Can you really laugh yourself younger?
OUR search for the secret of eternal youth has led us to ‘miracle’ face creams, special diets and even that most radical of anti-ageing treatments, the facelift.
But could it possibly be true that something as simple, painless and non-invasive as having a good laugh is the solution to those mornings when you wake up with every joint and muscle groaning and glance in the mirror only to discover yet more wrinkles on your face?
That’s the theory behind laughter yoga. Devotees claim it improves the immune system and reduces pain — the endorphins released are said to be 30 times more powerful than morphine. And, most seductively, it is said to slow the ageing process.
Laughter yoga was developed in the mid-Nineties by Madan Kataria, a doctor in Mumbai. He had been working on the potential health benefits of laughter and, on impulse, took his wife to a local park, accosted three strangers and told them jokes.
When the jokes ran out, he decided to test the theory that feigning laughter could induce similar benefits to the real thing. He encouraged the group to fake laughter for a minute and found that it quickly became genuine, infectious and beneficial.
Word of the Kataria method spread, and there are now laughter yoga clubs in more than 70 countries, with around 100 in the UK.
One meets on the first Sunday of every month at the Parliament Hill bandstand on London’s Hampstead Heath, not too far from my house.
I’m not a natural participant in group activities — gym classes generally make me curl up in embarrassment and the idea of playing silly games and forcing a laugh with a bunch of strangers is dreadful — but if it’s good for me and cheers me up, then maybe it’s worth giving it a go.
While I’ve done yoga before — and also, in a long life, plenty of laughing — I can’t really imagine how the two can be combined.
Will we be expected to do the downward dog and giggle at our neighbour’s ample posterior, or stand on our heads and titter as everyone falls over? That sounds a bit mean.
Nor can I imagine that forcing a laugh will be relaxing. There are few more awkward moments than when someone says something they think is funny and you feel, out of politeness, that you have to laugh.
I’m wincing at the mere thought of having to do it for an hour. In the open air. With people who might not be amusing at all.
In the event, a group of complete strangers gathers at the bandstand. There are 18 of us, including a couple of children — one aged two and her 11-year-old brother.
The gender balance is pretty equal. There are three or four couples and the age range is diverse — there are people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, while the oldest is in her late 80s. The group leader gathers us in a circle and asks us to run into the centre one by one and say what we like to do.
BLIMeY, I didn’t enjoy exposing myself like that as a child, never mind now. I don’t think any of us feels relaxed about it, but everybody tries to enter into the spirit. Some run, some dance. I, more sedately, volunteer my liking for walking my dogs.
But that seems somehow inappropriate when everyone else claims to love an active lifestyle.
There is some laughter when one chap says he likes to stand on his head but, not surprisingly, it is forced. We are dying of embarrassment, not amusement.
At the end of that exercise, we all have to chant: ‘Very good, very good, yay!’ Positivity is the name of the game, but I’ve never been one to believe in the power of positive thinking.
For the next hour, we go through a series of exercises that become increasingly silly. We play Laughter Olympics, pretending to be weightlifters, jumpers and runners. We award each other a gold medal, then go around the group shaking hands and telling the women they are ‘gorgeous goddesses’ and the men ‘glorious gods’. Urgh!
I confess to more than a little annoyance at this ghastliness — at this stage, there is nothing real about my ha ha ha, ho ho hos.
But then, a strange thing happens. The laughing, which had been entirely false, changes and, as the hour wears on and we incorporate some breathing exercises, we are genuinely hooting, sometimes at each other, but mostly with each other.
The early embarrassment seems to have dissipated. We begin to feel we know each other and we are all going through the same range of emotions.
At the end of the session, we form a circle to do the Hokey Cokey, join hands and stand together, eyes closed, humming — a most relaxing activity.
So how do we feel? We are bonded. People are exchanging email addresses and agreeing to meet at the next session. Faces glow pink with the kind of delight rarely witnessed in a group of people who met only an hour before. And my usual aches and pains in the hips and lower back are gone. The next day, when I meet a friend, she says: ‘Wow! What have you been up to? You look amazing.’
I am, by now, so convinced a laugh is good for me that I try the Telephone Laughter Club. You dial a number at 7am and, for ten minutes, laugh with other giggly voices. No one speaks. This I don’t find great. I shan’t be doing it again — but other people apparently swear it kick-starts their day.
SO WHeRe is the evidence that laughter yoga works? Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, has been researching the way human beings achieve the same kind of social bonding and contentment that monkeys and apes get from social grooming.
In humans, he says, it’s laughter. He has found that genuine laughter gets the best results but forced laughter can do it, too. endorphins are released as the lungs are emptied and stress is placed on the diaphragm.
These endorphins tune the immune system biochemically, releasing the body’s defences, and give what he describes as an ‘opiate high’, relieving pain and inducing relaxation.
And what of the anti-ageing claims? Ageing, he explains, is genetically determined, but being more relaxed will reduce wear and tear on the body and produce a sunny look. Result!
I am planning to continue with laughter yoga — and also to stick with Marlene Dietrich’s mantra: ‘Darling, when you are young, never smile. It causes wrinkles. When you are old, smile all the time. It hides them.’