Today World Lunar Day 2012 is Laughter Yoga without a doctor

Laughter strengthens the health and the immune system

05/07/2012

Today is the World Lunchtime! Have you already laughed? Laughter is healthy and raises the mood. There are around 150 laughing clubs in Germany. The members of the Yoga Laughter Clubs regularly meet to laugh together in an organized way. Because regular laughter is not only fun, but also demonstrably reduces the risk of illness.

The level of laughter is not particularly humorous. For outsiders, the sight of the laugh hour may even seem a bit strange. The participants of the Frankfurt Lachclubs „Happiness is now“ chuckle, pluster or laugh loudly. A joke or a humorous story, however, is not the trigger for the loud laughter. „Simulate until it works“, is the motto of yoga teacher Laurenz Menzinger.

After working to the laugh club
In real life Menziger is a personnel consultant. Once a week after work, he conducts the Yoga Laughter Lesson in a small shop in Frankfurt. A good year ago, Menziner successfully achieved the title „Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher“ receive. He learned the method of an Indian doctor in a Swiss training center. The content of the seminars was the teaching of breathing techniques, stretching and laughing exercises. Special exercises are, for example, the "laugh shower" or the "sorry-sorry-I-laugh". Body and mind are animated by the laughter. „If you really laugh, you forget the daily worries.“ In addition, Laughter Yoga is a workout to strengthen the heart.

Laughter promotes good health
„Hearty laughter promotes good health“, Not just the laugh clubs. For example, researchers from the University of Oxford have found in a study that laughter contributes significantly to the reduction of pain. According to this, laughter clearly raises the threshold for physical pain and anyone who laughs actively can not only prevent pain, but also alleviate it. Another study indicated that laughter helps with appetite.

Laughter strengthens the heart and activates the immune system
Doctors also confirm the positive features of laughter. „Laughter activates the whole cardiovascular system“, reports the neurologist Prof. dr. Jürg Kesselring from the Valens Hospital, Switzerland. „Improving blood flow improves breathing, which makes it easier to laugh“, so the statement of the expert. According to Prof. Dr. med. Jürg Kesselring can also strengthen the body's own immune system. If you laugh heartily and really laugh, activate more T-cells than usual. „And that strengthens the immune system“, so kettle ring. However, the neurologist doubts whether laughter can actually cure disease. The therapeutic benefit of laughter should therefore not be overestimated. But also Kesselring stressed: „Laughter can certainly promote self-healing processes in the body.“

Laughter is infected
In the Peiner and Frankfurter Lachclubs such assessments are rather secondary. On today's World Luge Day, the members want to encourage walkers and passers-by in central places to laugh. Many react with „Shaking his head and incomprehension "says Menzinger, because not everyone can get up „"But the laughter community is getting bigger and bigger." Thousands of laugh clubs around the world testify that many people just enjoy laughing, the laughter yoga instructor emphasized, and members of other laugh clubs today want flyers to the World Day and you draw attention to their own offer, while all fellow human beings are invited to laugh, according to the motto: „Laughter is on, even those who actually have reservations“.

The cultural scientist and laughter researcher Prof. Rainer Stollmann from the University of Bremen does not think much of community-organized laughter. Previously there was the so-called primal scream treatment, then the community cuddling „And now there are just Laughter Yoga clubs“, stressed the laughter researcher. But the moment, „Stollmann continues, "I do not care about the participants of the Laughter Yoga courses, they are looking forward to the shared laugh lessons and are from convinced of the positive health effect. (sb)

Read about:
Laughter helps against pain
Laughter helps against appetite

Picture: Rolf van Melis