New yoga practice in Nanaimo promotes destressing, laughter

Lee (pictured) says laughter yoga is for everyone even if they think it is a little silly. Photo: Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm.

Sometimes laughter is the best medicine and a new laughter yoga class is finding new ways to help people destress and boost happiness.

Crystal Lee, a certified laughter yoga leader and a career coach, has started offering laughter yoga classes in Nanaimo. She describes laughter yoga as a series of movements and breathing exercises designed to simulate laughter and cultivate an inner sense of joy. 

She first got into it 11 years ago when living in Vancouver. She said at the time several laughter clubs in the city would meet regularly and she wanted to give it a try. 

“I just went for a session with some friends and just came out of it and loved it. I didn't quite know what happened, I just knew I felt better,” Lee said.

She said as a career coach it is a great fit to go along with her work as she finds laughter yoga helps develop strategies to be more resilient in her daily life. 

Lee explained that laughter yoga was started in India in 1995 by the medical doctor Dr. Madan Kataria and his wife, Madhuri Kataria who both practice yoga. Dr. Kataria saw that many people were coming to him again and again and he was not sure how to help them. When researching what to do, the doctor came across journals and research on laughter.

“He decided ‘Hey like I can't write on a prescription pad go home and laugh but what if we just go to a park and get some folks to laugh with us?’ so he and his wife went to a local park in Mumbai, India and started a joke club with just four other people,” Lee said. “After two weeks, there were over 50 people there, and it was great, but after a little while, they kind of ran out of jokes, and not everyone found the jokes funny anymore. So some folks were like, ‘Okay, this is not fun anymore, I'm not coming back.’ So he said, ‘Wait, wait, wait, please give me one day, I'm gonna come back tomorrow with a plan.’”

That’s when he read more about laughter and found several health benefits to laughing and decided to keep going.

“So the next day when they went back to the park, they decided just to laugh together without humour or jokes,” Lee said. “That's one of the biggest things about laughter yoga is that we actually don't need humour. We can just be together and laugh together and often it becomes real anyway.”

Lee said laughter yoga soon caught on and now there are over 5,000 laughter clubs worldwide. 

In 2015 Lee became a certified laughter yoga leader and began leading her own classes. She said in the typical class they play a lot of laughter games and activities along with gentle stretching and deep breathing.

Lee said that when she moved to Nanaimo two years ago she found she began to miss the classes and laughter.

“Having moved to Nanaimo about two years ago, I kind of got out of laughter a little bit and realized I missed it,” Lee said. “I also missed the sense of community I had, because I met a lot of laughter friends of all different ages. So I decided, ‘Hey if there isn't a club here in Nanaimo, I might as well start one.’” 

This past weekend she held her first laughter yoga class in Nanaimo at The Space @ Aura Arcana which she will continue to host on the first Saturdayv of each month. She said at first she was worried that no one was going to show up to the class.

“But nine strangers came and I was so happy. We had a lot of fun. The feedback was amazing. So I'm really pumped for our next one,” Lee said.

Right now, she offers her classes by donations on a sliding scale starting at $5. Lees said offering the classes at a low barrier rate goes along with the overall mission of laughter yoga.

“​​Laughter yoga globally, there is a mission to promote world peace, and laughter, or rather, world peace through laughter. A lot of clubs around the world are free or donation-based,” Lee said. “I'm starting this new laughter club, I'm fronting the cost of renting the space right now. So, I am asking for a donation to support it. I also want to continue with the mission of laughter yoga more broadly across the globe, which is to promote world peace through laughter.”

Also with her background in public health, she said she sees the importance of allowing anyone in the community to come and laugh. 

“I believe in doing what we can and promoting a sense of community and connection because it's been shown to improve health and well-being, so that's important to me. Right now, gosh, inflation, everything's expensive,” Lee said. So I hope that finances won't be a barrier for folks to try.”

Lee said laughter yoga is for everyone even if they think it is a little silly.

“I'm actually a really serious person, and I don't really play, so for me, I actually find the laughter yoga space to be really helpful because it provides me with the structure of exactly what to do, Lee said. You have full permission to make silly faces or make funny noises. There's no right or wrong.”

Lee said she has seen great improvements in her own life since starting laughter yoga with her anxiety and perfectionism along with daily stressors she might have. She said laughter yoga helps build pathways to find new perspectives on things.

“For example, we have a laughter exercise. It's about being stuck in traffic and instead of just honking the horn, we would laugh,” Lee said. “For a while, I had a sticker of a happy face in my car and whenever I was frustrated by the traffic, I would touch the happy face and I would laugh. It became this coping strategy for me in daily life.”

She said one of the participants last week found a new perspective for when her toddler throws a temper tantrum, the mother can also throw a mini temper tantrum to get the energy out too. Then the mother and the toddler can laugh about it afterward.

Lee shared an easy exercise she does with classes:  

You put your palms and fingers together. First, you tap your thumbs together making a ‘ha’ noise, then tap your index fingers together twice while making the ‘ha’ noise each time. Then it continues down the hand with the middle finger being tapped three times while making three ‘ha’ noises. Then tap the ring finger four times while making four ‘ha’ noises and then tap the pinkie finger five times while making the ‘ha’ noise five times.

To learn more about Lee’s laughter yoga classes and when her next classes are, go to relocal.ca/laughter-yoga. 

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.