Laughter Exercises Helps Cope With Physical Disabilities

My Laughter Yoga exercise routine is the best medicine and the most powerful tool to manage pain and distress. It has the ability to elevate your mood by releasing endorphins, a ‘feel good’ hormone that alleviates pain and provides a feeling of comfort and safety.

This concept is the fastest growing trend in the world today. It helps people cope with physical and mental disabilities. It a simple exercise routine developed by Dr. Madan Kataria that works on the body and the mind simultaneously. It effectively combines the tenets of yogic breathing with laughter exercises to provide enormous health benefits. Many practitioners have reported a remarkable improvement in their physical condition and flexibility.

How does Laughter Yoga helps to cope with physical disabilities?

Mobility: Mobility sometimes gets partially or severely restricted due to disease, injury and pain. Being a physical exercise, my Laughter Yoga helps mobility especially if you are rendered physically incapable due to injury and/or disease. Many people with physical disabilities are unable to move parts of their body without regular physiotherapy exercises to keep their body moving. Due to low mental functions, they are not following instructions given by their physiotherapist. After laughter yoga they are much more compliant to physiotherapy, which have led to notable physical improvement in their motor functions.

Pain: Laughter Yoga triggers the release of a natural opiate called endorphins into our bloodstream. This provides immediate pain relief typically lasting for 2 hours. It can relieve headaches, muscular and joint pain and is powerful enough that a number of practitioners have undergone surgery using laughter instead of anesthetics.

Anger: It can be overwhelming trying to understand why you have to deal with something that can be so difficult and seem so unfair. ‘Why me?’ is a nagging question in the mind. Trying to live with disability can be really frustrating and leaves one dependent on people. Laughter Yoga is an ideal exercise that helps one to accept the disability and provides relief from feelings of negativity.

Sadness or depression: People find it hard to express their feelings and emotions and they get chronically depressed. Laughter Yoga exercises have made them much more expressive and joyful and has also helped to come out of their depression.

Feeling scared: It’s natural to experience a certain amount of fear in the face of physical disability. But when this fear takes on an unbearable dimension, it can lead to severe damage to the psyche. Laughter Yoga provides an immediate feeling of safety and security. This may be due to the effects of endorphins, natural opiates, which are more potent than morphine. It helps to overcome fear and anxiety and generates more positive emotions.

Stress or anxiety: Any form of disability is a cause of immense stress and anxiety. Frustration anger, aggressive behavior and irrational logic overcome the power of reasoning. Laughter has been shown scientifically to provide a substantial and immediate reduction in stress levels as it lowers stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine and enhances the levels of health hormones and neuropeptides that alleviate the negative symptoms of stress within minutes.

Shock and denial: Physical incapacity can put people in a state of shock and trauma. There is not just the physical pain but a mental denial that can lead to blockage of feelings and an inability to express one’s emotions freely. The group dynamics of Laughter Yoga leads to more openness and helps people to share their grief. The exercises and the deep breathing is designed to relax the body and the mind and assist one to accept reality. My Laughter clubs are a safe haven for people to release their inner feelings without fear and pain.