Laughter Yoga Can Give You A Joyful High!

Laughter teacher Sarah Tolmie who has been teaching Laughter Yoga for almost three years says Laughter Yoga is not only good for the soul, but great for the body. It relieves stress, eases pain, boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, relaxes the muscles and releases "happy" hormones. Just half an hour of laughter therapy is better than an hour at the gym, she adds.

Laughter Yoga is basically a non-humor based form of laughing, she said. Your brain, just as with thoughts, doesn't register what's real or not real when you're going through the motions so you fake it till you make it. Once you start to fake laughter, your natural laughter set point kicks in and you start laughing naturally. It's the absurdity of it because it's pretty weird and funny. When you laugh you're really connecting to who you are. It's totally unfiltered access to a primal emotion. Anger and fear are primal emotions but so is joy. When we're not feeling it we're really not accessing a part of us. It's the part of us that stimulates our creativity and healing.

She even reckons it's even better than the pub. "If you feel cranky or have had a bad week it's your responsibility to shift that so I will use my Laughter Yoga to put me in a better place," she says. Instead of Friday night drinking where you avoid/suppress and over express in your emotional world, just go and do a half an hour laughter session and see how great you would feel.