Photo: Getty Images/Marcy Maloy

Mastering the three stages

Most sessions start with clapping and chanting, "ho, ho, ha, ha, ha." When you begin, keep your hands parallel to one another and make full contact—from fingertips to palms—when you bring them together. As you chant, maintain a smile, focus on your navel, and feel your abdominal muscles moving. You'll soon notice that clapping stimulates acupressure points on your palms and improves blood circulation throughout your body.

Laughter meditation, which is performed sitting or lying down, is the final stage. It is comprised of three types of laughing exercises: yogic, playful, and value-based.

Developed from yoga postures, yogic laughter includes lion laughter—practiced with the tongue thrust out, the eyes widened, and hands out like claws; humming laughter, which is performed with the mouth closed; and gradient laughter, gradually increasing and then decreasing the intensity of the laugh.

Playful laughter aims to convert forced laughter into spontaneous laughter. Techniques include shy laughter, mobile phone laughter, milkshake laughter—opening a phantom milkshake of chuckles—and more. Value-based laughter involves attaching special meaning to laughing, like greeting, arguing, and forgiving. In group settings, members rotate around the room greeting each other with a laugh while maintaining eye contact.

The health benefits

Laughing can be as much of a cardiovascular workout as many aerobic activities. It flushes the lungs with fresh oxygen, boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, and creates happy chemistry. Daily laughter can relieve stress and lift depression. "When you start laughing," says Dr. Madan Kataria, the 50-year-old physician from Mumbai, India, who founded laughter yoga, "your chemistry changes, your physiology changes, and your chances to experience happiness are much greater." Group sessions also create social interaction.

In 2005, after instructing yoga for 33 years, 51-year-old Jeffrey Briar became certified to teach laughter yoga and founded the Laughter Yoga Institute, which meets daily in Laguna Beach, California. More than 4,500 people have attended his beachside sessions.

Jeffrey implements the technique to relieve stress in everyday situations, like getting stuck in traffic. He boasts, "I can laugh myself out of stress in as little as 20 seconds."