Laughter Yoga

We're in that slow period now, as far as Lymphoma news goes. It's about six weeks until the ASCO conference, and I think researchers are holding on to all of their "good stuff" now, hoping they will make a big splash at that conference. But it's also too early for ASCO abstracts to come out, so there's nothing to read there.

What's a Cancer Nerd to do?

Go out and find something interesting, I guess.

I came across an article today about Laughter Yoga. It was emailed to me by a Public Relations group. I get lots of press releases about health issues from PR groups, and most of them have nothing to do with what I write about. I guess technically, this didn't have anything to do with it either -- not cancer or lymphoma. But I do take a yoga class once I week, and I certainly like to laugh, so I thought it was at least worth reading.

The email describes an article from the journal BMC Pediatrics called "Healing with laughter: the therapeutic power of laughter yoga in pediatric health – a systematic review."

The article describes research laughter yoga and its benefits for children. It's a review of several studies involving a total of 305 children who were taught laughter yoga.

So what is "laughter yoga"? It's a practice that combines laughter and playfulness with breathing exercises and mindfulness. It's not necessarily what many of us think of as yoga -- no downward facing dogs or warrior poses.  But it does focus on other things that are familiar to yoga practitioners, like mindfulness and breathing. 

I you would like to see Laughter Yoga in practice, here is a nice video from the Mayo Clinic. And this one from Celeste Greene reminds us to be playful for 5 minutes. No jokes -- just deliberate laughter. They made me laugh just watching them. But, honestly, I'm a very easy laugh. Ask my wife. 

The article collected data from studies about children, and it found some positive results. The children who practiced laughter yoga had a reduction in anxiety and stress levels. It did not seem to have an effect on clinical depression or self-esteem. But it did show an increase in Salivary Immunoglobulin A (SIgA), a measure of immunity. 

So there is definitely some good that comes from laughter yoga, at least for children.

I haven't looked into whether laughter yoga helps adults in the same way, but I can guess that it does. Laughter is a known stress relief, as is some deep breathing. It all kind of makes sense. 

So this is your reminder to stop every now and then and take a deep breath. And if you can, find something that makes you laugh. It might not help, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

In the meantime, I'll keep looking for any little gold nuggets of Follicular Lymphoma news that might be hiding out there.  

Take care of yourselves.