CNN report on laughter yoga (3’45)
Transcript
CNN reporter: Every morning on Laguna Beach, California, you’ll find a group gathered on the sand, laughing. There are no jokes, no punch lines. They’re laughing for no reason at all. You’re probably laughing just watching this. It’s called laughter yoga, led by Jeffrey Briers.
Jeffrey Briers: You can generate happiness from laughter. You can start feeling terrible. Laugh with other people and you will create happiness.
CNN reporter: Before you write this off as just another off-the-wall California fad, you should know laughter yoga was the brainchild of Indian doctor Madan Kataria. He was doing research for an article called “laughter: the best medicine” when he got the idea.
Dr Madan Kataria: I was a very serious physician practicing medicine in India. I didn’t laugh too much because I don’t have a great sense of humour. It just came from up. And suddenly, 4 o’clock in the morning, I got this idea: why not start a laughter club?
CNN reporter: What began with 5 people in a Mumbai park in 1995 has spread to more than 5,000 laughter clubs in 50 countries, like Korea, Israel and Germany.
Dr Madan Kataria: You really don’t need any sense of humour to laugh. You don’t need to be happy in order to laugh. In fact, when you laugh, you develop your sense of humour, you develop joy within yourself.
CNN reporter: More than that, Kataria says the breathing and laughing of laughter yoga will improve your health, even if you have to fake the laughter. It’s a claim backed up by Lee Berk at Loma Linda University. Berk has spent more than 30 years studying how laughter affects what’s going on in our bodies. Berk has found laughter decreases stress hormones, improves our immune system and boosts endorphins. Those are the brain chemicals associated with the runner’s high. Even the anticipation of laughter produces some of the same beneficial results, offering evidence of what Berk calls the biology of hope.
Dr Richard Davidson: What we have here is a series of brain images that reflect the state of the brain when a person is made to experience happiness.
CNN reporter: Dr Richard Davidson, one the world’s leading experts on the mind-body connection says he has located where happiness lives in the brain: the left prefrontal cortex. Negative emotions such as fear and anxiety show up on the other side of the brain: the right prefrontal cortex. Davidson is at the forefront of research using the latest brain imaging technology to search for how a positive disposition affects our health. Already, Davidson has found that the people who are upbeat have a stronger immune response when they’re given a flu vaccine. That means a positive outlook actually makes you less likely to get the flu.
Dr Richard Davidson: In general, there are data showing better health outcomes among optimists compared to pessimists, on a number of different measures.
CNN reporter: Dr Kataria, who began the laughter club movement, says people who laugh are living in the moment.
Dr Madan Kataria: Joyfulness makes you feel good immediately. It’s now. And that’s what children do. And I want all, everybody in this world to live like a child: now, just now.
Pronouncing figures:
1970: nineteen seventy
4: four
5: five
1995: nineteen ninety-five
5,000: five thousand
50: fifty
30: thirty