This episode explores the transformative practice of Laughter Yoga and its incredible benefits for well-being.

Klaudia shares her personal reflections on daily laughter exercises, emphasizing that even forced laughter can yield positive outcomes for our mental and physical health. Through engaging activities like high-fiving oneself in the mirror and laughing, she highlights how these unconventional practices can surprise our brains and break us out of our routines.

Ultimately, Klaudia invites everyone to embrace laughter more often as a simple yet powerful tool for enhancing happiness in our 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 in our life. And this month at the Happiness Challenge December was all about power of Laughter Yoga.

In the episode 130, Cat Googe, laughter Yoga leader, also known as the Joy Queen, introduced us to the concept of Laughter Yoga.

And in episode 131 I recap some key information about it, dove deeper into benefits of laughter and introduce you to the Laughter Challenge for this month. And in this final part three I share my reflections when it comes to daily exercises of laughter.

Join me so entire premise of Laughter Yoga is that we have conscious time to laugh for extended period of time. And Cat Googe was specifically encouraging us this month to look into a mirror and complete one of the actions.

Giving yourself high five and having a bit of laugh. Giving yourself a self hug and laughing a bit or just looking into mirror and laughing a bit.

And at the first glance definitely when I start doing those exercises I was practicing the high fiving, it really feels like forced fun. It also feels like it's a little bit staged.

But very interestingly I kept going with this practice even it felt a little bit bizarre just because I was trying to remember three simple things.

One, the brain doesn't differentiate, so our brain doesn't necessarily differentiate between genuine laughter or maybe a bit forced or sticky stage laughter. So actually by laughing we do reap the benefits for our body and well being even if it is a bit more staged than natural laughter.

So keep laughing, it actually does work. Secondly, it definitely felt awkward because it's unconventional and also something new.

And especially the exercise of looking in the mirror, high fiving yourself and laughing, it's an example of a neuro. So it's an example of an exercise that keep our brain active by surprising it and snapping out it out of everyday routine.

So I was doing this especially in the mornings and that was really interesting because yes, my brain haven't really expected that this is now a new routine, but it was really nice to know that okay, it feels a bit awkward, it feels new, it feels a bit strange because it's unconventional and actually my brain needs to work harder to think about this. And the third aspect was that starting small is okay, you can look in the mirror, you can giggle a little bit, chuckle.

Sometimes I laughed a lot, sometimes I laughed a little bit.

But what was really interesting for me was to actually consciously pause to laugh and associate that I'm looking in the mirror when I'm laughing because let's be honest, when we look into mirror, it's generally to correct ourselves, change our appearances, maybe judge ourselves so it's not actually such a positively associated activity. We look into the mirror to fix something and actually looking the mirror and just laughing was really interesting change for me.

So I think overall it's a really interesting, simple practice that helped me to start the day on a positive note. But it definitely felt a little bit unconventional, a little bit strange. But I did laugh, which is I think the key aspect of this exercise.

But I guess the main aspect here is that yes, laughter yoga and consciously laughing just has incredible benefits for us. And if looking in the mirror when laughing doesn't suits you, explore other tools to laugh more often.

So few other things that you could try is meet up with your friends and family for evening of laughter and suggest that everyone brings a funny story or a joke to share. Make a list of movies that make you laugh. I especially love comedies when I'm sick because I know that by laughing I'm boosting my immune system.

So have a laughter marathon by watching your selected movies by yourself or with others. To get those benefits of laughter, write down some of the funniest stories from your life.

Maybe funniest stories that you've heard, maybe funniest stories that happened to you. Write them down and have a bit of giggle and also create maybe your own jokes.

Have fun inventing new jokes, words saying just to humor yourself and other people. So for example, I find it definitely amusing to change some English expressions.

English is not my first language and I actually love of changing some bits which don't make really sense to me. So for example, instead of apple of my eye, I often say apple of my pie because I wouldn't want to have an apple in my eye.

But if I love someone very much and you gifted me an apple, I would for sure bake a pie. So pick up the paper and pen and laugh a little bit more when developing your comedy skills.

And I guess whatever you choose, the most important aspect is to laugh more often. As independent health researcher Freda Gonot Szopinski said, you don't have to wait to be amused.

There is a way to train yourself to enjoy the cheap medicine of laughter every day. Thank you so much for listening.

For ac summary of this month's challenge, Visit my website thehappinesschallenge.co.uk and subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter. If you are up for learning more about neurobics, which I have mentioned in relation to that high five exercise.

Listen to episode 79 what is Neuroplasticity? And how to engage in neurobics to be happier. It is a really interesting field of research. I dare you to be happy.

I dare you to laugh more often this month and I see you at the next Happiness Challenge. Bye.