I wish I had time to blog and expand on this, and I don’t.

Here are 5 great articles in this week’s news about Laughter Yoga:

• “Laughter” yoga no joke. This one comes from Florida and has a video.  Teacher Pat Conklin takes laughter seriously. “I’d forgotten how to laugh, pretty much forgotten how to laugh.” She used to be a stressed out grant writer dealing with chronic pain and depression. “Laughter Yoga took me out of that deep dark place, to a much more hopeful, positive, optimistic place and it brought joy back into my life.”
• For heart transplantee, laughter is best medicine. Linda Levier is 70. She had a heart transplant 7 years ago. She attributes her miraculous recovery in great part to Laughter Yoga.
• Laughter-yoga classes touted as calming aid for mind, body. This one is from Columbus, Ohio. Here is a gist: “It’s like an endorphin cocktail for me,” said Spirit Sky, 64. “I feel refreshed and so much lighter.”
• The pursuit of happiness. This is about “DIY Happiness”, a series of eight workshops for 320 women from different 20 boroughs of London, England. When it comes to promoting wellbeing and mental health, a holistic approach can often be more beneficial than ‘treating’ individuals.
• Laughter therapy is no joke. Whoever said laughter is the best medicine was on the right track. The nurses and caregivers at the Matlosana Hospice and Khaya Tshepo Paediatric Palliative, a day-care centre in Klerksdorp (South Africa), cannot start the day without a big belly laugh. “We have seen tremendous change in many caregivers who do the laughter [therapy]. Unlike the others, it is immediate, it works much faster to create a dramatic increase in happiness, and it is the caregivers themselves who run it,” Jaffer said.