Whether or not you’re in the mood to laugh, laughter yoga will crack you up – even those who prefer frowns to smiles will exercise their cheek muscles during a laughter yoga session. I had never done any type of yoga previous to this. I found it all somewhat strange, and even laughter yoga seemed an outcast in an already niche market. Many of the laughers were already there and were chatting amongst themselves when I arrived to the assigned classroom at Lakeland College. I felt out of place when I walked through the door – I was the only male in the room – and I felt like 15 sets of eyes were following my every movement. We would all be laughing together before long.
Lily Belland, an understandably joyful woman who studies education at Lakeland College, runs the laughter yoga program through the Lloydminster Laughter Club. She has been involved with laughter yoga for the past three years, but this is the group’s first year operating as a student association club at Lakeland College and they are looking for new people to laugh with. “It helps everyone,” said Belland of laughter yoga. “We want everyone, ages five to 100, to come and laugh with us.”Belland first explained how laughter yoga worked and told everyone to fake laughing at first if they weren’t able to laugh immediately.
We started with a clapping exercise activity. Belland said the word exercise sounded too formal, she thought activity sounded like more fun. The clapping starts with a chant “Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha,” said out loud four times. It’s followed by, “Very good, very good, yea!” At which point you are supposed to throw your hands in the air and wave them wildly and uncontrollably. I felt awkward, but what I was doing felt so childish that I had to laugh, it was impossible to hold it in. Though it was just a quick chuckle, it worked.
Next came a breathing activity. Our group stood facing each other in a circle. We held hands and walked towards each other, taking a deep breath and raising our hands as we did so. Once you are so close to the others that you could touch them, you are supposed to hold your breath for as long as it is comfortable while waving your hands in the air. It was embarrassingly ridiculous. At this point everyone in the room is smiling uncontrollably. In one activity, we were asked to pretend to be on the phone and simply laugh while walking around the room and making eye contact with as many people as possible. If you were faking your laugh at first, you weren’t after a few minutes of this.
In another activity we had to clap our hands against our thighs, walk around the room laughing and making eye contact with everyone. Again, what you’re doing is so out of the ordinary, so utterly insane that you have to laugh at yourself and the others for acting like crazed lunatics. Belland then led a few meditation activities. For the first, you lie down and take long deep breaths, humming while you exhale. At a certain point I found the collective humming to be so absurd that I snickered a little bit. After another breath that snicker turned into quiet laughter. My laughter prompted someone else’s laughter and before we knew it no one was humming anymore. I was keeled over on my side trying to stop.
I couldn’t.
I laughed until I was in serious need of oxygen and for some reason it felt liberating. The last part of the session was called hearts to the world. You hold your hands over your heart and send out positive thoughts to everyone you know. You start by thinking of just the people in the room, then to everyone in the building, followed by all of Lloydminster, then all of Canada and the world.
For me, though this felt bizarre, it gave me the opportunity to think about my family in B.C., my friends working in the United States and travelling in Europe, and the new people I have met during my short time in Lloydminster. Unexpectedly, despite being so far away from those people, this made me feel closer to them. It was surprising, but laughter yoga did more than make me laugh. For someone living far away from family or going through a rough period in their life, a little bit of laughter could go a long way.
Belland, 35, got into laughter yoga after a family crisis. “It was black and white,” she said. “When I went I felt like crying. By the time we were done, I thought, ‘I don’t remember the last time I laughed like that.’ It was so freeing. I just felt so able to handle what’s coming at you, able to smile – think about it, there’s a lot of people in the world who haven’t smiled in days.”If you would like to laugh, laughter yoga runs every Monday at 7 p.m. at Lakeland College, though they will be taking Thanksgiving Monday off. It’s completely free and everyone is welcome. “I really encourage the students to come out,” added Belland. “It’s such a stress buster and it will get them through exams.”