Laughter Yoga

For last week's class, we had a guest presenter who instructed us in laughter yoga (a combination of laughter and physical activity).  One of the premises behind laughter yoga is that the combination of purposeful laughter and physical activity helps participants to circulate air in their lungs better and therefore feel better and become more healthy.  When the time came for trying out laughter yoga in group activities, however, I have to admit that I really struggled!  It was difficult to laugh just because I was supposed to!  This combined with many of the "silly" actions participants had to do as part of the yoga only contributed all the more to my rising self-consciousness.  I felt embarrassed and laughed often out of sheer nervousness!  In applying this to Therapeutic Recreation, I really appreciated the point that my instructor Heather made in that it is helpful for TR majors to experience what it is like to feel uncomfortable and resistant to a new activity because that is often how participants will feel in our programs!  More specifically, however, laughter yoga would be easy to use with many different populations and settings because it does not require a lot of props and is easily adaptable to varying levels of physical ability.