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Laugh Your Way To Wellness

Boost immunity, protect your heart, and reduce depression: practice hilarity

by Kay Harvey

Published in METRO •METRO Spotlight | 0 Comments, Talk about this article »

You know that friend of yours whose great belly laugh always gets you laughing, too? A good laugh is contagious—and much needed in these uneasy times.

Maybe that’s why yoga classes laced with laughter are so popular in the Twin Cities and elsewhere—and why some traditional exercise classes now include whimsy with their workouts, says Bobbie Speich, a licensed practical nurse who leads Smile Connections, a laughter group that meets twice monthly at Regions Hospital in St. Paul (www.worldlaughtertour.org). The sessions include a talk about humor’s health benefits, yoga-like breathing, and “stretching the smile muscles.” Laughter is required.

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And it comes easily with exercises such as the lawn mower. Speich instructs the class to run around the room pushing make-believe mowers and pulling imaginary starter cords. “Then we rev it up even more,” she explains.

By this time, everyone’s pretty giggly, so laughs come easily when the class segues into a pretend triathlon. “We stand in place and run for a minute while laughing, then do pretend swimming while laughing, and then do pretend biking while laughing,” Speich explains. The giggles become guffaws, and everyone keeps moving.

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“Before you know it, you’ve had a really good workout,” Speich says.

In classes Speich led at a Twin Cities church, participants played, laughed, and exercised for 45 minutes. “They told me, ‘It’s amazing how long the good feeling lasts,‘“ she says.

Strong Medicine

It’s no joke that laughter is good for you. Merely anticipating a good guffaw may keep winter colds away by reducing stress hormones that weaken the immune system, according to a recent study at Loma Linda University in California. Researchers found that levels of three stress hormones—cortisol, epinephrine (adrenaline), and dopamine—were reduced by 39 percent, 70 percent, and 38 percent respectively in study participants who were about to watch a funny movie.

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A 2005 study at the University of Maryland School of Medicine
found that laughter and an active sense of humor help protect against heart attacks. Last year, researchers from the Pediatric Pain Program at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine concluded that laughter therapy holds promise for helping relieve children’s acute pain. And at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, researchers learned that clowns helped acutely ill elderly patients feel less depressed.

Moms and Kids Get Silly

“Kids take to laughter yoga right away,” says Maeren Dahlke, a certified Yoga Kids teacher who offers laughter yoga to children, families, and other teachers at several metro-area locations.

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At Bliss Yoga Studio in St. Paul, Dahlke leads moms and their children as they breathe, stretch their bodies, and have fun together.

It’s no joke that laughter is good for you. Merely anticipating a good guffaw may keep winter colds away by reducing stress hormones that weaken the immune system.

“Let’s do the alligator,” Dahlke directs. Lying facedown with their tummies flat on blankets on the floor, the kids extend their arms in front of them like pretend jaws. “Now snap your jaws together,” Dahlke says, and the kids each move one arm up and down to slap it against the other. “Use your feet to splash your way through the water.” The sound of slapping feet meshes with a roomful of giggles. The zebra pose (hands and feet on the floor while kicking alternate legs in the air) stirs up laughs, too. The candle pose ends with a fun surprise. As the children lie on their backs with their legs raised and their bare feet pointed toward the ceiling, the moms sneak up to blow out 10 imaginary candles, represented by their children’s wiggling toes. It tickles, which sparks fits of the giggles.

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A wind-down exercise leaves everyone relaxed. “It’s fun and silly, and it helps my daughter calm down before bedtime,” says Jill Carlson, mom of 6-year-old Solei.

Hitting the Laugh Track

An exercise class with laughter attracted women ages 40 to 92 at Well Within (www.wellwithin.org), a holistic wellness resource center in West St. Paul. Instructor Barbara Montez opens the class by explaining how laughter therapy helps the body systems and reduces stress. Then the fun begins. For starters, there’s the imaginary-ice-cube-down-the-back exercise that gets everyone wiggling and giggling. Then comes the motorcycle exercise. “We start out with our hands on the handles,” she says. “You use your imagination, put your hands out, and go ‘vroom, vroom, vroom.’ Then you laugh, which comes pretty easily at that point.”

At age 40, after her bookkeeping job was outsourced, Montez became a professional clown. She created a full-time business and, along with teaching, works parties, events, and county fairs.

They Do Church Mirth

Mary Huntley and Edna Thayer, registered nurses in southern Minnesota who taught at Mankato State University, recently wrote A Mirthful Spirit: Embracing Laughter for Wellness (www.mirthfulspirit.com), which explores connections between humor and wellness. The coauthors do double duty as laugh leaders at their seminars, workshops, and talks to business and service clubs and support groups throughout the Midwest. “We do a laughter Sunday,” Huntley says. “We go into churches and take over the whole worship service. We do a talk for the kids and pick out hymns that speak to joy.”

Mark your calendar: January 24 is Global Belly Laugh Day. Join the fun at www.bellylaughday.com.

Regular contributor Kay Harvey of Minneapolis is an award-winning reporter who’s now practicing her belly laughs on a daily basis.

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