Forget massage, running, even yoga. The most relaxing fun your body can have without sex is laughing. A recent study at The University of Maryland Medical Center found laughter helps blood vessels function better. It’s also known to enhance the immune system, reduce stress, and ease aches and pains. And you can (carefully) count it toward your (slightly fading?) resolution to stay/get in shape (the website of Laughter Clubs International shows a cartoon with one person saying, “You look great! Working out?” and the other responding, “No, laughing out loud!” Ouch. But you get the idea).

You can even combine it with other movements in laughter yoga, also known as hayasa (laughter in Sanskrit) yoga. It’s a technique started by Madan Kataria, a Bombay-based physician, that involves dipping into a ‘laughter cocktail,’ Kataria told Yoga Journal. It includes “hearty laughter, greeting laughter, open-mouthed silent laughter, humming laughter, lion laughter (an adaptation of Lion Pose), and swinging laughter, with arm movement.” Students hold each one for 45 seconds and then do a series of breathing and stretching exercises. One site says of this style, “you don’t need to be happy, have a sense of humor, or even have a reason….” But now you do have reasons: your health, your heart, your blood vessels. And this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The earth laughs in flowers.”

For extra inspiration, check out this video on LIME of a seriously funny chuckling yogi.

Photo by Sean Hawkey