Off My Noodle

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Laughter Yoga Is a Real Stretch

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By now nearly everyone in the world knows about the remarkable health benefits of laughter. Hearty belly laughs release those feel-good endorphins, lower stress, and if you end up laughing so hard that milk spurts out of your nose, you’re probably burning calories too, even as your friends sidle away from you and pretend they’ve never seen you before in their lives. Laughing just makes the world a sillier, better place. (Maybe someone ought to send some Woody Allen books to famous sourpusses, like Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez?)

That’s why as a card-carrying member of a professional humorists society, I felt duty-bound to check out a new trend called “laughter yoga,” which is supposed to combine yoga breathing with unbridled laughter. Laughter yoga began in India, a place so crowded they could definitely use a few laughs. At last count, there are more than 5,000 laughter clubs throughout the world.

I already thought yoga was funny, especially when an instructor once tried to get me to bend my left leg up and over my right ear - from the rear. I was awed by students in that class who were made of far more pliable substances (rubber, perhaps?) and could successfully twist themselves into these extraordinary shapes, but my own sincere, yet ludicrous attempts to contort myself this way were a genuine laugh riot. However, laughing during yoga once got me into trouble, too. One turban-wearing, guitar-toting teacher opened his class with a Jeremiad on the futility of war, blocked chakras, and other things that didn’t strike me as all that relevant to getting in shape. Trust me on this: you will get kicked out of class on your asana faster than you can say “oooohhhhm” if you start giggling during a class taught by a yoga teacher who has had a humorectomy.

I figured, laughter yoga would pose no such risks, and it sounded so crazy, it just might work. But when we stood in a circle and Hilary, the group leader, told us that we were all very brave, I immediately had a feeling of dread. My bravery is tested enough on a daily basis by trying to raise four kids and working as a freelance writer. Hilary’s body was toned to such perfection that at first I wanted to cry, not laugh. Fortunately, I was distracted by a guy who had the name AL GOMEZ tattooed on his forehead. He must have forgotten his ID at home, I thought, but later he ‘fessed up that he was working on a Ph.D. in laughter studies, so perhaps walking around with AL GOMEZ on his forehead and testing public reaction was part of his dissertation. If that’s the case, things in academia are more dire than I suspected.

We had to introduce ourselves through a gibberish dialect of our choice - English was banned for the hour, and my lame efforts made me regret that I had paid little attention to Gibberish 101 in college. Next we were subjected to a “trust” exercise where one person stood in the middle of a circle and allowed herself to freefall into the group, making funny noises in the process. Bravery would really be an advantage here, so I quietly stepped out of the circle, channeling my inner great-grandmother from Russia: “You’re going to stand in the middle of a group of strangers to see if they’ll catch you if you start to fall? Are you meshugga?”  This may strike you as paranoid, but remember, paranoia is an art - I just make it look easy.

Too bad they hadn’t invented laughter yoga back when I was in college, and could instantly unleash my sense of restraint to “blow up” a laughter balloon under my armpit and make appropriate noises as I let the air out, like we did in drama classes. But now? I’d rather struggle to get a perfect “downward dog” pose than romp on all fours and bark at the moon. I wondered: Was everyone else really having fun, or were they also faking it, like me? And I also wondered: why go for pretend laughs when there are plenty of real laughs to be had if you just hang out with your comically gifted friends, read some P.J. Wodehouse, or rent some Steve Martin movies? 

I cheered up when the hour drew to its merciful close, until we had to sit in a circle to share our feelings. “Sharing feelings” probably began here in California and has spread faster than swine flu around the world, and on behalf of my native state, I apologize. But then I worried: maybe the years had just made me too repressed, my mirth gland manacled shut. Maybe I was no better than that humorectomied yoga teacher! If so, it would explain why I hadn’t had any fun at this dumb laughter party.

Thankfully, one brave young man shared his feeling that the evening had struck him as a bunch of piffle and bushwa. (I have translated on his behalf. His exact words are not printable here.) That’s when I burst out laughing, my first genuine, endorphin-releasing laugh of the night. Finally, the class got an honest laugh out of me!

As I left the building, still giggling, I was just as convinced as ever that laughter is still the best medicine, but that some prescriptions may have unpleasant side effects.

Posted by judy @ 05:04 PM • (36) Comments