Laughter Yoga with our, "Young at Hearts"

With a distinct rise in life expectancy due to advances in medical science, the population of senior citizens is likely to triple by the year 2020.

As the joint family structure crumbles and youngsters steer away from parents, the seniors, find themselves alone either in aged care facilities or old-age homes. They are prone to frequent bouts of depression that often leads to a debilitating condition.

Factors Affecting our “Young at Hearts” and How Laughter Yoga Can Help

Retirement: The biggest stressor for seniors is a feeling of being useless after retirement. It leads to major depression and mental agony. Lack of importance creates frustration and many a times proves extremely detrimental to physical and mental health.

Extended Hearty Laughter helps to reduce stress and generate a positive attitude. Laughing together in a group helps to boost self-esteem and overcome feelings of insecurity.

Lack of Bonding: Laughter Yoga is especially beneficial for older people. Seniors are always in need of human contact. While most of them are surrounded by like-minded peers, they still miss the bonding of a family. They need someone close with whom they can share their emotions.

Laughter Yoga sessions have the power to reach beyond the healing of laughter. The effective network of caring-sharing relationships is the key to a happy and healthy life. Relationships with people become very strong and the feeling of loneliness dissipates. Seniors enjoy the daily meetings as it generates a sense of belonging. Laughter Yoga can give seniors that much needed feeling of closeness and fraternity.                                                                                     

 Physical immobility: Sedentary lifestyle, illness and lack of physical exercise cause stiffness of limbs and muscles, leads to immobility and pain and aches.

Laughter Exercises coupled with deep diaphragmatic breathing are simple, structured and a lot of fun. They are easy, safe, and economical and provide a genuine form of physical exercise. Regardless of any limitations cognitive or physical, they are appropriate for all. Extended Hearty Laughter is known to increase muscle movement, mobility and boost the immune system. It increases disease fighting cells and proteins, and triggers release of endorphins (body’s natural painkillers)

Decline of cognitive faculties: Faced with age and age-related troubles, seniors find that their physical and mental faculties decrease. With the beginning of certain diseases like Alzheimers and Senile Dementia, the capacity to comprehend humor declines. The degeneration of the brain cells makes it difficult for many seniors to understand and organize facts, let alone humor. Simple tasks become difficult, frustration levels rise making it harder for them to laugh.

Under such conditions Laughter Yoga is ideal for seniors to reap the scientifically proved benefits of laughter to improve their health and well-being. It helps to provide an emotional bonding and is one of the most powerful tools against depression.

 In the past 7 years I have facilitated laughter yoga classes across Ontario  to over 500 different retirement homes and long term centres.

I believe regardless of a person’s cognitive abilities Laughter Yoga is a fun and easy way to exercise the body and mind with healthy laughter.

Since humor is an intellectual phenomenon, seniors find it difficult to laugh without a reason. This is where Laughter Yoga helps them to be able to laugh and start living a life full of joy once again. Being a physical process, it does not require any mental abilities thus helping the older people to understand humor without using their cognitive faculties. A few hours of laughter every day will increase your memory, thinking ability and intellectual capacity.

Physical illness: Scientific studies have proven that the reason of frequent sickness is because there is a lack of oxygen in the body cells. Laughter Exercises and Deep Breathing help to attain good health by increasing the supply of oxygen. People in the Laughter Clubs with chronic pain, migraines, headaches and asthma have found attacks to become less frequent, and in some cases, to disappear completely. Many members with high blood pressure, severe spinal, neck or shoulder problems and even diabetes have found their life normalizing eventually requiring no medication. Many members with depression, anxiety and chronic stress related diseases have reported moving from debilitating fear and  anxiety to a more positive state of mind, transforming their quality of life.