Laughter yoga comes to Yk
Instructor aims to make students giggle until it hurts
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Friday, February 3, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Andrew Matthews is serious, very serious, about laughter.
Andrew Matthews wants Yellowknife to lighten up and have a laugh with yoga. His first official class is at Collective Soul Space tonight. - Jessica Davey-Quantick/NNSL photo |
The newly-minted yoga instructor is launching his first official session at Collective Soul Space today, but not with backbends and warrior poses. Instead, Matthews is bringing laughter yoga to Yellowknife.
"Laughter yoga is basically laughter therapy," he said. "It's getting people together in a group setting and kind of faking laughter until it becomes contagious."
Laughter yoga classes can take many forms, but most involve light stretching and general tomfoolery. Forced laughter or fake laughter plays a key role, until participants segue into genuine jocularity. A University of Oxford study found pain thresholds are significantly higher after laughter, and suggested that endorphins released during laughter might be the cause.
"Your body can't really tell the difference between fake laughter and real laughter. So after a couple minutes of fake laughter, you start to release endorphins, and start to feel good," said Matthews. "And then you start to loosen up and before you know it you're laughing whole-heartedly because laughter is so contagious. When you get a group of people doing it all together, it's such a really neat experience."
The former competitive snowboarder got into yoga as part of his snowboarding career. He found snowboarding hard on his body and yoga balanced that out. After he retired from a 10-year career in competitive snowboarding, he was certified as a yoga instructor.
"I think this is just like a way to bring another aspect of health and well-being into people's lives," he said. "Life can be stressful and really get us down if we don't balance that with having fun and being silly."
The born and raised Yellowknifer said he's hoping the city is full of people ready to get a little silly.
"At this point I would like to see it at least once a month," he said. "If there's more interest than that I would totally be open to doing it more often," he said.
The first class is tonight at the Collective Soul Space in the Scotia Centre.
