Well-being: take the path of joy with laughter yoga

It all started when, at 5, Valérie Jarraud was already giving massages to those around her in Croatia, she recalls. But the initiatory journey really began in India, years later. “To date, this is the most unsettling trip of my life. There’s a completely amazing energy there. When you arrive with a gram of kindness, it’s tons that come back to you, it’s tenfold, ”she raves. “It puts all our actions into perspective, all the vibrations that we can send out to the world, and what actually comes back to us.”

Valérie Jarraud describes herself as a “slasher, a real Swiss army knife”, who has lived several lives, tried many experiences. “I am someone who always needs to experiment, to enrich myself with many things.” She works in hotels, insurance, real estate, which have fed her to a certain point. “That’s the difference between Europe and Asia. Europe has gone abroad to look for what could enable it to enrich itself. And Asia has done the same job but inward.” So, at about 30 years old, she thought it would be good to go a little to look inside herself.

She then embarked on the path of personal development and took advantage of a trip to India to learn massage techniques and deepen an area that has always attracted her. “And, at a pivotal moment in my career, I thought it would be an opportunity to make it my job and to be able to offer it to others too.”

Laughter yoga to reduce stress and anxiety

It was during this Indian course that she became acquainted with laughter yoga. “I didn’t quite understand the idea. It was a bit amazing when my teachers exposed it to me. However, I tried, and at the end of the workshop, I felt so good that I said to myself there was something to dig into.” Once back in Europe, she ends up training. She is now a teacher of laughter yoga.

“We recreate neural connections,” she explains. We are going to allow people to do things that they are not used to or no longer do, like children, with childish exercises that allow them to put themselves in funny situations. And even if you force the laughter a little at first, it will allow you to laugh much more freely, much more spontaneously afterwards.

Indeed, the brain does not make the difference between a real laugh and a simulated laugh. When we smile, the neurotransmitters present on both sides of the commissure of our lips send information to the brain, which makes it possible to reduce cortisol and adrenaline, “to take its dose of happiness. Dose as a mnemonic device to retain all the benefits provided: increase in dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphin. In a way, you change the chemistry of the brain and after 10 to 20 minutes, you feel much better”.

Meet Valérie Jarraud here. She will provide training in laughter yoga on June 10 and 11 at L’Espace des Possibles in Meschers-sur-Gironde, near Royan (17).