History Of Laughter Yoga

In March 1995 Dr. Madan Kataria, a family physician from Mumbai, India, decided to write an article called "Laughter - the best medicine" for his monthly health magazine "My Family Doctor".

The outcome of his research for this article surprised him greatly. Decades of scientific research had already proven that laughter has both a preventive and therapeutic effect. He was impressed by the findings of Norman Cousins, a leading journalist in the U.S.A. in the 1960s dying from a degenerative disease, who managed to heal himself completely using laughter as his main form of therapy.

Dr. Kataria woke up on March 13th, 1995, with what he thought was a great idea: he would start a laughter club. At 7 am he went to his local park and somehow managed to motivate four people to laugh with him. This small group quickly grew to over 50 participants within a few days. The format was the turn-by-turn telling of jokes or anecdotes.

Within two weeks the stock of good jokes was depleted and participants complained. They did not want to listen and even less take part in the telling of stale or vulgar jokes.

Rather than abort the experiment Dr. Kataria had the idea of dropping jokes altogether. What he had observed several times in those first two weeks was that when the joke or anecdote being told was not funny, one person laughing was usually enough to get the whole group to laugh: laughter is contagious. He experimented with this idea of laughing for no reason and it worked very well.

The brain cannot distinguish self-induced laughter from the laughter from external stimuli, and what to some may seem like a silly and artificial beginning almost always leads into a natural euphoric state of hearty laughter.

He had unknowingly stumbled on a branch of yoga traditionally called Hasya Yoga (a Sanskrit name for Laughter Yoga.)

His wife Madhuri Kataria is a Yoga teacher and helped build upon the yoga connection of laughter. Together they designed a sequence of simple laughter exercises with gentle yoga breathing exercise (pranayama) for maximum benefits.

A journalist heard of this unusual club and wrote an article about it in the local newspaper. Inspired people started to come to Dr. Kataria for advice on how to start their own "Laughter Clubs". Everything else is history.

Since its humble beginnings in 1995, this unique idea has grown into a worldwide movement of many thousands of Laughter Clubs all over the world. Laughter Yoga and Laughter Clubs have been featured in every single major media network around the world (press, radio, television). Laughter Yoga is currently referred to as the "latest exercise craze to hit the United States of America".

The American Chapter

The American Laughter Yoga movement owes a lot to the ground work realized by psychologist Steve Wilson from Ohio who invited Dr. Kataria and his wife to the USA for 1.5 months in 1999 and was the first one to expose them to the american media. Although Mr Wilson never taught nor promoted Laughter Yoga afterwards but his own curriculum "Certified Laughter Leader", he gained some level of popularity and introduced the essence of the concept of simulated laughter exercises to the american public.

It wasn’t until 2004 that california based Sebastien Gendry, another American of French origin, became highly interested in this subject and went all the way to India to train with Dr Kataria. A strong connection ensued and Sebastien went on to serve as World Operations Director for Laughter Yoga International for 2 years. He facilitated several Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher trainings for Dr. Kataria in the USA, which led to still more, and tirelessly promoted Laughter Yoga with the national media. He organized the first All American Laughter Yoga conference in 2006 which led to a national television coverage of Laughter Yoga on CNN, the Associated Press, and not long after that ABC Dancing With The Stars, ABC Good Morning America, the Oprah Winfrey Show and many many more national, state and local media outlets.

Today over 200 such Laughter Yoga Teachers have been personally trained by Dr Kataria, training in turn several thousands class instructors (Certified Laughter Yoga Leaders.) These trainings also indirectly led to the creation of an estimated 400 Laughter Clubs (as of 2009) nationwide, and growing.

Laughter Yoga is here to stay.

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