Searching for Happy

This week’s experiment has involved laughing yoga. I’m ending it a bit early, as I’m going on a trip tomorrow and I don’t know if I’ll have time to post this tomorrow amongst all of my running around that’s involved with being in airports.

Oddly enough, I love being in new places, I’m just not always a fan of getting there. Lately though, airports have been growing on me.

To see how yesterday went in this experiment, check out Laughing Yoga Day 5.\

Conclusions in my Laughing Yoga Experiment

In the beginning of my laughing yoga experiment, I asked if I could gain the same benefits as my earlier experiments in benefits of yoga and the benefits of laughter.

The answer is a clear “sorta”.

Practicing laughter yoga helped my mood. Laughter does that. Generally it’s harder to be in a bad mood when you’re laughing, and that’s just how our brains our wired as human beings.

As a result of this, I think I slept a bit better, but I experienced nowhere near as much of a noticeable improvement as I did when I was doing my experiment on pure yoga. This might be personal for me though. Laughter yoga is focused on breathing, and it was the stretching in yoga that seemed to help me sleep better.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a shortcut to combining the benefits of my two previous experiments, but it did have merits all on it’s own. I recommend trying it.

As one of the comments this week noted, laughter yoga might have a much greater impact if you do it in a group. Laughter is, after all, contagious, so you might see a more interesting and dramatic result (or at least laugh more).

Have a lovely weekend!

This week I’ve been working on an experiment involving laughing yoga.

So far, I’ve been enjoying myself, as I find any time you make the time to laugh, life is going to feel a bit better.

To see how the experiment has been going so far, check out yesterday in my laughing yoga experiment.

Laughing Yoga Day 4

Here’s the video I practiced with today:

It seems incredibly simple compared to some of the videos I’ve worked with in the past few days, but it highlights an important fact – laughter that starts as fake can become real.

This is something we forget sometimes. We get in darker moods, where laughter seems harder to find. However, if we fake a laugh as a start, that might be what “primes the pump” for some genuine, soul-clearing laughter.

Just some idle thoughts for a quiet Thursday evening. Have a lovely evening everyone!

Firstly, if you’re just starting out check out yesterday in my experiment with laughing yoga. It will explain a bit more about where I’m coming from for this experiment.

It’s funny, I just realized today how incredible a world we live in is, where I can just assume that I’ll find anything I need on the internet if I search for it. I don’t claim that the training videos I find are the greatest available in the whole world, but I do think that they can give me a general idea of what laughing yoga is and whether or not it benefits me.

I realize that I forgot to post it, so here’s the video I practiced with yesterday. It’s a bit silly, but it does a good job of showing you breathing techniques and is pleasantly silly while still effective in teaching you laughing yoga. The only fault I found in it was that it was a bit too long. My jaw was tired from laughing by the end of it.

But, back to the present.

Laughing Yoga Day 2

Today, I did a bit of research and found a shorter video to work with:

I found myself feeling happier and more energized after each of my laughter yoga sessions so far, so we’ll see what the longer-term impacts are!