Yoga Instructor Edely Wallace says, “The body does not know the difference, if it’s fake laughter or real laughter.”

It’s called laughter yoga! The class combines yoga breathing with laughing exercises. There are no jokes — the laughter is induced.

Studies show yoga improves balance, flexibility and muscle tone.
The simple act of laughing improves blood flow, boosts the immune system, helps control blood pressure and reduces pain by releasing endorphins. Put them together, and you’ve got a workout.

And once you start it’s contagious! Instructor Edely Wallace trained with the man who discovered the concept — renowned physician Madan Kataria. His mission: to make people laugh more.

Wallace says, “Children laugh from 300-400 times a day. When we grow older, we laugh 15-20 times a day, so we have lost this ability to laugh.”

Laughter yoga incorporates laughing, breathing, stretching and clapping.

“The component that’s the most important is that you don’t have to find anything amusing,” said instructor Phyllis Rollins. “There are no jokes. There’s no reason. There’s no comedy. We laugh for no reason.”

Yoga student Allen Reinke said at first he felt a little strange laughing without reason.

“Once I loosened up I found out, hey this is fun. It’s getting over the first five minutes that’s the issue,” Reinke said.

Before you know it, you’re doing the cell phone laugh, the Woody Woodpecker laugh, and the “oh no you didn’t” laugh.

Studies have shown the effects of laughter are serious stuff.

“It has a stimulating effect on your immune system. It just makes you happy,” Rollins said. “If you laugh for five minutes, it’s the same as doing exercise for 50 minutes.”

Laughter yoga won’t replace your regular cardio workout, but it will burn calories.

“Your face will ache. Your stomach will hurt. You will laugh until tears come out of your eyes if you’re genuinely laughing,” Rollins said. “Even if you’re not laughing genuinely the body and the brain don’t know any difference, so it doesn’t really matter.”

The class combines laughter exercises with yoga breathing. It includes a gentle warm-up, clapping, body movements and laughter exercise. Participants say laughter yoga cultivates a playful attitude. Unlike common yoga class, it does not feature yoga poses.

Renowned Indian physician Madan Kataria, M.D., created the laughter yoga concept. He first held meetings in 1995 with only five people. Today, there are more than 5,000 laughter yoga clubs in more than 55 countries.Yoga is a well-known exercise that incorporates breathing, stretching and a variety of poses. Now, a growing number of instructors around the world are combining the ancient art of yoga with laughter.

Instructors and participants do not rely on jokes to make them laugh. The laughter is induced. Participants simply giggle for no reason, and it becomes contagious! Instructor Edely Wallace, from Yogamatrix Studio in Orlando, Fla., said, “It’s like a child that laughs for no reason, and this is what laughter yoga is. We laugh for no reason. Humor is not a prerequisite for laughter.”

Those who take part in the laughter yoga class say they do get a real workout.

“Laughter yoga is aerobic because you have to breathe from your belly to laugh. Laughter comes from the belly,” said Wallace. “It’s breathing. You jump around. You perspire. You burn toxins.”

Wallace said children laugh between 300 to 400 times per day. In contrast, adults only laugh between 15 to 20 times per day.

“We lost this ability to laugh, and this is what creates bad chemistry in the body,” says Wallace. “When we learn to laugh again, we come back to our childlike playfulness, and life becomes easier. Everything becomes easier.”

Research shows laughter improves oxygenation, produces endorphins, releases neurotransmitters which create new pathways in the brain, and balances the hormonal system. It creates a “feel good” chemistry that acts as a natural painkiller, and it rejuvenates and accelerates healing processes in the body. Studies show it does not matter if laughter is spontaneous or induced because the body does not know the difference between the two. It produces the same chemistry.

What started as a three-times-a-week meeting in Laguna Beach is now a daily occurrence. There are weekly classes in Irvine and Orange. A new Irvine class started this month. All are free of charge.

When Jeffrey Briar started laughter yoga at the beach in 2005, he said, many days were just him laughing by himself. Now, others have caught on and dozens of folks get together every day to laugh as a form of exercise.

“No jokes. No comedy,” Jeffrey Briar, 53, recently told about a dozen seniors.

Just laugh, for no reason.

“Anyone can laugh, even if you have no sense of humor, are depressed, or are anxious,” Briar said.

The group at Rancho Senior Center in Irvine warmed up, amping up good moods by uniformly chanting, “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ha! Ha! Ha!” and “Very good, very good yoga mat , yay!”

Next, they walked around laughing and waving, and then bowing at one another and exchanging loud, hysterical laughter, giggles, and soft snickers.

Just laugh, at any level of vigor.

Briar guided them: “Watch other people laugh. That’s the secret to laughing.”

Some of the quiet laughs exploded. Some of the forced laughs became real.

Others whom Briar has guided through laughter yoga include “Dancing With the Stars” contestant Harry Hamlin, who producers felt needed a little loosening up. So, they hired Briar for $200.

In 2007, Briar got a phone call from Oprah’s producer.

“Can you fly to Chicago to lead a yoga class tomorrow?”

His response: “To be on Oprah? Sure.”

Briar said Oprah wanted her makeup artist to lighten up, so that became the show’s premise.

Since he was 18, Briar has taught regular yoga, but in 2005, he went to Switzerland to add laughter yoga to his skill set with yoga mat. Briar trained with Madan Kataria, a physician from India who popularized the integration of yogic breathing with laughter. There are about 6,000 laughter clubs in 60 countries.

“It’s a relief for me,” said Robert Huang, 76. “First, it was difficult and then I got used to it. The misconception is you have to have a joke to laugh.”

Huang has done laughter yoga for more than a year.

Back in class, Kay Kendzora led the group through an exercise that she created: planting flowers.

The group went through digging motions, jumped into an imaginary hole, and was then instructed to “wiggle up through the earth and explode into a beautiful blooming flower” – all while laughing.

Briar said that laughter gives people a sense of safety. Some do it just to feel better – go through the motions and feel the emotions. Others said it helps a group bond. The laughter yoga instructor has led classes for a technology firm in Irvine and for 200 car salesmen in California.

The laughter yoga club draws the biggest crowds in Laguna Beach. The spot at Main Beach where the club meets is a spot that was special to Briar’s father, who died in 1990 after battling depression for 18 years.

“It seemed very appropriate to kind of bless that place and keep its energy in the kind of joyful consciousness that he would have liked to live in himself,” Briar said. “It is so beautiful and inspiring for health and beauty.”

Sherri Long, 63, told the group to pretend that they are walking several uncontrollable dogs – so they ran around chaotically with abrupt turns while laughing.

“I’ve learned to laugh differently, more deeply,” said Joan Case. “It’s very healthy and gets your lungs working.”

What’s kept her in laughter yoga for about two years, she said, is also “the enthusiasm and the warmth that you get from other people.”

You can wear anything you like to this yoga class because there’s no down dogging or plank posing — just a lot of tee-hee-heeing and hah-hah-hahing.

The class is called Laughter Yoga, and yoga instructor Linda Putthoff offers free classes at her studio near the Country Club Plaza every Friday night.

Your only requirement: You must laugh. Even if you don’t think you’ll be able to muster a belly laugh in a room full of strangers, you’re more than welcome to fake it. Really.

On the surface, laughter and yoga seem as compatible as peanut butter and mustard on bread. But the fledgling discipline of laughter yoga is picking up fans around the world.

Madan Kataria, an Indian cardiologist and family physician, started the first laughter “club” in 1995 in Mumbai, India. He began by gathering joggers and walkers, strangers all, in a local park to share jokes and belly laughs. People loved yoga mats.

Kataria began to inject yogic breathing exercises into the fun. The cardio workout of the laughing and the deep breathing of the yoga made everyone feel happy and calm.

Laughing for the sake of laughing has become so popular that Kataria and his enthusiastic followers have founded hundreds of laughter clubs in 60 countries. They are just now starting to come to Kansas City.

Body & Soul of Kansas City will launch a Laughter Club — KC Laughs — in September. Members will meet Thursday nights, just for grins and giggles.

Putthoff’s Laughter Yoga class meets on Friday nights.

“We hope to spread it,” says Putthoff, who has taught yoga for 25 years. “It’s not rocket science.”

(If it were rocket science, everyone would surely want to work for NASA.)

Putthoff learned laughter yoga from leading practitioner Sebastian Gendry, who came to Kansas City in April to train teachers.

She says laughter yoga dovetails with her longtime commitment to the transformative nature of yoga — not so much the limbering of limbs but how yoga can make our lives easier, more joyful, more grace-filled.

The 45-minute classes begin with everyone seated in a circle — on chairs, on blankets, whatever’s comfortable. To get their bodies moving and the blood flowing, everyone claps. A rhythm quickly sets in. Clap, breathe, laugh. Clap, breathe, laugh.

No one tells jokes. You just laugh. No talking allowed.

“We’re not thinking, we’re not processing,” Putthoff says. “We’re getting out of the rational brain, which is very yoga.

“What we’re trying to do is create the innocent joy, the natural innocent joy we all share. It’s not about humor at all. It’s about tapping into the joy response in the body.

“Fake is fine. The body does not discern between fake laughter and real laughter. We simply walk around the room … and just laugh. We find that once you turn on that joy response, genuine laughter frequently follows.

“It’s so wonderful all these different sounds people make when they laugh. I’m a real ha-ha person. Some are tiny little gigglers, and some smile with their eyes and don’t make much sound.”

Barbara Anderson, owner of Body & Soul, says that people might be surprised by how much of a physical workout laughing can be. She thinks the name “laughter yoga” is a misnomer, because all of this really has very little to do with yoga as most people picture it.