Laughter While You Drive

Driving to the Beat of Laughter Yoga

Have you noticed that time seems to pass faster when we do something that you love, whether it is a hobby, leisure thing, or a celebration. By the same measure it feels like time is slowing down during our most difficult and challenging times. I feel most would agree with me that driving can be monotonous and time be in slow mode.

What can help is to do Laughter Yoga exercises whilst driving. By the way some people are unfamiliar to the term Laughter Yoga and the word Yoga simply refers to the deep, yogic style of breathing that we do when we practice the activity of Laughter Yoga.

My experience is that when I drive in a car filled with light-heartedness and laughter, time passes easily and the car ride may be experienced as one of great joy. It can be done both when driving alone or in the company of other people.

When you were a youngster, did you do like me, help pass the time playing ‘I spy with my little eye’? It was fun and involved other people, was a good game, connecting one with our parents in a way that was different to the norm.

For those who have not yet done a Laughter Yoga class, it involves many playful activities pretending various scenarios and laughing. This is referred to as to ‘fake it till you make it’, as our body when practicing simulated laughter in an exercise does not recognise the difference with real and fake laughter. The fake laughter becomes real and positive endorphins are consequently released into the bloodstream.

One laughter exercise like the childhood game can be to look out for various things and laugh either by yourself or together with others. You might look for a colour or make of car, road sign or virtually anything and laugh when you see it.

Always remember safety first when driving and always be ready to discontinue the laughing in a split second, as concentration on driving is paramount. Some laughter may be done with one hand momentarily on the wheel and I will share some more ideas about safe laughs that can be done in these moments.

Laughter is best done or at least 15 minutes per day, the benefits are greater if that is in one 'sitting'. When you try this, do not laugh continuously, rather as we do in laughter club or outside sessions, laugh for about a minute and take a breath and short break.

To begin, check the time and aim to laugh for 15 to 20 minutes as follows. Start laughing for 30 to 40 seconds and then take a rest by doing some deeper breathing for 15 to 20 seconds. If you like to be organised and have a passenger, you could make a printed list of about 15 exercises to fill that amount of time. Otherwise simply go with the flow and feel what’s right for you. Who know it could be a regular practice that you implement into your life.

Many involve singing songs and nursery rhymes, where I use ha ha words instead of the actual words. This keeps the flow of laughter going better than the actual words of the song or rhyme. Words can lead to too much left-brain thinking, which we want to get away from in these moments. Our aim is to use the left side of our brain more in spontaneous and playful exercises. 

Here is my list and no doubt if you are able to be in touch with your playful aspect, you will come up more ideas when you practice Laughter Yoga in the Car.

1.            Laugh at other cars' features, such as number plates, colour, design etc.

2.            Laugh at anything that appears or disappears in your view.

3.            Laugh at yourself with something you have done that strikes you as funny.

4.            Sing a nursery rhyme using ha ha instead of words. Suggestions follow.

5.            Ba ba black sheep, Polly put the kettle on, London Bridge is Falling Down.

6.            Gibberish laughter, talking gobbledegook language.

7.            Supressed laughing.

8.            Laugh at signs.

9.            Cellphone laugh. Pretend you are sharing a laugh over the phone.

10.         Royal or shy laugh, if it is safe to use one hand with a pretend wave.

11.         Body part, point to, touch or imagine pointing to a place on your body.

12.         Gradient laugh. Laugh in different gradients, soft and quiet, becoming loud.

13.         Lion laugh. Good for thyroid gland. Put tongue out and laugh.

14.         Silent laugh. Laugh both to yourself and with others, keeping mouth closed.

15.         Kookaburra laugh. Laugh like a Kookaburra, like ‘whoo whoo whoo ha ha ha

16.         Body parts, “I love my knee, ha ha ha. I love my shoulder, he he he” etc.

17.         Mad Scientist laugh.

18.         Find your Laughter centre, touching or imagining parts of body and laughing.

19.         Witch. Laugh in a high pitch like a Hansel and Gretel witch.

20.         Father Christmas – appropriate as it is fast approaching. Ho Ho Ho.

You may not choose to use set exercises as outlined above. Alternatively, you can laugh spontaneously when there are breaks in the traffic; sitting at the traffic lights. You could point to the traffic light and laugh as loud as you like until it changes, or simply and easily hum away to yourself, breaking into soft gentle laughs. The laughter can vary between soft and loud.

Remember to laugh more, each day if you can and take the spirit of laughter with you along your merry way, wherever you go. The more you do it, the better you will feel. Your energy will be increased, your joy enhanced and life will take on a different hue.

Best of luck,
Wishing you Lots of love and laughter,
Lynette Mitchell xo

Please email me to receive my newsletter, or sign up on Laughter For Living.

Disclaimer: This post is written from my personal understanding and experience and is not to be misconstrued. The advice given is general and I am not a medical doctor, taking responsibility for how it is received, my intention is that posts will be supportive and assist in living a more holistic life.

Stress, Suggestions and Using Laughter

What does the word stress bring up for you? Very likely it will be negative because the media influences us that stress is ‘bad’ and we are directed to find relief from it with buying, eating, drinking, holidaying etc. Many people are so accustomed to living in a stressful manner and may not realise that there are ways to combat it. It can be that when we our time is restricted, it is beneficial to feel under pressure and we can achieve that without sending our bodies into a stressed mode. In fact it can be uplifting and energising, rather like self-testing or facing a challenge. And the word challenge is bandied about these days, as one to use instead of one that conjures up negative tones such as difficult or hard. A challenge helps us to get out of our own way and get things done, especially if we are procrastinators. I can relate to that. Our attitude is our choice and it can be small things that help us to feel in balance when our life is full of demands. We may feel stuck and often have little choice of changing things for the time being.

From my experience and many others, laughter, exercise, gratitude, good diet and meditation are imperative to live a fit and well life. Incorporating laughter into your daily life is highly beneficial. Laughing helps you to improve your sense of humour and bring lightness, upliftment and joy. When life throws you a lemon and you feel lost, being able to laugh can save the day and give you enough strength and hope to keep on going.

Meditation helps deal with thinking too much as alternatively things blow out of proportion and our mind will be in a constant whirl. We do not need to think and things frequently seem worse than they really are when there will be light at the end of the tunnel. I believe that whatever comes our way we can deal with and will ultimately makes us stronger and wiser.

Speaking of laughter, I have found it to be a fantastic addition to my life. It has helped me with the physical exercise aspect and in other ways, including bringing a lightness and energy into my being. I love being involved with Laughter Yoga and grateful to the Laughter Yoga movement Founder, Dr Madan Kataria who developed Laughter Yoga into a simple exercise routine, which he calls ‘laughing for no reason’. It is scientifically proven that the body cannot differentiate between real and fake laughter. What begins as pretend laughter still releases positive endorphins into our blood stream and what began as an exercise quickly turns into real spontaneous tummy wobbling laughter.

How we can learn to laugh easier is to be in a group situation, such as a Community Laughter Yoga Club which assists us to learn to laugh more freely. Before we go I will leave you with an example of how to do this laughing for no reason thing. Once you learn the art to laugh, you will discover there is no limit to your laughter creativity. You will find yourself laughing more and longer. You will re-invent yourself. The more you learn to ‘laugh for no reason’ the simpler and more spontaneous laughter becomes.

An important hint first up is to recognise the benefit and have the desire to laugh more for the many health benefits that it brings. The next step to help you lighten up and heighten your sense of humour, find everyday things, in fact anything at all, to practice laughter and laugh lightly at them.

Try the following. Begin with a quiet little chuckle, chortling away, make it bigger and louder, if it is appropriate, depending on where you are physically. Say to yourself, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, incorporating breathing which goes as follows. Breathe in and as you breathe out, say either silently or out loud, ha ha ha ha ha ha and you can add some he he he’s too. It is very good to incorporate laughing and breathing, which is why it is called Laughter Yoga. There are many other Laughter Yoga breathing exercises, which I am happy to forward to you upon request. Also you will find more about them on my website or you might be able to come along to the free community Ferntree Gully Laughter Club, which meets on the 2nd, 4th and 5th Sunday morning at 10.30am.

Love and laughter blessings to you,

Lynette Mitchell.

Please email me to receive my newsletter, or sign up on Laughter For Living.

Disclaimer: This post is written from my personal understanding and experience and is not to be misconstrued. The advice given is general and I am not a medical doctor, taking responsibility for how it is received, my intention is that posts will be supportive and assist in living a more holistic life.

The Seniors Festival, Flexible Time, Goals and Renewing One's Self

Feeling respect and honour is important and coming up in October we may be prompted to feel gratitude, respect and honour for the seniors in our community because of The Seniors Festival, officially in Victoria the 4^th to 11^th October. In the Knox district there will be activities throughout the whole month of October. It culminates in a closing ceremony on 31st by the Royal Australian Air Force Big Band. Also it can serve as a timely reminder about our local laughter club which has been laughing away for 10 years. I invite you to experience what we do at the Ferntree Gully Club, which meets on the 2^nd, 4^th and 5^th Sunday at 10.30am. You will enjoy yourself, whilst probably enjoying a new experience. Laughter Clubs gather together in great community spirit and practice laughter yoga. This is a form of physical exercise which is loads of fun and is fun, energising and uplifting. More information is here.

Seniors Festival I am looking forward to the Seniors Festival this year, which has an enormous variety of community activities throughout Victoria, many free ones, like our Laughter Club. We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to the Knox Council for featuring us in the Knox Council Seniors Festival Information Booklet again this year. We are featured on page 19 and if you do not have the booklet, you may pick it up at the Council or contact me. I have several and am happy to post it, hand deliver or email to you or else here is the downloadable PDF (21 page) link.

Use It Or Lose It There is an important and from my experience to be true, a well-known saying to ‘use it or lose it’ and surely this can apply to many things in our lives. It could be true too that when we become more aware of decreasing something in our life, such as flexibility or fitness, it is also true that when we apply ourselves, we are able to regain it or significantly improve over a period of time. This may take considerable effort and application and mean that we do need to rise up out of our comfy chair to exercise or whatever it is that we know is in our best interests and might have been putting it off. Effort applies to so many things that are worthwhile and another well-known saying is ‘practice makes perfect’.

Time Can Be An Issue For You  Another issue may be time. If you are like me, you will agree that we can fill our lives and become busy with a variety of interests which may take up a lot of our time and energy. Even everyday things such as looking after ourselves can take up a lot of our time. A different and more inviting way of looking at how much time we have can be to feel and know that we have enough time. Time can be experienced as stretchy, even standing still and even become quite flexible. For this to happen we may need to change our mindset, particularly when our self-talk is about there not being enough time. We could be more positive and each day say to ourselves, ‘I have enough time to do what I need to do’. There are counselling exercises which help evaluate where we place our time and one is a fun one, having a dozen cardboard cut-out egg shapes and distributing them into various baskets. It helps one to see where there is an imbalance whereby what we are doing will clearly not enable us to reach our goals.

Goals  Of course as a foundation, you want to know what your goals are in your life. This includes personal, professional, spiritual and community goals. Does this bring up for you a need to revisit your goals and figure out how you are in reality spending the hours in your day? I know I tend to go with the flow a lot and can certainly improve in this area and have been working on achieving a greater balance in what I do from day to day and improving putting more time into my spiritual, or self-mastery wishes.

Look At Your Life In A New Way And Take Action  The simple thing of changing the way we view our life can be energising in many ways and of great benefit on every level, whether to ourselves, our family, friends and members with whom we work, or groups to which we belong. When we apply ourselves to regaining or keeping ourselves as fit, healthy and involved as we would like to, we will be rewarded. (Not that we do things seeking rewards.) This may require a far greater amount of effort and attention if we have let things go too far. It is never too late to turn over a new leaf and life can be very forgiving as we adapt to what our current motivating force is. All is not lost and we will find more pleasure and meaning in our lives when we follow our heart. When we are surrounded by happy people we feel happy and in the same way, when we are in tune with our bodies and our life, including our hobbies, we frequently mysteriously connect with and are drawn to likeminded people.

Summing Up  Seniors Week is coming up Victoria wide 4-11 October and in Knox, right throughout the month, with many wonderful activities to participate in all over Victoria, many of them being free, including your local Ferntree Gully Laughter Club, which you are warmly welcomed to attend. We need to keep active in order to maintain our fitness and flexibility. Let your self-talk be that there is enough time. Revisit your goals and evaluate where you are investing your time. Review your life and view it through new eyes in order to feel more energised and involved and lastly – do things that bring you joy.

Lynette Mitchell runs the free community Ferntree Gully Laughter Club, phone her on 0425 799 258. Besides this she sees clients who need counselling, life coaching or laughter yoga sessions.

Contact details: Lynette Mitchell

Phone: 9763 5475

Mobile: 0425 799 258

Email: lynette@laughterforliving.com.au

Website: www.laughterforliving.com.au

Disclaimer: Information shared here is from my personal understanding and experience. Advice given is general and as I am not a medical doctor, take no responsibility for how it is received, my intention is that articles will be supportive and assist in living a fuller, holistic living life.