It’s a grim old world we adults live in. The evidence of our malaise reads like one of those good news/bad news jokes. Good news: children laugh up to 400 times a day. Bad news: over the same period, strung-out and stressed grown-ups raise a chuckle just 14 times. It’s proof that as we get older, we become more serious and careworn.
Thankfully, there is a group of people dedicated to putting a smile back on our faces. No, not comedians. Welcome to the world of the laughter therapist.
Titter ye not. It might sound like a joke, but consider the evidence.
There is a growing body of research that shows laughter helps protect the heart and reduces blood pressure. A throaty chuckle or two increases tolerance to pain, reduces allergic reaction and bolsters the immune system.
The key is endorphins, those natural opiates within the body that are spontaneously released whenever we find ourselves succumbing to a gut-busting belly laugh. You might experience the same kind of endorphin rush from brisk exercise, but for some people that’s not an option.
Last year, when Kylie Minogue was recovering from breast cancer, she took to watching episodes of Little Britain. The “laughter therapy” worked wonders, according to her sister Dannii.
So when the therapist Jeya Jeyaratnam begins to explain the science behind her laughter classes, you understand how seriously its proponents approach this bold new world of the giggles.
“The body doesn’t know whether you’re genuinely finding something funny or not,” says Jeyaratnam. “The important thing is that you are working your muscles, taking in more oxygen and creating a feelgood high. Even if you have to force it, the motto here is ‘Fake it until you make it’.”
Still, when I turn up for one of Jeyaratnam’s “laughter parties” at a gym in Edinburgh, my inner cynic is stifling a smirk. I’m a bit worried it might be too happy-clappy for me.
Surveying the room full of 20 strangers, I’m not sure how well I’ll cope doing the funky chicken and laughing hysterically into an imaginary mobile phone.
But Jeyaratnam has warned me the only way to reap the benefits of a class like this is to leave your inhibitions at the door.
“You must be prepared to look a little bit silly, that’s the point. It is about participating and letting go of the tensions and boundaries that leave us feeling stressed.”
And so it is that within a few minutes I find myself walking around the room clapping my hands with my fellow participants and chanting “ho ho ho” and “hee hee hee” in various levels of fake euphoria.
Apparently, this exercise is designed to stimulate the same facial and abdominal muscles as a gentle yoga session would.
Jeyaratnam then tells us to walk around the room nodding at strangers. Under no circumstances should we smile — let alone laugh. Her intention, though, is precisely the opposite, and before long our po-faced expressions are cracking into sniggers and nervous giggles.
The ice is well and truly broken. For the next hour, she has us blethering gibberish, dancing the twist and mowing an imaginary lawn, all in an effort to tickle our funny bones.
Like fellow newcomer Stuart Ullathorne, I found all this awkward at first, but the more I relaxed, the better I felt.
“I definitely felt like I’d stepped out of my comfort zone initially,” says Ullathorne, 34, who recently moved back to Edinburgh after leaving a high-stress job working with homeless families in London.
“Once you start playing around, though, you actually feel quite energised. I felt like I was glowing by the end of it.”
Ullathorne came along to the class after watching a television series that explored the science of happiness. He was impressed by the session.
“It may seem a bit bizarre and ‘out there’ just now as it’s still new,” says Ullathorne, “but I’m sure in five years’ time laughter therapy will have grown into a big thing.”
The concept of laughter yoga is just over 10 years old, and began in Mumbai, India. Dr Madan Kataria, a family physician, saw the benefits of laughter on his patients’ physical and mental health, and collaborated with his yoga instructor wife to set up the first laughter club in 1995.
The combination of childlike games with gentle breathing and stretching exercises proved a huge success, and the idea has since spread into a global phenomenon. There are now more than 5,000 laughter clubs around the world.
Employers have been swift to recognise the stress-busting qualities of the treatment. Employees at Volvo in Sweden, Emirates airlines in Dubai and the Western Australia parliament have all reported good results from laughter therapy classes. Hewlett-Packard in Denmark even noted a 40% increase in sales following a year-long laughter programme.
In Scotland, £150,000 of public money was invested in a Centre for Confidence and Well-Being, established by Carol Craig, the “happiness czar”.
A laughter session at Queen Margaret University College, as part of a health and wellbeing week, brought Jeyaratnam into contact with Lisa Lind, who is in charge of human resources at the college.
“The staff were definitely a bit uncomfortable at first and someone refused to take part altogether,” recalls Lind. “But the class actually acts as a sort of barometer — if you find you really struggle with the class, then maybe you’re carrying a lot of tension or worrying too much about what people think.”
After an hour-long session, Lind says the mood in the office was buoyant and a team that had been having problems gelling was now joking and dancing in the corridor. “It seemed an excellent way of unwinding and coping with anxieties at work,” says Lind. “It forces you to ask yourself: ‘Am I taking myself a bit too seriously?’”
Although she worried at first how she would live down the embarrassment of making loud animal noises in front of her colleagues, Lind soon found herself getting into the swing.
“As humans we wear so many masks, it makes you feel very vulnerable to take them off, but what’s the worst that could happen?” she asks. “When you’re all in the same boat, you feel like you’re sharing something — even if it’s just pure humiliation.”
A certified health and fitness instructor, Jeyaratnam’s background as a therapist has helped her explore different ways of dealing with day-to-day stresses. Originally from Malaysia, nine years in Scotland have familiarised her with the most common form of stress relief, as practised by the population at large.
“Quite often I hear people saying that they need a couple of glasses of wine before they can relax,” says Jeyaratnam. “It seems very common to only let your inhibitions drop when you’ve had a drink. That is a shame. Why shouldn’t you feel natural and be yourself all the time?”
One of the central ideas behind laughter therapy is the idea of acting like a child again, re-creating behaviour we forget as we grow up: laughing for no reason, playing and inventing fun games just for the sake of it.
“Children don’t tend to dwell on bad things,” she says. “They’ll be crying one minute as if it’s the end of the world, but next thing they’re playing and laughing and it’s all forgotten.”
While she is not suggesting we walk around laughing constantly, she does believe many people could benefit from taking themselves a little less seriously.
Lind agrees. Last year she went to hear the Dalai Lama give a talk in Edinburgh and couldn’t help but notice something. “He couldn’t stop giggling — he was laughing away all the time like a little kid.”
But then the Dalai Lama and those children laughing all day long do not have a mortgage to pay.
Jeyaratnam has no truck with such scepticism. “Yeah, life is still going to have its stresses and sad moments,” she says, “but it’s all about learning to laugh them off a bit more.”
COME ON, GET HAPPY
What do I need? Not a sense of humour. A series of laughter exercises will get you giggling.
Does it do any good? “When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing each other,” as Alan Alda once said.
And the cost? A 45-minute session is £10 per person.
Find out more: www.laughteryoga.org
