This week to attain, maintain or regain your sense of wellbeing...
...practice laughter yoga every day. Laughter yoga is the practice of deliberate, voluntary laughter. The idea is that forced laughter soon turns into real laughter and has the same benefits for body, mind and mood that spontaneous laughter does. Laughing on purpose can help us learn how to create laughter from the inside and how to use laughter to shift our moods, rather than waiting for our moods to shift before we can laugh. It's also another way to shift our breathing and create a state of relaxation without being focused on our breath. Laughter yoga is usually practiced in groups. We get the most benefit if we can laugh vigorously for 20-30 minutes, according to Laughter Yoga Aotearoa New Zealand. Natural laughter usually comes in bursts and this why practicing in groups can help. But there's no reason why we can't also practice laughter yoga alone, using a few simple exercises to get us started.
This week, schedule time to practice laughing for no reason, without needing something ‘out there’ or external to yourself to make you laugh. It might help to start with just a few minutes and build up to 10, then 20. If you live with other people, you might also need to give them a heads up to expect to hear some loud laughter coming from your room for a while - they might even want to join you. Laughter yoga is something that can wake your body up, so don't schedule your practice time right before bed, unless you find that it tends to make you feel relaxed and tired afterwards. It will probably feel strange to do this at first, but that's okay. This week, give yourself permission to be silly for a brief time each day.That's a good practice in itself.
To practice laughter yoga, try these simple exercises that involve forced, extending laughing.
1. Take a Laughter Drink
Standing up straight, feet hip-width apart, raise one hand in front of you as if I are holding an imaginary (and bottomless) cup full of laughter. Take a deep breath into the bottom of your belly, then 'pour' the laughter into your mouth for the entire out-breath. As you tip the 'cup' into your mouth and breath out, force yourself to laugh out loud as you 'pour' more of the laughter out of the cup. Repeat this for ten breaths in and ten breaths out, trying to pour more and more laughter out of the cup each time.You can imagine the cup is full of different kinds of laughter - the light, giggling laughter is floating on the top, the deepest belly laughter is sitting on bottom. When you tip the cup to your mouth, start with light tee-hees and move through the whole range of laughs until you get to the loudest, deepest ha-ha-has. With each breath or 'cup', try to laugh for a little bit longer.
2. Laughter Balloons
Standing with your back straight and your feet hip-width apart, place both palms flat on your belly and imagine you are holding a giant, empty balloon against your stomach. This time, on the first out-breath your laughter will fill the balloon, until your arms are stretched out in a circle in front of you. Then, take a deep breath in and slowly release the laughter out of the balloon on your next out-breath, laughing out loud until the balloon is emptied and your palms are once again flat on your belly. Repeat this two-step process five to ten times, aiming to laugh for longer each time.
3. Laughter Hand-Ball
Standing with your back straight and your feet hip-width apart, facing a wall, pretend you have a laughter ball in your hands. Take a deep breath in and on the out-breath, 'throw' the ball at the wall with a burst of laughter, and 'catch' the ball when it bounces back with another burst of laughter. The louder your laugh, the faster the ball will travel. Experiment with a different kind of laughter each time.
4. Laughter Body Fill
Standing with your back straight and your feet firmly grounded on the floor, this time, your laughter will fill your body. Imagine each in-breath fills a different part of your body with the energy to laugh. On each out-breath, laugh out loud from that part of your body, starting with your toes, legs, stomach, chest, shoulders, nose and the top of your head.
If you work up to spending five minutes on each exercise, you'll eventually be doing 20 minutes of yoga laughter a day. As you move through the week, observe how this affects your body and moods.
Once you are comfortable using yoga laughter at an everyday kind of time, add it to your Personal Coping Kete as a way of coping during times of stress and distress. Doing some laughter yoga could allow you to take a break from distressing thoughts, shift your body's physical stress responses and release some of your brain's happy chemicals.
