An Indian Doctor named Madan Kataria was doing research for an article called “laugh medicine” which describes the health benefits of laughing. So excited about his research he went one night to sleep thinking about his own life style and he was thinking, I myself don’t laugh enough … I don’t have a sense of humor, how can I get these benefits myslef?! …he wake up in the middle of the night with an idea or a solution to his case: “Why don’t I start a laugh club?”
He started this club with 5 people in a Mumbai park in 1995, where the club members gather at a certain time of day standing in the fresh air laughing their hearts out, hopping on one leg, making funny faces, doing all sorts of silly moves that a 3 year old kid would do!! No jokes were told, not even a silly comment just laughs and more laughs. The only thing that makes one laugh is the scene of this group laughing and acting this way. He later on developed a techniques based on Yoga and this laugh therapy which he later called “Laughter Yoga“. The idea became sucessful, it spread out to more than 5000 laughter clubs in 50 countries around the world, and there are now certifications that allows you to be a Laughter Yoga teacher.
This technique is backed up by clinical research, laughter was found to have the following health benefits to the body: decreasing of stress hormoens, improving immune system, boosting endorphines. A year long study on a group of heart attak sufferers where the same medications were subscribed to all of them but half of them were asked to watch a comdey show for 30 minutes a day. The greoup that had laugh therapy had to take less medications, and only 8% of them had a second heart attack compared to 42% of the other group!
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