Laughing All the Way

In my practice the other day, I decided to focus on a little section of B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga that presents variations of salabhasana, or locust pose, and dhanurasana, or bow pose. All was going according to normal until I came to this variation:

Images from http://www.familyhistoryfiles.com

"Well, how hard could that be?" I thought. You see, reading the instruction I found that I was supposed to take dhanurasana and then simply roll onto one side, roll back up to center, then roll to the other side. Right. I'm always up for a challenge, though, so I decided to charge ahead. Once in dhanurasana, I try to roll easily to the right. Nothing happens. So I start rocking side to side, building momentum to roll over that frontal hip bone that keeps putting on the brakes. Rocking a little more, and I've got it! I'm going over! And over, and over, in slow motion, almost like a giant tree falling from a great height. Falling, until.... BOOM! I land on my right side with a resounding THUD. Instantaneously, laughter bursts through. Laughter so pure and hard and deep that before I know it, I've got tears streaming down my face, snot pouring from my nose, and I can hardly breathe. I haven't experienced an uncontrollable, riotous laughing fit from my yoga in some time. And it feels so good!

This got me thinking about "Laughter Yoga." I've heard brief stories about it here and there, and especially of it's purported health benefits. Yet, I believed it to be a very small, almost obscure facet of modern yoga. As it turns out, I was wrong. Watch the video below to see what I mean.



This comes as such a poignant reminder of the beautifully diverse tools that yoga can offer us to help heal ourselves and prevent future suffering. I just had a visit from my Auntie this week, who wanted to visit her old home of Hawai'i in the midst of her battle with lung cancer. She is the latest in a merry-go-round of family members to tangle with some form of the disease. I only had a brief visit with her and of course found that catching up on family stories took most of our time together, pushing a discussion of yogic healing techniques off to another day.

How perfect that my practice then led me to this easy, fun, and accessible exercise of laughter! Learning to laugh even when you feel you have nothing to laugh about is really the heart of what yoga is trying to teach us. If we can peel back the layers of suffering in this existence to find our pure joy within, then we have found our essence. It is then that no misfortunes can move us, and we will be able to feel peacefully content at all times. I will definitely be sending some resources to my Auntie, to get her laughing all the way on her path through this life.

It's so simple that we don't even think about it: laughter is good for you! What do you have to laugh about?

http://laughteryoga.org/

http://www.laughteryogaamerica.com/