Health and fitness experts are increasingly adopting a holistic approach to good health. With different forms of workout and lifestyle changes, there is one more thing that is gaining a lot of importance in the health and fitness community i.e Laughter.
On May 1, World Laughter Day is celebrated across the world to imbibe the spirit of happiness and positivity among people in this fast-paced world. Laughter can contribute a lot towards ensuring a balanced state of mind. It can benefit an individual physically, mentally and socially.
Benefits of Laughter
Laughing out loud every day can help you boost your immunity, lower stress, reduce pain, relax your muscles and work towards preventing heart diseases. It also strengthens you mentally by bringing in happiness to your life, easing out anxiety, worries and builds up your mental resilience. Besides, it also strengthens your social relationships and promotes bonding with people around you.
Let’s analyse various ways in which laughter can benefit us:
Stimulates organs: Your daily dose of laughter can contribute towards increasing your heart rate and oxygen levels that will help in improving blood circulation, thereby, prevents cardiovascular diseases. Medical experts recommend laughter therapy as it helps in inhaling fresh oxygen, stimulates muscles, heart and lungs and increases the release of endorphins. Laughter reduces blood pressure and prevents cardiac arrests.
Reduces Stress Hormones: Laughter does work on our hormones affecting our overall wellbeing. It helps in reducing stress hormones, namely, epinephrine, cortisol and growth hormones. Meanwhile, it also increases anti-body producing calls in the body and enhances the effectiveness of T-cells.
Burns calories: Laughing can help you get in shape, as well. One can lose about 40 calories by laughing 10 to 15 minutes a day. It can also help you tone your abs and diaphragm. While laughing, our stomach muscles expand and contract in a similar way when we do some abdominal workout.
Enhances mood: Laughter therapy is recommended to reduce stress, anxiety and depression, thereby, improving self-esteem and alleviating negative emotions.
Fights pain: Laughter can eliminate pain by releasing endorphins in the body that eases muscular tension.
Cure for dementia and trauma: Laughter therapy has been used as a medication to treat dementia and has also been helping people to deal with trauma.
Improves professional performance: Laughter therapy like Hasya Yoga engages our mind and regulates emotions. It also aims at making the whole body work out. People in senior level management who need to have a clear and focussed mind to lead a team better often find Hasya Yoga beneficial.
Improves soft skills: Laughter therapies and Hasya yoga can ease your mind and help you build good social skills like building rapport with people, managing conflicts among group members. These essential soft skills will help you work as an effective team player.
Fosters creativity and innovation: If your mind is stress free, anxiety free, then you can think out of the box and can get more innovative at work. Your daily dose of laugh can direct your mind towards a positive direction.
Growing importance of Laughter
According to a report, it has been observed that people tend to laugh less as they get older. While children laugh about 300 times a day, adults manage to laugh around 18 times a day.
Medical practitioners have realised that laughter is the best medicine to help patients deal with any medical conditions and it also helps them recover soon. Laughter therapies, Hasya Yoga and other therapies aimed to release stress has been gaining a lot of importance over the years. The number of laughter clubs, wellness communities and laughter related workshops have only grown in the recent years. Laughter therapy sessions can make you healthier and happier. What starts as a forced laughter becomes a real one after few minutes and spreads positivity among the participants of the laughter session.
References:
https://jordandistrict.org/2022/09/dont-forget-to-laugh-from-our-health-wellness-team/
https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/laughter-yoga-laughter-therapy-benefits
