There’s a scene in the movie Mary Poppins where Uncle Albert (played by Ed Wynn) gets stuck on the ceiling of his sitting room, buoyed upwards by uncontainable glee. Uncle Albert, it seems, was given to fits of laughter that literally lifted his spirits—along with the rest of him—right off the floor.
According to Madan Kataria, a Bombay, India-based physician, author of Laugh for No Reason (Madhuri International) and founder and president of Laughter Clubs International, laughter may indeed be the best of all medicines. Kataria has developed a form of laughter therapy called Hasya Yoga (hasya means laughter in Sanskrit) that combines deep, controlled breathing and stretches with various types of forced laughter.
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