by Joy Cressler

Created on: August 04, 2008

It's long been said that laughter is the best medicine.
Now classes are starting up all over the country that bring that adage into a new dimension of reality as it offers participants an opportunity to laugh their way to better health.
For example, Kira McCullough of Fort Worth started teaching a free 45-minute class called "Laughter Yoga" earlier this summer. She chose to offer it on Sundays because it was the only time the Yoga studio that agreed to host McCullough's class had an opening.

McCullough, 39, a single home health nurse, said she first heard of Laughter Yoga last year on Oprah, but it wasn't until this year that she became educated enough about the precepts of the program to introduce it to the Metroplex.
To do that, she attended week-long Laughter Yoga convention in California, joined by a variety of mainstream professionals from all over the country, including psychological therapists, doctors, lawyers, nurses and police offers.
She learned that Laughter Yoga started when Dr. Madan Kataria, an Indian doctor and student of Yoga, endeavored to write a paper, "Laughter is the Best Medicine," for a medical journal.
Once convinced of the medical benefits of laughter and Yoga breathing exercises, Kataria realized that physicians couldn't prescribe 20 minutes of laughter each day to improve their patients health, so the idea of Laughter Yoga was born.
"Thanks to Dr. Kataria, countless people all over the world today enjoy the benefits of a daily dose of laughter practicing Laughter Yoga," McCullough said. "It's about lifting up the layers and getting back to our child-like playfulness."
She said Western science is just starting to discover the great effects of laughter.
"When we laugh our bodies release a cocktail of hormones and chemicals that have startling positive effects on our system," McCullough said. "Stress is reduced, blood pressure drops, depression is lifted and our immune systems are boosted."
McCullough said the four main steps of Laughter Yoga include clapping, deep breathing, child-like playfulness and the actual Laughter Yoga exercise, which isn't strenuous.
She said there are many examples of the way the exercises are conducted, including pushing a pretend broom to sweep the floor, or while emulating the act of washing windows or even putting on lotion. McCullough said by doing those activities, it's believed that the next time a person does those tasks, their approach will be lighter.
"Things grow more serious as you grow older," she said. "As adults, we have a lot of responsibility, coupled with the fact that there's a lot going on in our society. We don't laugh as easily as when we were children."
McCullough said she was already enrolled in yoga classes at Soul Fitness in Fort Worth, so it seemed natural to approach the owner about offering the class there - after McCullough became properly trained, of course.
Soul Fitness owner Shelly Smyth-Schuster said she agreed for McCullough to offer the Laughter Yoga class free at her studio because she also agrees that laughter may indeed be the best kind of therapy.
"What I believe I do at Soul Fitness is a sort of therapy," Smyth-Schuster said. "It's physical exercise, sure, but more so, it's an emotional release. Americans don't laugh enough. We need to smile and laugh more."
More about Laughter Yoga is available online at www.laughteryogafortworth.com.

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