Friendships through laughter yoga
By Paige Ellis
It seems like everyday, someone is touting yoga’s health benefits: It strengthens your muscles! Improves your flexibility! Reduces your stress!
But less is said and written about another important “side effect” of yoga – community.
There is one form of yoga in particular that really fosters social connections and combats depression (a symptom of social isolation) – laughing yoga.
While researching for my project, I first needed to contextualize this practice. So I did some digging and found out that yoga is at least 5,000 years old. Laughing yoga, on the other hand, is just turning 16.
- I found laughteryoga.org very useful for providing background. It’s also the official website of Dr. Madan Kataria, the giggling guru behind this form of yoga.
- This article in The Globe and Mail also taught me about the origins (and theory behind) laughing yoga.
- In order to localize this phenomenon, I narrowed my research to Toronto laughing yoga groups. This article from The Toronto Star was very useful in outlining the challenges of selling laughing yoga to frown-faced Torontonians.
- Next, I found a beautiful photo feature from the Washington Post about how laughing yoga helps people overcome depression. The article showed me just how much multimedia potential this story has (the visuals!) and also highlighted the importance of audio.
Going into this project, I have two things I keep returning to:
1) We are covering such a wide variety of issues. How do we maintain a consistent tone?
2) How do we ensure we all stay true to the project theme? This is especially relevant for me, since I’m profiling something that isn’t typically considered “community-building.”
And now, a quick vocabulary lesson to finish off my post.
Hasya yoga – technical name for laughing yoga. Hasya means “laughter” in Sanskrit.
Yogi – male practitioner of yoga. You’re forgiven if an image of Yogi Bear popped into your head (cue laugh track)
Yogini – female practitioner of yoga.
“The healing powers of laugh yoga” by Linda Davidson
“Laughter’s the best medicine for GTA yoga fans” by Teenaz Javat
“At this health club, you provide the laugh track” by Tim Albone
6 Comments → “Friendships through laughter yoga”
Hey Paige, look what I found this morning at the Toronto Star!
http://www.healthzone.ca/health/dietfitness/fitness/article/947625–gym-rat-iam-yoga-offers-stretch-with-side-of-introspection
-Kasia.
I truly loved this brilliant article. Please continue this awesome work.
hi-ya. i like your blog Friendships through laughter yoga and will certainly post a link to http://networkedstreets.com/wordpress/archives/192 on my site.
I am impressed, I have to say. Really rarely do I see a blog that’s both informative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Your opinion is important; the matter is something that not a lot of people are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to this.
you are making me laugh
Does your blog have a contact page? Im having problems locating it but, Id like to send you an email. Ive got some suggestions for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great blog and I look forward to seeing it grow over time.