Laughter is the best medicine, a cliché to be sure, but a new study has shown that laughter yoga, a blend of playful laughter exercises coupled with gentle breathing and stretching, can significantly lower systolic and diastolic blood-pressure levels, as well as bring about significant reductions in the stress hormone cortisol. Laughter yoga is apparently a concept in which anyone can be taught to laugh for no reason at all, according to the lead investigator and founder of the Laughter Yoga school, Dr Madan Kataria.
You apparently do not even need to be happy to learn how to laugh - participants learn to laugh in a group in which laughter is used as a form of bodily exercise. This laughter, explained Kataria, when combined with yoga breathing to bring more oxygen to the body and brain, results in significant biological and physiological changes, such as the reductions in blood-pressure and stress levels.
The investigators studied 200 male and female individuals within the information-technology industry in India, a group that is particularly stressed due to the demands of their job, said Kataria. These individuals participated in a typical laughter yoga session, which lasts about 20 to 30 minutes. Subjects simulate laughter for 45 seconds to one minute, beyond the typical burst of laughter, which is followed by deep breathing and gentle stretching. This process is repeated for the duration of the session.
The 200 subjects completed seven sessions of laughter yoga over a three-week period. At the end of the "treatment," subjects who laughed reduced their systolic blood pressure more than 6 mm Hg, a significant change from baseline and also significant when compared with a nonlaughing control group. Diastolic blood pressure was also significantly reduced. Cortisol levels, a hormone released during periods of stress, were reduced in the laughter group, and perceived stress levels, as measured by standardised questionnaires, were improved.
