| History of Laughter Yoga |
 |
 |
 |
|
In March 1995, DR. MADAN KATARIA, a medical doctor in Mumbai, India, decided to write an article called ‘Laughter - The Best Medicine’ for a medical journal. Through his research he discovered a large number of modern scientific studies that described in great length the many proven benefits of laughter on the human mind and body. In particular, Dr. Kataria was impressed by Norman Cousins' book ‘Anatomy of an Illness’ and the research work by Dr. Berk. Profoundly inspired and being a man of action rather than a academic, Dr. Kataria immediately decided to field-test the impact of laughter on himself and others. At 7 am on 13th March 1995 he went to his local public park and managed to persuade four people to join him in starting a ‘laughter club’. They laughed together in the park that day to the amusement of bystanders, but the small group quickly grew to more than 50 participants within a few days. In the initial meetings they stood in a circle while one person would step to the centre to tell a joke or a funny story. Everybody enjoyed and felt good for the rest of the day. After two weeks they hit a snag as the stock of good jokes and stories ran out, and negative, hurtful and naughty jokes started to emerge. Two participants were offended and complained that it would be better to close the club than to continue with such jokes. Dr. Kataria asked the club members to give him just one day in which he would give them a breakthrough’ that would resolve the crisis. That night he reviewed his research and finally found the answer he was looking for: our body can not differentiate between acted and genuine laughter. Both produced the same ‘happy chemistry’. The next morning he explained this to the group and asked them to try something new: they would laugh without jokes. He asked everyone to laugh with him for one minute. Amid skepticism they agreed to try…. The results were amazing. The group acted out laughter, but after a moment a few people burst into real laughter at their group ‘silliness’ --- this was contagious and very soon others followed. Soon the group was laughing like never before. The hearty laughter that followed persisted for almost ten minutes. This was the breakthrough and the birth of LAUGHTER YOGA. Realizing that there were ways other than humor to stimulate laughter, Dr. Kataria developed a range of laughter exercises including elements of role-play and other techniques from his amateur dramatics career as an actor. He realized the importance of childlike playfulness and thus developed techniques to stimulate this in the group. As yoga practitioners Dr. Kataria and his wife MADHURI KATARIA (co-founder of laughter yoga) saw the similarities between laughter and pranayama exercise and incorporated elements from this ancient form of yoga into laughter yoga, including deep breathing techniques used between laughter exercises to deepen the impact. The resulting laughter yoga technique is a blend of yogic deep breathing, stretching, laughter exercises and cultivated child-like playfulness.
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.26
3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."
|