Laughter Yoga Challenge

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people – Victor Borge

Is it possible to laugh for no reason?

Inspired by Hasyayoga a practice involving prolonged voluntary laughter, the Laughter Yoga Challenge is based on the belief that voluntary laughter or laughing without any reason, provides the same physiological and psychological benefits as spontaneous laughter. Infact, research has proved that just 10-20 minutes of fake or real laughter has a profound benefit on the human body. The effective blend of laughter and breathing results in multiple health benefits, primarily increasing the supply of oxygen and boosting the immune system.

The session does not rely on jokes, humor or comedy. It initiates laughter as a form of an exercise in a group, and as the laughter sessions progress, the laughter becomes real and contagious.

Avail Program Through

• When run in the physical mode, Participants generally start out very tentatively – but it is a matter of minutes before the whole atmosphere suddenly begins to change to one of light hearted merriment and soon loud guffaws! During most of these laughter exercises, group members keep moving, and establish eye contact with others in the group. The Laughter Yoga Challenge strives to connect with the group members and cultivate childlike playfulness during the whole activity.

• While run in the virtual mode, the modus operandi is no different. The virtual environment infact helps a lot of shy participants drop their inhibitions, since they are in their own private space. When you are just a small rectangle inside a laptop screen and there are 25 other rectangles that are also ringing with laughter – people become less conscious and lose themselves in the process, thus having fun!

After the Laughter Yoga Challenge sessions, energy levels can be too high to return directly to normal. To reduce these levels Archana Rao leads the group through Guided Relaxation, which is also called Yoga Nidra. This guided body tour brings immense relaxation by bringing complete awareness to different parts of the body. During this time the mind is completely relaxed and saying positive affirmations encourages the group to be positive in life.

A few key parameters:

1 hour

Time Limit

Physical or Virtual

Where this can be run

20 to 500

Group sizes

Debrief can be customised

Customisation

Is this workshop right for my team?
This activity is a wonderful way to bring teams together in a easy relaxed manner – either at offsites packed with the “official agenda”, at office premises where there is a large enough conference room or even virtually with each person logging in from home or a distant location. The underlying message of the activity is for all of us to stay relaxed and not take ourselves too seriously, regardless of the roles we perform in our corporate jobs every day!