Trying to get in shape for the summer? Try doing a laughter workout through laughter yoga. Learn some of the basics here.
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RochesterHomepage.net
By Megan Backus
Looking for a new way to get in shape and stay healthy this summer? Laughter may be the best medicine.
“It’s a way to feel joy without having to be happy,” said Dale Heffer, a certified laughter yoga leader at Way to Be Fit in Irondequoit. “It doesn’t have anything to do with humor.”
Laughing. Cracking up. Chuckling. Call it what you want, they’re doing it. And they’re doing it to get in shape. It’s called laughter yoga.
“We start out just going ‘hahahhaha’, and then we just keep laughing more and more and more and more, then maybe somebody cracks up for real, and then it’s just contagious,” Heffer said.
Heffer and Joellen Kuhl have been instructing groups to giggle for the last year. The unique yoga combines stretching and movement with laughter exercises that work the joints, stomach muscles and lungs.
“It’s relaxing,” said Hannah Albertson, who’s been taking laughter yoga for a month. “People who are older don’t move around that much, and it helps you be more flexible.”
“I think it’s nice to have a place where you can basically just be any way you want to be,” said Jonathan Smelts, who has participated for the last year.
Classes are known to get a bit goofy with exercises ranging from talking gibberish, to conducting a laughing choir, to making a pretend milkshake. But it is possible to over-do it.
“If we’re doing something where somebody’s really becoming hysterical and really laughing like crazy then we just have them calm down, and we just keep talking and say take deep breaths,” Heffer said, “so we don’t let it get out of hand.”
There is more to laughter yoga than getting a work-out and letting loose.
“I love it because it’s very free for the mind body and spirit,” Smelts said.
“I never leave in a bad mood either,” Albertson said.
Heffer and her partner in laughing offer classes at Way to Be Fit in Irondequoit every Sunday at 3 o’clock. They would like more people to get a good laugh more often, so they’re hoping to hold classes at Cobbs Hill Park later this summer.
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