World Laughter Day: Expert on easy ways to add laughter to your life

Laughter is the best medicine, it is said. When you laugh, your mood instantly lifts up and the stress melts away like magic.

But it is not just the short term benefits that laughter bring into your life, positive thoughts infused by it can improve immunity, act as a natural painkiller, and help deal with depression and anxiety. Laughter improves intake of oxygen and stimulates heart, lungs and muscles.

It also increases the release of endorphins making you feel good. Apart from helping you burn calories, laughter also helps lower blood pressure and cut down your risk of stroke or heart attack.

“Laughter is your birthright, a natural part of life that is innate and inborn. Infants begin smiling during the first weeks of life and laugh out loud within months of being born. Even if you did not grow up in a household where laughter was a common sound, you can learn to laugh at any stage of life,” says

Mukul Nagpaul, Fit India Movement Ambassador and Founder of Pmftraining.

Nagpaul says much like exercise and workouts, one should also begin setting aside special time to seek out humour and laughter. Once the habits is formed and humour and laughter become integral part of your life, one will find it it naturally in everything.

Here are tips shared by the fitness expert on how to boost the dose of laughter in your life:

Smile: Smiling is the beginning of laughter, and like laughter, it’s contagious. When you look at someone or see something even mildly pleasing, practice smiling.

Instead of looking down at your phone, look up and smile at people you pass in the street, the person serving you a morning coffee, or the co-workers you share an elevator with. Notice the effect on others.

Count your blessings: Literally make a list. The simple act of considering the positive aspects of your life will distance you from negative thoughts that block humour and laughter. When you’re in a state of sadness, you have further to travel to reach humour and laughter.

Spend time with fun, playful people: These are people who laugh easily – both at themselves and at life’s absurdities and who routinely find the humour in everyday events.

Their playful point of view and laughter are contagious. Even if you don’t consider yourself a light-hearted, humorous person, you can still seek out people who like to laugh and make others laugh. Every comedian appreciates an audience.

Bring humour into conversations. Ask people, “What’s the funniest thing that happened to you today this week in your life?”