Laughter yoga

I was at the Gaunts House Summer Gathering at the weekend down in Dorset. It's a hippie festival that's been going for a few decades, and true enough there was plenty of hair and tie dyed clothes. I was there as part of the ZenWays team manning the 24hr meditation tent. You'd never catch me at a hippie festival otherwise... ;-) We were taking it in shifts to meditate and be available to lead guided meditations for anyone who wanted to join us over the whole period of the festival (see picture below). Among the perks we got for volunteering was free entry to the festival and therefore to all the classes and workshops.

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One of the classes I went to was on laughter yoga (Hasyayoga) led by Paul Reeves (pictured right). Ever heard of it?

The practice is based on the work of Dr. Madan Kataria from Mumbai (popularly known as the ‘Guru of Giggling’) who came up with Laughter Yoga in the 90s.

On the serious side, it's known to have medically beneficial effects to cardiovasular health and mood, and thought also to help treat or reduce risk factors for allergies and asthma, arthritis, diabetes and a few other things (the science of laughter is no laughing matter...). But hey, whatever the literature says, it's just great fun!! It certainly lifted my mood, made my sides and diaphragm ache, my cheeks hurt, and I made far more close eye contact with strangers than is socially acceptable otherwise.

Rather perversely, laughter yoga practice doesn't involve any specific humour or comedy - although it quickly turns very humorous. So how do we start laughing without a seed joke? Paul insisted that, if you need to, "just fake it 'till you make it". Once you start, the fake laugh quickly becomes very genuine! Wikipedia says that "laughter yoga is the only technique that allows adults to achieve sustained hearty laughter without involving cognitive thought." Does all other laughter require cognitive thought? Maybe it does... In any case, this is the yoga part - letting go of cognitive thought, letting go of inhibitions, being in the moment.

He showed us an exercise to get us laughing if we simply couldn't get going. Imagine you're in a car, one hand on the steering wheel, one on the key in the ignition. Turn the key. Make the noise, go on... eh eh eh eh ha ha he he hum, vroom, ha ha ha!! LOL. Drive around on the power of your laughter. It's ridiculous. But it's got us started, right!!

He he, ha ha ha. He he, ha ha ha.

Another lovely (perhaps more serious) exercise we did was chakra laughing. Bear with me... We started by bringing our attention to our muladhara (root/base) chakra in our perineum and laughing a low ho ho in the belly. Then we gradually worked our way upwards. At swadhisthana (belly) we did a deep Father Christmas laugh (not too hard to imagine since Paul looks like Father Christmas himself! - or Gandalf). With our awareness at at the solar plexus (manipura) we did a slightly higher pitched ha ha ha, at the heart (anahata) a higher ha ha ha, at the throat (vishuddha) a high he he he, then at the 3rd eye a high pitched squeaky squawk laugh. Finally, visualising the crown chakra (sahasrara) we laughed silently (with, by now, a bit of a wheeze). Great stuff!

Doing this made me think of what your characteristic laugh says about you - does it betray where you are in their body, where you're blocked, or what your spiritual state is? Does it very from time-to-time, day-to-day?

Finally we finished in a group hug circle (very in-keeping with the hippie festival feel...) and laughed to each other. Wow, I was surprised, the energy generated in the space within the circle was almost tangible.

Highly recommended! Give it a go if you ever get the chance. You might have a laugh (sorry, had to).

ZenWays meditation tent at the Gaunts House Summer Gathering