The Small Face of Traditional and Complementary Medical Applications: Laughter Yoga

Abstract

Laughter is usually acknowledged as a visual representation of happiness or feeling of joy. It is known that laughter positively effects human body physiologically and psychologically. Laughter yoga is an exercise composed of breathing techniques involving combination of relaxation and breathing exercises and unconditional laughter. Laughter yoga could be applied as a nursing intervention for decreasing severity of various disease (cancer, diabetes mellitus, etc.) symptoms and improving current condition (stress). Technological developments in health area and increased knowledge also changed the role and responsibilities of nurses; traditional and complementary medicine is reported as applications that can be used as nursing interventions. Laughter yoga application has been increasing and its effects are proven; however, there are only few studies on laughter yoga in Turkey in the literature. This review aimed to inform health professionals about laughter yoga and its effects, to represent how it could be used for improvement of health in context of evidence based practices.

Keywords

• traditional and complementary medical applications
• nursing
• laughter yoga
• yoga