laugh!

Last month I read an article about laughter yoga in The New Yorker, and it made a whole lot of sense. Laughing is good for us! We know this instinctively. When we are with our favorite people, we tend to laugh, and at the end of our time together, we just feel better than we did before. Several of my blog friends are posting this John Cleese video (below) on the subject of laughter yoga. Check it out. Even fake laughing has positive chemical effects on our bodies.

This summer, I took a yoga class in which the instructor kept reminding us to smile. At the beginning of the yoga class, I didn't really feel like smiling at all and I kind of groaned inside. But forcing myself to smile made me feel lighter within minutes. At the end of the class the smile was naturally emanating and it made me feel good.

There are trying times in life. Keeping laughter yoga and even just the practice of smiling as resources will certainly help pull us through. Try it! It really works. I wish I had thought to do this more during a period in my life I now call "the infertility chapter." I went through episodic depression, and I wonder if practicing laughter more often would have helped me get through it faster. (Thankfully, access to therapeutic massage once a week - and having some good friends who did make me laugh when I would let them - definitely got me through that time.) Be happy.

(Thanks to Nan, Steve, and others who posted this. Your posts reminded me to share this info here as well!)