Laughter Yoga - ONLINE

Laughter Yoga? 

We hear you ask. Laughter Yoga is a series of exercises involving breathing, laughter and other emotion expression sounds to promote relaxation and wellness. It enables people to laugh, even if they don’t feel like it. It’s an aerobic exercise program that results in happiness. If you’ve ever enjoyed charades or theatre sports, you’ll probably enjoy laughter yoga.

The big ask of laughter yoga is that you be willing to play and be silly, to let your inner child out to have some fun. When we laugh, we are in the now, which helps to still the mind and momentarily forget any worries. Through laughter, we can learn that sometimes our problems are only as big as we make them.

Like any physical activity, we start the session with a warm-up, gradually building up to more invigorating exercises before winding down and finishing with a laughter meditation, then silent meditation. It may be modified for the online sessions.

Laughter Yoga relies on the exercises to create laughter. It is a Body to Mind exercise. There are no jokes or storytelling. It is an invitation to laugh with each other in a free and easy manner - non-judgmentally.

Laughter Yoga requires no special clothes or footwear. It can be done standing up or seated, if you are less mobile. Some have even used it for pain management.

Due to the meditation at the end, you may like to have a yoga mat, towel or pillow to lie on. Or you can sit in a comfortable chair.

Our Laughter Yoga facilitator is Lisa Wood. Lisa ran a laughter club at Eastwood Street Community Centre for a couple of years before COVID and, utilising her Kinesiology knowledge, has developed exercises to include a range of different sounds to explore and release the emotions we collect and store in our body with the aim of creating a sense of contentment and balance.