Mark Waldman explains laughter yoga, a group exercise that improves mood and reduces stress. Studies show it lowers depression as much as regular exercise but produces greater gains in life satisfaction. The technique uses intentionally silly exercises that work fast.
Hi, I'm Mark Waldman. I and Andy Newberg, we do research at the University of Pennsylvania and at Jefferson University and at Loyola Marymount University. And we're always looking for 60 seconds, simple exercises that you can use to change your brain. But we always want it to be evidence based research. So on the strategies and techniques that I'll be offering you, I suggest that you go to pubmed.gov and check out for yourself, see what the evidence actually is. Is it BS Brain science or is it BS Today? I would like to do an experiment that is unprepared, has not been rehearsed, whatever else. And it has to do with the question, is laughter good for your brain, good for your body and good for your health? When Andy and I wrote the book how how God changes your brain, we put smiling as one of the seven best ways to exercise your brain. But we didn't put laughter onto the list because we know that one kind of laughter is an anxiety type of laughter. You watch a kid falling over and bouncing off the trampoline and landing on their head and people laugh. But that's a nervous type of laughter that's not very good for your brain. Is genuine laughter healthy for you? And can you train yourself to go from artificial laughter to genuine innate laughter? Because the new science actually shows that this type of laughter may be very good for your brain. So, for example, at the university, and I want to point out some of the things about this, at the University of Arizona, at the Department of Surgery and Medicine, an article has been published, a peer reviewed journal article on the effect of laughter yoga on mood and heart rate. And they were working with patients who were about to go through transplantation. And there's another study, and this was published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry just recently. And we compared or this group of individuals compared laughter yoga to a group of individuals doing exercise and they were looking at whether or not doing laughter yoga improves depression. And it was a controlled trial. And the interesting thing is is that both the exercise group and the laughter yoga group had decreases in depression. But in terms of life satisfaction, those who engaged in laughter yoga did better. So what exactly is laughter yoga? Well, I'm going to demonstrate for the group of individuals who have never done it before. We're going to walk into the office of Praxis now. It's been a very, very busy schedule here for these individuals. All I've asked them is will you agree to spend the next three minutes so I can capture you on video? So let's Watch and see and learn what this particular strategy is. Because I'm going to suggest, no matter how outrageous it may seem, if you bring this into your office environment, if you bring this into your home environment, this fun little silly exercise will improve worker productivity, will reduce stress levels and will increase life satisfaction. And all it takes is 60 seconds of laughter with a group of individuals. So let's see what happens. Hello everyone. If I may have your attention. If you can all gather here into the center of the room and come stand up around me. Kind of like a semicircle like this. Let's all gather together. By the way, you see this particular smile on the face? This is that anxiety smile. This is the kind of smile when you don't know what you're doing and they're being filmed. And this is going to end up getting posted on YouTube and all over the place. Unfortunately for them, we'll probably all get viral and somebody's going to say, oh God, my hair wasn't done correctly and everything else. So you see these big smiles. If you see a gorilla smile like this, back away slowly. This, it means trouble. So if you really want to learn how to have the right kind of smile, the smile that can actually build neurological trust in another person's face, you have to be able to evoke a deep sense of true happiness and well being. Now, if you're a gorilla or a chimpanzee, they like to do this. Now, for whatever reason in the world, I try this with my wife and other individuals. I don't think this works in human social situations. It is not. Nobody's ever responded to me as if I'm being affectionate towards them and they usually run in the other direction. So this is how laughter yoga works. First, we're going to start out with a series of utterly uncomfortable, ridiculous exercises. And the first one, as it was developed by this individual in India, it goes. Ho. Now just start laughing fit. And raise your hand the moment it feels like it's real. So close your eyes. And I'm going to come back in about an hour. I'm just going to ask you one question. Whether you feel less stressed out over your next hour of work. Let me tell. Okay, so thank you all very much. That's what laughter yoga is. Again, we do have period of time studies that have shown that this is an effective way to reduce depression and actually increase last life satisfaction. Thank you so much. This is the end of our part 1/3 show. For 60 seconds to change your brain.
Millions of individuals around the world are grappling with various mental & emotional health issues
