Laughter Yoga for Parkinson's Disease

Dopamine Boost (helps with depression and anxiety)

Laughter Yoga releases a super food, mood-boosting cocktail that includes dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin.  Dopamine increase is especially beneficial for Parkinson's and over time, the cocktail can help lower depression and anxiety.

 

 

Facial Expression (Parkinson’s Mask)

Laughter relaxes and strengthens the facial muscles which helps with facial expression.  This can help to relieve Parkingson’s mask since it is impossible to laugh without engaging facial muscles! 

 

In addition, laughter makes you feel good inside, even if you are unable to show it externally.

 

 

Increased Lung Capacity (helps with stiffness in Ribcage and Abdomen)

Laughter Yoga is an exercise for the lungs.  The deep breathing techniques of yoga combined with laughter as the exhale helps increase lung capacity while bringing more healing oxygen to the entire body.

 

Laughing can also produce hearty coughing, which further helps to clear the lungs.

 

These are especially good if your ribcage and abdomen are becoming stiffer because of Parkinson’s.

 

 

Speech and Communication

Parkinson’s can cause speech and communication challenges, oftentimes resulting in a quiet voice.  Through increasing lung capacity and circulation and practicing deep belly laughter, laughter yoga can help with these common symptoms. 

 

 

Stress Reduction

When you laugh, intentionally or spontaneously, your body thinks you are happy and it starts to behave accordingly.  It stops producing the “bad stuff” like cortisol and adrenaline (the stress hormones) and increases the good stuff (happy hormones).

 

This also makes room for your body to produce the healing hormone DHEA as it shares a base DNA sequence with cortisol.  It’s a double whammy - when you are stressed, you can’t produce as many healing hormones.  Lower stress and increase healing!

 

Additional information and links

 

Northwestern University Study on the effects of comedy improvisation on Parkinson’s symptoms

A study by researchers at Northwestern University showed that comedy improvisation helped patients with their ability to focus, facilitated communication, and just made people feel better overall.

 

Laughter class is essentially one huge group improv – we "perform" laughter exercises and are laughing for “real” in no time. 

 

Since the body doesn’t know the difference between spontaneous (“real”) and intentional laughter, you are completely in control of your laughter benefits.

 

Regaining your voice

Here is an interesting story of a student of Laughter Yoga who lost his voice because of Parkinson, but practicing laughter for 10 minutes for 10 days gave him back his voice.

 

"I used to love to sing in church, but Parkinson's robbed me of my voice. I stopped singing because I could not hear myself. Do you know that after laughing once a day I could hear myself again in church. This is the magic of laughter!"

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