Laughter Yoga offers a unique approach to enhancing our well-being by harnessing the benefits of laughter, even when it feels forced.

This episode delves into the fascinating science behind laughter, highlighting how it releases a cocktail of hormones that improve our mood, reduce stress, and strengthen our social connections.

Klaudia shares insights on how laughter can serve as a mental reset, helping us concentrate better on tasks and fostering positive interactions with others. Despite a decline in laughter as we age, Klaudia encourages listeners to embrace laughter through simple exercises, like looking in the mirror and laughing at themselves. Join her in this challenge to reconnect with joy and experience the profound benefits of laughter in our daily lives.

Hello happiness seekers. My name is Klaudia.

Welcome to the Happiness Challenge, the podcast where I test drive the best happiness hacks that science has on offer so that we can create more happiness at work in our relationships and in our own skin. In the previous episode 130, I had enormous pleasure to chat to Cat Googe, Laughter Yoga leader, also known as the Joy Queen.

Cat has introduced us to the concept of Laughter Yoga with all of its benefits and shared simple ways to integrate it into our daily life. And in this short episode, Part two, I recap some interesting information about Laughter Yoga and dive deeper into the benefits of laughter.

And now there is literally thousands of laughter yoga clubs across the globe.

And Laughter Yoga is based on that very simple premise that our body take advantage of all benefits of laughter, even if we pretend that we are laughing. And you may think that actually feels like a forced function. Not sure I'll be feeling comfortable, maybe I'll be feeling awkward.

But let's do a quick experiment, listen to the next track and see what happens. Did you smile? Did you laugh? Did you giggle A little bit? I bet that uncontrollably, even if you are not trying, you did laugh a little bit.

Because laughter is contagious.

We have this incredible set of mirroring neurons, a type of neurons that get activated when a person performs, forms an action like laughing or smiling and make us copy that behavior almost uncontrollably. So even if you might be feeling I'm really not in the mood.

Doing laughter yoga in group means that people laughter will make you laugh, which is exactly what we are aiming for. Because laughter yoga is so good for us because of that component of laughter.

So laughter releases a cocktail of hormones such as endorphins, the body natural feel good chemicals that's relieving pain. Dopamine, making us feel instantly happy. Oxytocin, helping us to bond with others.

And these in turn decrease the stress hormone and increase our immune cell count, making us less prone to illnesses. A session of genuine yoga Laughter has a potential to relax our muscle up to 45 minutes, leaving our body feeling rested, recovered and recharged.

And because laughter also increases the heart rate from 10 to 20%, laughing aloud also improves the functioning of the blood vessels. And according to Jennifer Acker and Naomi Bagdonas, authors of Humor Seriously fantastic book. I highly Recommend it.

Laughter is like exercising, meditating and having sex all at once. So very much intriguing and very beneficial for us. Laughter is also balm for our mind.

So when we laugh, electrical activity sweeps across our brain, involving all brain regions. And I very much like to compare it to like a reset that lifts our mood, diffuses negative emotions and help us to change our perspective.

Research showed that watching a funny video can help someone concentrate on tedious tasks better for twice as long in comparison to watching a neutral video. So actually, who said that funny videos can distract us from work?

Just having that mental break can help us to concentrate on what we're doing much better. And finally, laughter is very much a glue for our social connections.

It has been confirmed that laughter indeed evolved to communicate with others and gain social acceptance. Laughter is a sign that we are happy, relaxed content. And that means that we are able to break ice, find common ground and trust others.

But also it means that we strengthening that connection with ourselves because we feel relaxed and we feel good in our own skin. So lots of different benefits of laughter for our body, for our mind and our social connections.

Now the sad thing is that laughter, jokes and humors are very good for us. But a survey or 1.5 million people across the globe shows that unfortunately the frequency at which we laugh or smile drops significantly with age.

Statistics shows that it drops significantly after turning 23. So it's actually we are getting grumpier with age, we laugh less often. Gallop calls this a humor cliff.

As we age each year, we laugh a little less than the previous one. And again, researchers are quoting different reasons for that. First of all, we're busy, we preoccupied with daily chores.

And actually laughter seems like something more frivolous, something sometimes we don't have time for. Secondly, our life experiences get tougher so we might be in the space that it is difficult to laugh.

And thirdly, due to cognitive decline that happens with age, some studies suggest that we lose our sense of humor. So this sounds very doom and gloom, which is not the case because it doesn't have to be that way.

So whatever the reason, Ma as my guest, cut good stress and I'm very much encouraging you to do. In day to day life, we don't laugh for longer periods of time.

And that's why laughter yoga is such a great solution because it lasts at least one hour and allowing us to simply laugh. But for now, for the purpose of this Happy Dash challenge, let's start small.

I dare you this month to try cuts there of looking into a mirror and completing one of the three actions. You could give yourself a high five in the mirror and have a bit of laugh.

You could give yourself a hug and laugh for a bit, or you could simply look in the mirror and just giggle a bit. And this is really to have a conscious time dedicated for laughter.

Reap those benefits of laughter that has been shown by research and also reconnect with ourselves to get that inner joy. I hope very much that you will join me in this there. I will see you at the end of the month for some further reflection in tips.

In meantime, you can find me on LinkedIn and as always, I dare you to be happy. Bye.