Laugh your way to happiness : the science of laughter for total well-being

143 Pages·2014·0.7 MB·English

by  Lesley Lyle

Laugh Your Way To
HAPPINESS
Use the Science of Laughter for Total Well-being
Lesley Lyle
DEDICATION
To all members of the New Forest Laughter Club, thank you for sharing the
laughter and the joy. To Dr Kataria and all those who continue to spread the
sound of laughter around the world. And especially for Iain.
Foreword
It has become a rarity today to see someone smile and laugh with gay abandon.
It seems as if people have forgotten how to laugh. In this competitive high-
pressure and high-tension world, laughter is fast disappearing and people are
succumbing to daily stressors that relentlessly rob them of the ability to laugh.
In my quest to find a solution to put the smile back on people’s faces, I
walked different paths before creating Laughter Yoga. Laughter Yoga proved to
be a panacea for all negativity. It is indeed the best prescription for good health
and happiness. A daily dose of laughter is the one solution that has the power to
unwind stress and uplift joy; the power to slow down a racing heart and
strengthen the mind; the power to raise the spirit and fend off pessimism … and
all this in an instant. Sounds crazy, but works like magic! It is, in fact, nature’s
most creative and complete way to keep healthy and safe.
For centuries, laughter was referred to as the best medicine for body and
mind, but never was there a reliable delivery system. Laughter was simply the
end result of entertainment or amusement, but Laughter Yoga has taken laughter
to a new level. It is a complete delivery system, allowing laughter to actually be
prescribed as part of a daily routine in order to realize all of its health benefits. It
enables everyone to laugh, even those who are serious, introverted and
uncomfortable being funny. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined
that laughter could be as simple as that – just laugh, because we can!
The benefits of laughter are numerous in all facets of life – personal,
professional and social. Laughter, backed by countless evidence-based studies, is
being practised not only as a fitness exercise but also as a therapeutic tool to
control chronic diseases such as depression, hypertension, heart disease, cancer,
diabetes, arthritis and migraines.
This wonderful book by Lesley is not just about learning Laughter Yoga: it
will teach you how to bring laughter fully into your life and use it optimally to
enhance your well-being. But remember, the secret is to share your laughter with
everyone around you. If you are happy, but people around you are not happy,
they will not allow you to stay happy. Therefore, it is imperative to bring
happiness to others in order to become happy yourself.
Lesley is doing a great job of sharing her joy and laughter with everyone she
meets. An airline professional, she travels around the world spreading the word
of love and laughter and connecting with other laughter leaders to generate
awareness about the significance and value of laughter in people’s life.
This book will help you understand how unconditional laughter helps you
get in touch with your true self and spiritual nature. The narration of Lesley’s
personal experiences is inspiring and will help you keep your spirits high despite
the challenges of life. This book will teach you to shift your perspective through
laughter so that you can navigate your life in a better way and discover the
benefits of laughter for body, mind and spirit.
I thank Lesley for her inspired contribution to bringing more laughter into
people’s lives.
And remember: keep laughing and smiling – it really can change your life …
ha ha ha!
Dr Madan Kataria
Bangalore, 2013

Lesley Lyle is a certified Laughter Yoga teacher who uses laughter
therapeutically in her work as a coach, facilitator trainer and consultant. She has
a DipHe in Clinical Hypnosis and was trained in Laughter Yoga by its founder,
Dr Kataria. Lesley is also a qualified NLP Practitioner and Stress Management
Trainer. It was Lesley’s insistence on focusing on people’s solutions instead of
their problems that led her to learn about Positive Psychology Training and enrol
on MAPP (Master in Applied Positive Psychology) to become a Positive
Psychologist herself. Lesley now practices hypnotherapy and happiness
consultations in clinics in Harley Street and New Forest.
‘The key to happiness is to start where you are right now, today. From there we
can learn to adopt the habits that make us feel happier and more resilient.
Whether you laugh because you are happy or laugh to become happy really
doesn’t matter, the outcome is still the same.’
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: Discovering the Power of Laughter
Chapter 2: The Science of Laughter
Chapter 3: The Spirit of Laughter
Chapter 4: Laughter at Home
Chapter 5: Rediscovering the Laughter of Children
Chapter 6: Laughter Games and Activities
Chapter 7: The Power of the Smile
Chapter 8: Stress-busting
Chapter 9: How to be Happy
Resources
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I’d like to thank the people who have helped me to find my way to ‘here’ and
provided me with support and encouragement. My family (Iain, Bernard, June,
Tim, Ben, Katy) and the ‘family’ I have come to know at Watkins Publishing (in
particular, Sandra, Francesca, Deborah, Lydia, Vicky and Stephen) and the
people who inspire me through their work of NLP, Stress Management, Clinical
Hypnosis, Laughter Yoga and Positive Psychology.
Introduction
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
Charlie Chaplin
If there is a route to increased health and happiness, then I believe that laughter
is the superhighway!
This has been my experience and one I have shared with countless people
around the world who have also discovered that the power of laughter brings
about positive change. Research has shown that people who frequently laugh and
smile are likely to enjoy a higher income, have better relationships and better
health, live longer and are regarded as more attractive by others. They feel
happy. The aim of this book is to show you how you too can discover the power
of laughter to change your life.
My starting point and inspiration has been the work of Dr Madan Kataria, the
Indian GP who founded Laughter Yoga and invented the concept of ‘laughing
for no reason’. Rather than relying on humour and comedy for laughter, which
we may not encounter every day, Dr Kataria found that laughing as an exercise
is just as effective – and may actually be even more effective than mere humour.
This is because participants are able to engage in extended, hearty laughter that
provides maximum health benefits. The most important element of Laughter
Yoga is that it is based on the scientific fact that the body does not know the
difference between fake and real laughter. As long as you do laughter exercises
with willingness, they will provide the same physiological and psychological
benefits as a real laugh. In practice, as laughter exercises are carried out in a
group where there is lots of eye contact, authentic laughter is almost guaranteed
because laughter is so infectious.
This book is about laughter, not about humour. The distinction between the
two is that humour requires something or somebody to make you laugh, like a
joke, comedy or a funny situation. I do not dismiss the value of therapeutic
humour and there is some wonderful work being done across the world where
humour is used as an intervention to promote health and wellness – for example,
therapeutic clowns working in hospitals and other organizations. However, in
this book I look at what is often called unconditional laughter. It is the sort of
laughter that is always available for you to access as long as you are willing to
allow yourself to ‘laugh for no reason’, whether you are with others or on your
own. Of course, once you get into the habit of laughing for no reason, you may
find that you are more easily amused and your sense of humour develops, but to
begin with, you just need to be willing to ‘fake it till you make it’.
Discovering the benefits of laughter
Laughter is a resource that is available to you in a never-ending supply, but first
you need to access it and allow it to flow so that you can utilize its full potential.
You may have forgotten, but during your early childhood, laughter was your
only means to communicate pleasure, joy and happiness! Now you may have
become one of the majority of adults who are estimated to laugh an average of
15 times a day, unlike children who laugh and giggle between 300–500 times
each day.
When we are happy, we laugh, but did you know that when we laugh, we
become happy? This is the simple principle that lies at the foundation of
Laughter Yoga.
Dr Kataria’s principle of ‘fake it till you make it’ applies not just to Laughter
Yoga but to other mind and body connections as well, as our mind influences
our body and our body influences our mind. You can often tell how someone is
feeling by watching the way they move their body: for example, a happy person
walking down the street is likely to walk energetically, with a spring in their step
and their chin tilted upward. A person who feels depressed may walk slowly,
with shoulders slumped and looking down. We now understand that if we adopt
the posture and behaviour of a happy person, we will start to feel like that
because our brain produces the biochemicals to match the actions of our body.
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy, Associate Professor at Harvard Business
School, has shown that standing in a posture of confidence, even for as little as
two minutes, can increase testosterone and decrease cortisol levels in the brain.
The same is true of a happy posture.
If you have previously tried to improve your health and happiness through
self-help methods, but failed to adopt the suggested health regimes because you
found them too time-consuming or difficult to maintain, you will love the fact
that you can gain so much by simply laughing. This book is for you if you want
to live proactively and enjoy your best life, rather than passively leaving positive
experiences to chance. By simply making some small changes, you will learn
how you can bring more laughter into your life, increase your ‘happiness ratio’
and improve your relationships with family, friends and colleagues.
You may be one of the many people who struggle to deal with stress and
anxieties effectively, and frequently find yourself reacting automatically in ways
that do not help or even make you feel worse. This book will explain how
laughter is one of nature’s ways of helping us cope in difficult times, as well as
allowing us to express joy and happiness when things go well. You will gain the
knowledge and information you need to create a happier and healthier lifestyle
so that you will feel better physically and psychologically, socially and
emotionally. Research shows that when our health and happiness improve, we
also have a positive influence on the happiness and health of those around us.
I will share with you my own personal experience of finding happiness and
health through laughter to provide you with a participant’s perspective of the
laughter experience, although nothing will inform you more than trying it for
yourself, of course!
My story is not a rags-to-riches, tragedy-to-success type of story that some
authors of self-help books like to describe. I have not gone from the depths of
depression to experiencing euphoric, everlasting joy. But the results I have
experienced have been profound in a subtle way, and I have found that each
small change has lasted and become a permanent feature of how I feel. The
compound effect of this has led me to experience the upward spiral of positive
emotion that is described by positive psychologists (I will explain more about
positive psychology later in the book). I have had the pleasure of working with
numerous people who have achieved incredible acts of courage such as climbing
Everest, overcoming addiction or rebuilding their life after a devastating
incident. I respect and admire them very much, but I can only offer a story of
someone who is ordinary and average. Still, I hope that you can relate to my life
experience.
I share some of the knowledge I have gained through my training in
Laughter Yoga, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Clinical Hypnosis,
Stress Management and Positive Psychology, and I include research results that
show how laughter increases our positive emotions and promotes good health.
You will find plenty of tips and techniques, along with practical exercises, so
that you can try out some of these proven strategies for yourself. There are also
links to numerous resources where you can gain further information and support.
I have deliberately excluded a detailed bibliography as I have not written a
reference book as such; however, I have included enough information for you to
be able to find the relevant research. In addition, all the available scientific