria to bring laughter yoga across the UK.

How can I incorporate laughter yoga into my life?

Laughter clubs can be found all over the UK and are non-profit, with all proceeds going to charity. Lotte offers laughter clubs in St Albans and Bushey, as well as workshops and training all over the UK. For more information and dates, please see her website UnitedMind.

Lotte also offers a telephone laughter club, where you can dial in and join a conference call of people laughing together! Her telephone laughter club was even featured in a BBC feature below, which also gives more information about laughter yoga and laughter clubs. For more details about her telephone laughter yoga, click here.

Finally, World Laughter Day is just around the corner! Come along for a celebration of the 10th World Laughter Day with a special UnitedMind event and try out laughter yoga for yourself. Taking place on Sunday 3rd May from 1 – 2.30pm at The Sopwell Nunnery Ruins, Cottonmill Lane, St Albans, AL1 2BY, with a donation of £5. For more details, see the Facebook event. Booking in advance is required; email lotte@unitedmind.co.uk to confirm.

Beating Burn-Out

Often I find that when I am drawn to writing about a certain subject, it is almost always something I should integrate into my own life. A deep-down wiser part of me is gently whispering ideas for me to write about, at exactly the right moments –  I just need to learn how to take my own advice! And today’s subject, burn-out, is definitely an example of this.

So what is burn-out exactly? I’m not going to go into the scientific description of burn-out, but instead put it from my own experiences and perspective, as it shows up differently for everyone. For me, it’s taking on too much, worrying about others’ expectations of me, feeling unable to manage everything I have going on. Feeling overwhelmed. Giving up the things important to me, losing perspective on my priorities. Eating poorly, sleeping less. Getting sick. Crying for no reason. Panic attacks. Feeling sick when I wake up. Putting things off, feeling as if I’m sleepwalking. Losing the present moment and living in a warped, frantic future-mode. Drifting further and further away from myself until I reach a crisis point that jerks me back awake and I am forced to confront my control demons and admit I’m not coping.

I don’t always reach that crisis point. I’m learning to pull back on the reins before I reach that stage, to slow it down and re-examine where I’m heading. But the problem with burn-out is that all of the commitments feel huge and necessary, while I start to feel more vague and insubstantial. Breaking the cycle seems to require a superhuman effort which I am far too exhausted to summon up.

When I attended a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in 2012, I was introduced to the idea of the Stress Curve, also known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which illustrates the relationship between performance at as task and stress levels. It helps to distinguish between good stress, which helps us to perform, and bad stress, which has the opposite effect. I was reminded of this theory yesterday during my mindfulness teacher training and it really resonated with me. While the diagram illustrates the effects of stress or pressure on performance of a task, I also see how it can be applied to the effects of life’s pressures and commitments as a whole. You can see my not-very-scientific (damn you Microsoft Office, expiring when I need to make a graph) version below.

We all need some challenges, what’s known as ‘good stress’, to help us to feel purposeful, to grow and develop, to accomplish the things we set out to achieve. That’s why performance is low at points 1 and 2, though there’s nothing inherently bad about being inactive, or laid back. This is still a psychologically healthy zone to inhabit, especially when recovering from burn-out, illness or difficult life experiences. We are most fulfilled however when we are in the region of ‘optimum stress’, where we feel challenged, enthused, energetic. There are problems to overcome but we feel in control of our time, we have the resources to manage them, and the support systems around us to keep ourselves well. When we get towards the peak of the stress curve, at number 3, we’re pushing it. We start to experience fatigue, which is a telling sign that we have taken on too much and need a break.

Here’s where the problem lies. How many of us feel tired, all of the time? The pace of modern life is so frenetic that we are culturally conditioned to ignore fatigue, or even to see it as a positive thing. We are told that pushing ourselves to our limits is a sign of strength and integrity, that we can just push on through the tiredness to achieve our goals, whether at work, school or in our personal lives. Our society values doing above all else, so we carry on doing, even when it doesn’t serve us.

This is the tipping point into ‘bad stress’, a psychologically and physically unhealthy place to inhabit. Most of us live here, around number 4, but this chronic exposure to stress can have negative consequences on both mind and body. It’s where I am right now, and I know this because my eczema has flared up, I’ve developed coldsores and a cold, I’m feeling anxious and spending more time planning than enjoying the present. But because we become so habituated to the feelings of fatigue, in fact it’s the default mode for many of us, it can be very difficult to  notice this shift into exhaustion.

So we make trade-offs with ourselves – ‘I’ll have a break once this project is over’ or ‘it’s not long till half term, then I’ll have a break’, as if to reassure ourselves that things will change soon. However when we live in this perpetual state of exhaustion, it becomes a difficult cycle to break. We’re too exhausted to do the things that make us feel happy or well, like exercising, eating healthily, sleeping, meditating, spending time on hobbies or with friends and family, so our horizons get narrower, our lives become poorer, dominated by all the ‘stuff’ that’s making us feel stressed and unbalanced.

This is where we start to slip down into burn-out. At point 5, the negative emotional and psychological consequences are really starting to kick in as we start to feel hopeless or despairing, giving rise to feelings of anxiety, panic, anger and depression. We might spend more time ruminating on what’s going wrong in our lives and losing perspective, or become consumed with anxiety about the future and how we’re going to meet all of our obligations and commitments, or where we’re heading in life, or the purpose of it all. In many instances, we will continue to push ourselves through this stage before we even realise we have a problem, because we are so used to putting up with the tiredness, aches and pains, illness, anxiety and all of the other symptoms of stress that seem so benign at first. That’s why many of us will reach point 6, break-down, where a physical, psychological or existential crisis hits, forcing us to reassess our lives and make drastic changes.

So what happens when we reach burn-out? How do we claw our way back to having some semblance of a life? Burn-out is a traumatic experience and it can take a long time to recover from its effects. It becomes necessary to question the way we have been living and why we are prioritising others above our own health and sanity. We are forced to confront deeply-held beliefs about our place in society and the value we place on being productive, responsible, efficient, reliable.

The truth is, you are no less valuable when you are resting than when you are working. You are no less lovable because you let go of responsibilities and take time out for yourself than if you are working all hours or caring for others. In the wonderful book ‘Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way’, author John C Parkin says:

“In the dance of life, pull down your own oxygen mask first, then take a deep breath and help everyone else. They’ll thank you for it, believe me.”

This approach is vital to understanding burn-out. Often when we’re feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities and commitments, we become terrified of letting other people – our partners, families, employers or colleagues – down. It feels selfish to relinquish these burdens and focus on ourselves. But to do any valuable work, we have to care for ourselves first, to use our ‘oxygen masks’ before helping others. Every person’s way of recalibrating, getting back to where they want to be, will be different. But a very powerful way of monitoring our stress levels and understanding our own experiences of burn-out, is to practice mindfulness.

In Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn describes mindfulness as a “radical act of sanity, of self-compassion, and ultimately, love”. By learning to tune into our bodies and recognise signs of fatigue with greater sensitivity and with an attitude of kindness towards ourselves, we can begin to notice when we are starting to slide down that slope and take action before exhaustion, and therefore apathy, sets in. In ‘Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way’, John C Parkin comments that:

“If you ignore tension in your body, it does what children (and some adults) do when they’re ignored: it starts shouting, screaming and generally misbehaving. This misbehaviour takes the form of aching necks, headaches, backaches, etc. So have a go at listening to your body before it starts to shout for your attention.”

Through regular mindfulness practices, such as the body scan and breathing space meditations, we can learn to recognise the signs in both our bodies and minds as we approach each stage. Being mindful of the sensations in our bodies, the thoughts that keep recurring, the emotions coming up for us, during our daily lives and during mindfulness meditations, can help us to establish a greater understanding of the beliefs driving our behaviours. Often, they make no sense, and come from a place of insecurity. Refer back to the stress curve. Where are you, right now? Where are you heading? What small changes can you make to get back into the ‘optimum stress’ stage? Do you need a break, to experience inactivity, to process all that is going on before re-engaging with your life? When we start to ask these questions of ourselves, we can start to notice the patterns occurring and make the necessary changes, before we’re forced to by breakdown.

My final piece of advice for fellow burn-out sufferers and survivors? To quote Tom Hodgkinson, author of the enlightening tribute to laziness, ‘How To Be Idle’:

“No! Be weak! Give up! You can’t do everything. Lower your standards. Get friends to come and help you.”

You’ll be amazed how liberating it can be.

I’ll be running a ‘Beating Burn-Out with Mindfulness’ workshop in Watford, Herts on Saturday 4th April. To register your interest and reserve a place, please email thehappinesscollective@outlook.com or leave a comment below and I will contact you with the details once they are confirmed.