Laughter Yoga

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posted Oct 31, 2008

Madan laughs out loud

Laughter Yoga practitioners lead a group of about 40 people in an hour of laughing in New York City’s Riverside Park. Dr. Madan Kataria, a Mumbai, India, physician, thinks one of the keys to fighting stress and depression is laughter. So he started the first laughter club in 1995, and has since taken them around the world. Participants start sessions, which normally last 30 minutes, with yoga breathing, then move to fake laughter exercises, accompanied by simple actions, such as acting like a lion. According to Dr. Kataria, the idea is to “fake it, until you make it.” The forced laughter becomes real, and participants come away energized by the experience.

Photo by Randall Rode

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The Steps of Laughter Yoga: Clips from sessions around the world provide a brief intro to the art of Laughter Yoga.



Kevin picks a pillow fight	Joe's 82 and still breaking records	Happiness class at Harvard	Bhutan's king guages bliss	Kurt paddles close to home	Tina quits her day job



Mark keeps the Secular Sabbath	Ceclie savors the slow life	Titus offers a wet-nose touch	Ricard's brain lights up	Madan laughs out loud	A prison meditates

The Happiness-in-Action Heroes are part of Sustainable Happiness, the Winter 2009 issue of YES! Magazine.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. admin. (2008, October 31). Laughter Yoga. Retrieved May 22, 2012, from YES! Magazine Web site: http://cms.yesmagazine.org/issues/sustainable-happiness/laughter-yoga. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License