Here’s a great news article talking about how laughter yoga helped one brain cancer patient deal with her illness. It’s a great example of how the healing power of humor is being used around the world to increase the quality of life. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it certainly helps. Continue to read a copy of the article.
Laughter is the best medicine
By Gail Kimberling Of the News-Times
Sal Strom’s life was turned upside down by a life-threatening medical diagnosis in January of this year.
It’s been a long six months for the artist, wife, mother and long-time Lincoln County resident since the words “brain tumor” entered her vocabulary, but Strom has been determined to beat the odds from the get-go.
And now she’s doing it with laughter.
“I believe in it 100 percent,” said Strom of “laughter yoga,” the latest health movement to sweep the world.
Faced with the prospect of a never-ending and expensive regime of prescription drug therapy following surgery to remove the tumor, Strom sought alternatives and came across a reference to laughter yoga in a book called “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel H. Pink. Further research led Strom to the work of Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician from India and pioneer of the Laughter Clubs Movement sweeping the world.
And the next thing she knew, Strom was a student at the Dr. Kataria School of Laughter Yoga held May 1-6 in Southern California.
“He was the most amazing man,” Strom said of Dr. Kataria, as she related his upbringing in a family of 14 children, his subsequent education, and his loss of joy as a workaholic physician. In the mid 1990s Dr. Kataria sought to regain that joy by developing a new technique of laughter based on yoga. He found anyone could participate in group laughter for 15-20 minutes, without restoring to jokes, with positive emotional and physical benefits.
“It’s laughing for no reason – and it’s yoga, because it’s breathing,” Strom explains. She adds she has “noticed a huge difference psychologically,” and after many months of struggling to not feel sorry for herself, “I’m happy about life.”
Since starting with five people in 1995, there are now more than 55 “Laughter Clubs” in 55 countries. The movement is not religious, or affiliated with any other organizations. Dubbed the “Guru of Giggling” by the London Times, Dr. Kataria has written a book, “Laugh For No Reason,” makes frequent appearances on television and radio, and travels the world instructing others to become Certified Laughter Yoga Teachers.
Strom’s seminar included about 40 participants from all over North America: a dentist from Mexico; businessmen and women; computer technicians; nurses; yoga teachers; and a group of “Laughing Lutherans” from Canada. The week concluded with a parade on Sunday, May 6 – World Laughter Day.
Recent research, Strom says, supports the many benefits of laughter – from helping coughs and colds to helping people be more accepting of others. “Through laughing you make contact with others, you learn to be playful, to express yourself,” Strom says.
And Dr. Kataria’s “group laughter” has applications everywhere – from conventions to the workplace to impromptu sessions on a sidewalk.
The ultimate goal, Strom adds, is world peace. “It helps you look at sadness in life as positively as you can. Bad things happen to everybody; everyone suffers. But when we laugh, we’re connected with each other and we can look on the bright side,” Strom says. “It’s not a therapy session, but it is therapeutic.”
Growing up in a bar with an infamous mom (Gracie Strom), “laughing was never hard for me,” Strom says, “but the health benefits were new.”
Strom is also finding a correlation to her art. “I was planning a series on the ‘cybercentral journey of the body’, now I want to add laughter,” she says. “It’s the whole mind-body connection.”
Adding laughter to your everyday life is “like filling up the toolbox, being prepared for when catastrophe hits,” Strom says.
It’s also about getting over fear – whether that fear involves humiliation, or failure, or your own mortality.
“We Americans have way too much anxiety and stress in our lives. You can ease that by laughing for no reason; your body doesn’t know the difference but it will feel the benefits.”
For more information about Laughter Yoga, see laughteryoga.org.
Dr. Madan Kataria’s mission: World peace through laughter
“Laughter has no language, knows now boundaries, does not discriminate between caste, creed and color. Laughter is a powerful emotion and has all the ingredients for uniting the entire world. We are building a worldwide community of people who believe in love, laughter, compassion, appreciation and forgiveness.”
Laughter Yoga
€ Is a unique idea which is sweeping the world.
€ Developed by a medical doctor from India in 1995.
€ Anyone can laugh for no reason at all; we don’t need jokes, humor or comedies to laugh.
€ We initiate laughter as an exercise in a group and it becomes a real contagious laughter by eye contact with others and b cultivating child-like playfulness.
€ Laughter yoga is a combination of breathing exercises from yoga (pranayama) and laughter exercises to increase the net supply of oxygen to the body and brain.
€ The concept of laughter yoga is based on the scientific fact that even if you laugh for the sake of laughing your body can’t tell the difference between real and fake laughter and you will get the same physiological and biochemical changes and same health benefits.
€ Started with just five people in 1995, it has grown to a worldwide movement of more than 5,000 laughter clubs in 55 countries. New to the U.S. in 2004.
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Here’s the link to the original article: http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2007/05/31/community/community07.txt
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