Laughter is the Best Medicine and Getting Back to Basics

Hello and welcome to 2015. I am going to get back to basics and share some eliminatory information with you. Laughter is the best medicine. How often have you heard those words? Do you really believe it? There is truth in it and two full pages of images on Google come up for this search title, which seems to prove there is are strong beliefs to that effect.

Would you care to try it now, observing first how you are feeling, then you do a little exercise. Take a deep breath and as you breathe out, focus and laugh with your whole body. Continue this exercise for a couple of minutes or more, taking care to not hyperventilate. Then observe the difference, how different do you feel, whether a little lighter, more energised, joyful? Notice that much of the time we laugh superficially, which is fine but not what we want in order to improve our health through laughing more. And yet if you started with a superficial laugh, the chances are that it became genuine and even with practice, real genuine body shaking laughter. If you need a list of more laughs to do,

Did you know that the body does not know the difference between real laughter and pretend laughter? That is why at the Ferntree Gully Laughter Club and within the laughter yoga movement, we choose a laugh and go for it. New members may find it difficult at first and are more likely to ‘fake it till they make it’, however when we start pretend laughing, it very quickly becomes completely engrossed laughter.

With practice, the laughter improves and we lose all feelings of self-consciousness. Then we are walking the talk, taking the spirit of laughter with us wherever we go. Being contagious, other people benefit and we become one of those lucky ones who find it easy to laugh naturally. Some people I meet say they do not need to come to the laughter club, because they laugh a lot at home already. Then others say they need to laugh more and come and it is a good, healthy habit to get into. It gets better with practice and after laughing, we find that we leave the half hour session feeling uplifted and invigorated.

Dr Madan Kataria and Lynette Mitchell

By coming regularly, which is on the 2^nd, 4^th and 5^th Sunday of the month, you will definitely be using laughter as the best medicine for your health and wellbeing. This of course carries forward into our lives as we take the spirit of laughter with us wherever we go, sometimes calling on it in moments of stress when we need to have a sense of humour.

Did you know that Laughter Clubs have been going for twenty years? They began as the brainwave of Dr Madan Kataria, an Indian physician, who started the first laughter club in a park in Mumbai in 1995 with 5 other people. Initially they told jokes, finding that jokes can help us to laugh but did depend on one’s sense of humour and can be limited due to belief systems. By discovering how to ‘laugh for no reason’ laughter club were internationally born, to the extent that there are over 6,000 clubs worldwide in 60 countries.

Lynette Mitchell is available for holistic counselling and laughter yoga sessions and runs the free community Ferntree Gully Laughter Club, phone her on 0425 799 258.