A Laughing Matter: Hayasa Pranayama

The health benefits of Hatha Yoga pranayama are well established and recently I have started to practice Hayasa Yoga; laughing yoga. And while I’ve been concentrating the practice on my silent laughing technique I made a discovery: Silent Laughing is a kind of Pranayama.

Pranayama is the use of restriction of breathing to move the prana; the life force – through the body. BSK Iyengar demonstrates pranayama in this video and the wikipedia defines pranayama as the “restraint of the breath” and it is practiced to bring about “changes of consciousness”.

Laughing pranayama is just fun to do.

Namaste

2 Comments to “A Laughing Matter: Hayasa Pranayama”

  1. sfauthor 10 November 2009 at 10:35 pm #

    Nice posting. Do you know about these pranayama books?

    http://www.YogaVidya.com/freepdfs.html

  2. Kat Caverly 12 November 2009 at 7:25 pm #

    So I showed this video to Tom on Wednesday night. He chuckled and when it was over he said “people are going to think you’re insane.”

    He thought the funniest part was when I said that I had been doing it for “a week” and that struck him has comically absurd.

    I had to remind him that I was totally serious and then he said it was his “tongue in my cheek”. Let me tell you, seriously, that laughter pranayama works to help change your consciousness to a positive air.


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