The regular practice of Laughter Yoga helps affirm and manifest what is best in mankind: love, peace, goodwill, trust, joy and much more. It is the purest form of laughter there is because there is no reason for it.

Does this make it a spiritual practice? Furthermore, since there is no organized social structure behind it, can it be labelled as a form of non-religious spirituality?

I would personally argue that this is a wrong debate to have. First because the expression “non-religious spirituality” would be best avoided altogether as it is technically incorrect. Next because while you can call an apple a divine creation, it’s still just an apple. The distinction does not exist in the apple itself but in the viewer’s ability to see it in a different light.

In short: if you are religious you will see Laughter Yoga as a religious activity, and if you are not, you won’t, and in both cases you will be absolutely correct.

It is popular, especially in America, to distinguish between spirituality and religion. It’s true that there are valid distinctions between the two, but there are also a number of problematic distinctions which people try to make. In particular, supporters of spirituality tend to try to argue that everything bad lies with religion while everything good can be found in spirituality. This is a self-serving distinction which only masks the nature of religion and spirituality.

Religion is spiritual and spirituality is religious. One tends to be more personal and private while the other tends to incorporate public rituals and organized doctrines. The lines between one and the other are not clear and distinct — they are all points on the spectrum of belief systems known as religion. Neither religion nor spirituality is better or worse than the other; people who try to pretend that such a difference does exist are only fooling themselves.

For the record, courts in USA have refused to acknowledge any substantive difference between “religion” and “spirituality,” concluding that “spiritual” programs are so much like religions that it would violate the separation of church and state to force people to attend them (as with Alcoholics Anonymous, for example). The religious beliefs of these “spiritual” groups do not necessarily lead people to the same conclusions as organized religions, but that doesn’t make them less religious.