Nashville’s Laughter Yoga Club Members Are Pretty Serious About Being Silly

We recommend the radio version of this story, since it’s something that needs to be heard to be understood.

If you don’t do theatre or improv comedy, kindergarten was probably the last time you stood around in a circle acting silly with other people — unless you practice laughter yoga. Those in Nashville who do say it has medical benefits, which have even been studied by a Vanderbilt University researcher.    

Like ashtanga, hot yoga or even nude yoga, laughter yoga also starts with breathing. But there are no downward dogs, warrior poses or even mats here. And all the exercises — including introductions — are meant to simulate or provoke actual laughter.

There’s quacking, speaking in gibberish, even laughing like opera singers — to name but a very few.

Marge Wozny, a clinical social worker, teaches about five laughter yoga classes in the city and leads Nashville’s laughter club. She jokes that she’s addicted.

“If I am not laughing at the laughter club at 9:30 am on Saturday, I feel like I need to call somebody in the laughter club,” she says.

Nashville’s laughter club is free, as per the vision of the physician who invented the practice 20 years ago.

Madan Kataria, a doctor in India, combined yoga breathing with simulated belly laughter because he thought childlike playfulness could make people healthier. So each exercise ends with a mantra straight out of pre-school: “Very good, very good, yay!”

According to some studies, laughter does have mild medical benefits. Ten minutes have been shown to reduce pain, stress and blood sugar, and even help with short-term memory. It has to be deep belly laughter — not fake laughter — for the full biochemical reactions to take place.

Vanderbilt researcher Maciej Buchowski has conducted a study on laughter. He says long-term scientific research is virtually impossible, but the practice can’t hurt, he says. “What is most important, it probably won’t harm the patients.”

To the laughter yoga club, the benefits are pretty real.

Most weeks, the oldest member is Naomi Faust, an 85-year-old with smiling eyes. She and her husband discovered laughter yoga when he was diagnosed with cancer. Laughter is so important to her, she went to a Smothers Brothers’ comedy show as part of mourning her husband’s death.

“My daughter and I went a couple of days after he passed, and I know it helped us so much,” she says. “We just let ourselves go and just laughed.”

She’s been coming to laughter club for more than three years, letting go as they laugh out childhood songs together, from “Row Your Boat” to “Polly Wolly Doodle.”

One woman, decades younger than most of the other students, told her teacher those singing exercises in particular helped her regain memory and coordination after a serious car accident. She’s now recovering and has decided she wants to become a laughter yoga leader herself.