SACRAMENTO REGION, CA (MPG) - Take a deep breath. Hold it, hold it, hold it... and exhale with a giant, joyful belly laugh! You are about to experience the worldwide health phenomenon known as Laughter Yoga!

Linda Kalb Hamm, a certified laughter yoga instructor, offers an hour of exercises on Zoom on Tuesdays from 6 to 7 p.m. designed to encourage its participants to laugh for no apparent reason. No mats or poses are involved, and each session involves a variety of playful laughter exercises, spontaneous giggle meditation, and guided relaxation techniques.

Laughter yoga offers one a helpful way to laugh away the worries and stresses of the day, literally an opportunity to “laugh their angst off”, she whimsically believes.

Kalb Hamm completed her undergraduate studies in sociology and psychology at U.C. Berkeley and went on to earn her Master’s Degree in Education. Whether she is working with children, teens, adults, seniors or Alzheimer’s memory care patients, as she did prior to the onset of the pandemic, Kalb Hamm says she experiences that same contagious delight of childhood as her new and continuing students discover the relaxation and joy of unconditional laughter where all are welcome to learn.

She discovered laughter yoga in 2012 as a participant in the University of San Francisco’s integrated medicine therapy program. Kalb Hamm quickly discovered that sessions of laughter yoga offered her great therapeutic value in pain relief for an injured shoulder. She soon sought to become a certified laughter yoga instructor, later conducting sessions in a variety of settings, for groups of all ages. In all, she has taught thousands of students the basics of laughter yoga and has inspired many of her former students to become certified laughter yoga instructors themselves.

Kalb Hamm had hosted in-person laughter yoga sessions in Fair Oaks and the greater Sacramento area through the social media app, “Meet Up” on the second and fourth Monday of each month from 6:45 to 7:45 p.m. at Meridian Veterinarian Care at 9712 Fair Oaks Boulevard before shifting her sessions to Zoom in mid-spring due to the pandemic shelter in place orders.

“Laughter has two sources, one from the body, one from the mind. Adults tend to laugh from the mind,” she said, and all of us “have a child inside us who is wanting to laugh and wanting to play.” Laughter yoga is based on the concept of cultivating one’s “childlike playfulness”, she explains.

"We use judgments and evaluations about what's funny and what isn't," she says. Children, who laugh much more frequently than adults, laugh from the body. "They laugh all the time they're playing.”

Participants tend to be more female, than male, she’s discovered, as men due to cultural roles and responsibilities have to work a little harder to let go of that mindfulness and laugh playfully.

Dr. Mandan Kataria, a physician from Mumbai, India, is considered the founder of and chief proselytizer for laughter yoga, a movement that since 1995 has spawned 5,000 laughter clubs - in which people meet regularly just to laugh - worldwide. This interactive form of yoga for all ages and abilities, has inspired over 7,000 laughter clubs in over 100 countries. As research on the psychological and physiological benefits of laughter continues to grow, laughter yoga is gaining prominent endorsements from the medical community (Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Andrew Weil), media (Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, CNN, BBC) and  celebrities  (Oprah Winfrey, John Cleese, and Ellen DeGeneres).

Kalb Hamm begins each Tuesday laughter yoga Zoom session with a series of standard warm-ups. She starts by having people clap rhythmically and chant, "Ho, ho, ha, ha, ha" several times. She then tells her Zoom participants to take a series of deep breaths, filling their lungs fully with air and then each releasing a hearty laugh.

How do you laugh when nothing is funny? Just open your mouth into a wide smile and force the breath out. You may feel silly at first, she said, but when you're enjoying the experience with a group of people on Zoom or in person who are fully committed to laughing, the make-believe version often transforms into the real thing.

Next come the individual exercises. We soon look at the individual Zoom participants who have joined us in the session and greet one another with a laugh. The presence of the web camera is soon forgotten. Kalb Hamm encourages her participants to look into other people's eyes and urges all not to worry if their laughter at the beginning feels forced. In time, genuine laughter will come, and soon all are laughing along with one another.

Laughter yoga teaches its participants how to "laugh for no reason," without relying on jokes or humor or the critical mind. Its playful, child-like exercises allow the participant to chuckle long enough to reap the health, emotional and social benefits of spontaneous laughter.

Kalb Hamm said not only do many of us need to learn this new way to laugh, which emphasizes yogic breathing, acupressure clapping and hearty belly-bursting guffaws,  but we also need to practice this form of uninterrupted laughter for at least 15 minutes to fully reap the benefits.

“The psychological rewards can be a reduction of stress, anxiety, tension and symptoms of depression,” she said. “Laughter gives us hope and optimism to deal with difficult and negative situations that may challenge us. When we laugh together, we see the best in ourselves and none of our differences really matter,” she said.

Her free weekly Laughter Yoga group is open to all who want to learn to laugh for no reason. Join allies and members of Sacramento LGBTQ Center to see how the universal language of laughter can help enhance physical and mental well-being and add more joy and sparkle to your life.

Visit Kalb Hamm’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/LaughingMyAngstOff/
or her web page at LaughingMyAngstOff.com/ to register for an upcoming Zoom session and receive the ID code and password to participate. Upcoming sessions are Tuesday, December 22 and 29, 2020 from 6 to 7 p.m. She can also be reached by email at [email protected]