Interview: Laughter Yoga

Laughter and happiness usually go hand in hand, but what about laughter and yoga? Dr. Mandan Kataria started laughter yoga in India in March 1995. He discovered a number of health benefits from something so natural to humans—laughter!

“Are we laughing because we are happy or are we happy because we are laughing?” wonders Tod Whitehurst, the local laughing yoga teacher at the Blue Ridge School of Massage and Yoga.

Whitehurst, a quirky and rather goofy man, teaches laughter yoga twice a month and says it has dramatically transformed his life. The classes are small, welcoming and leave you feeling happy and relaxed for the entire week. Laughter yoga involves stimulated and simulated laughter through various ‘laughing exercises’. These child-like ‘exercises’ truly help heal the mind, body, and spirit. In an interview, he reveals some of the hidden truths behind laughter.

Q. What is laughter yoga?

Whitehurst: Laughter yoga combines unconditional laughter with yogic breathing, pranayama. Laughing for no reason is scientifically proven to have the same biological effects as real laughter—the body cannot tell the difference between fake laughter and real laughter. The same physiological and psychological benefits are ensured.

Q. It is generally believed that in the absence of humor, laughter is not possible. How does laughter yoga overcome this obstacle?

Whitehurst: Since the body cannot tell the difference between real laughter and fake laughter, no humor is necessary and we receive the same benefits regardless. Even if the laughter is fake, you can ‘fake it ‘till you make it’, and the laughter eventually becomes real. When we laugh, we are releasing a build up of energy within the body called ‘spanda’ in Sanskrit. This energy drives our creative personal expression, our intuition, and our desire to live according to the body’s innermost urges. Releasing this energy has amazing benefits for the body and mind.

Q. How did you get into laughter yoga?

Whitehurst: I went up to Yogaville and was doing a workshop—they do meditation three times a day and they had as one of the forms of meditation laughter yoga. I was just curious because, laughter, meditation, you don’t think the two go hand in hand. So, I went off to see what it was all about. At the time I was suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder and when we went through the very first my post-traumatic stress just evaporated…From the very first moment…[pauses] I laughed, I cried, and I haven’t stopped laughing since.

Q. Is that when you decided to become a laughing yoga teacher?

Whitehurst: Yea, and so the guy said at the end of that session, that in two weeks they were going to have a laughing yoga training weekend… I needed to do this for myself…

Q. What was involved in the Training process?

Whitehurst: The training was over the course of three days, broken up with yoga twice a day and meditation twice a day so the actual number of hours was about 25 hours…We talked about the health benefits, the history of it, how to stimulate laughter or simulate laughter. What the neat thing he said was how you can have something come out of nothing…I don’t know if I’ve ever completely gotten this but there is nothing, and then all of a sudden there is something that comes out of it. So if you think about it, at the end of the exhale, there is a quiet and then you can just [starts laughing] and the next thing you know, there’s a laugh!

Q. How has laughter yoga transformed your life?

Whitehurst: Oh! Well, laughter yoga can also be used as anger management. I was suffering from, among other things, unfocused anger. And you cannot be angry when you’re laughing. You can be crazy, but you cannot be angry. So it releases anger, it reduced anxiety. And I’ll tell you the neat thing, for me I’ll tell you my lung capacity has increased. Somebody in my class, I saw her a year later, she said after she started doing laughter yoga, she’s asthmatic, right, she stopped using her inhaler. She hasn’t used her inhaler in over a year.

Q. Why is that?

Whitehurst: As you breathe out more, when you do a forceful exhale, like kapalabhati, [yogic breathing exercise] that is laughing! So the deeper you exhale, the more you automatically inhale because you create a vacuum in your lungs. The more that goes out that more that comes in. So breathing this way is an excellent way to treat lung disorders such as asthma.

Q. What is the most challenging part about laughter yoga?

Whitehurst: [pauses] The most challenging part is, for me, not to get hung up on somebody who is not laughing. Every now and then, someone will come in and it just does not resonate with them. Sometimes I’m called in and people say ‘lets do this for a business meeting’, so people have to be in this meeting but they don’t really want to do it. So while I’m doing this, somebody might not be laughing. That can be a big challenge for me at first. But I realized, that the sound of laughter, also lowers blood pressure and reduces stress. So even if they’re not laughing, they hear us laughing, and it’s making them better

Q. Why do you think that is?

Whitehurst: They’re possibly associating it with something positive, but the positive energy from the laughter is being sent out to them, whether they are laughing or not. The studies show that when they just play [the sound of] laughter with people and then give them stress tests, and it is almost always a lower level of cortisol [stress hormone] after hearing the laughter.

Q. Do you find a difference among the type of students who come in?

Whitehurst: No, I can’t really see a difference. There isn’t much of a difference between new or old student. Nor do I see a difference in ages. We do often see more women than men. Tonight’s class was different, but women in general care more about their health, it’s just a natural trend…so we tend to see more women show up to classes.

Q. Anything else?

Whitehurst: Do we laugh because we are happy or are we happy because we laugh? Whatever happens to the mind happens to the body as well. And whatever happens to the body happens to the mind as well. So for me, that is the most profound thing because if we sit here and laugh, without meaning anything from it, we’re happy!