When was the last time that you purposefully made a complete fool out of yourself?
I’m talking something like dancing around in circles while wildly waving your arms in the air IN PUBLIC and not at a dance club. If your answer is never, then you haven’t tried Laughter Yoga.
Through Laugher Yoga, I realized again today that getting out of your comfort zone doesn’t always have to mean hopping on a plane to a new travel destination. It can be simply trying something new in your own back yard – in my case it was Westpark in Munich, Germany.
Laughter Yoga was founded in 1995 in Mumbai by Dr. Madan Kataria.
Today there are over 6000 Laughter Clubs in 60 different countries. There are 60 different Laughter Clubs in Germany alone.
I’m a huge believer in yoga, and through my subscription to My Yoga Online I do yoga on a daily basis. But not all of my yoga experiences have turned out so well. I once attended a yoga retreat in Austria that freaked me out so much that I actually had to escape half way through the weekend! I was curious, but also a bit unnerved about trying laughter yoga.
Children laugh more than 400 times a day, adults a measly 12 times.
That’s what convinced me to go. The Laughter Yoga group in Munich meets in Westpark every Sunday morning at 11:00. The session takes place on a meadow overlooking a lake. The setting is beautiful (although it was very snowy today), but very public. My anxiety began to increase as I saw that quite a few runners and cross-country skiers would be witnessing me being utterly silly. We started by introducing ourselves by throwing around a rubber chicken. We then progressed into a variety of different exercises that started off as fake laughter, but soon through lots of eye contact with other participants and childlike playfulness, my laughter turned into real laughter.
Laughter really is contagious. But I’m not going to lie, I found laughter yoga very strange.
The instructor had warned our group of newbies prior to starting that we would likely to find it a bit uncomfortable, but that after coming to a few sessions it would start to feel more natural. I think it’s only fair to feel a bit strange when you’re making taunting childlike faces saying “Nanabooboo’ to complete strangers, or giving them a laughter shower. Or how about a polar bear back rub where you rub backs with other participants – all done while laughing unnaturally at first, but you feel so silly that it soon turns into real laughter.
The body can’t tell the difference between real and fake laughter.
At first, I avoided the very strange/amused looks we were getting from other people in the park, but by the end of the session I didn’t care and even started making eye contact with them – smiling and laughing like a maniac of course. I either made some people’s day a little bit brighter or gave them nightmares – it’s rather hard to say.