(IN WHICH we re-discover that starting a new physical activity in the middle of New England Summer is not the brightest of ideas, and have reinforced for Posterity the time-honored human truism that A Little Bribe Never Hurts….)

We did our first laughter yoga session on Tuesday, July 21st.  With surprise and relief, I must admit that it went far better than I had anticipated.  Well, telling them ahead of time that we’d only be doing it for half the night and then they could go served to brighten their spirits.  It was kind of a bribe.  

Plus, it was oppressively hot and disconcertingly muggy.  There’s no A/C in this library, only windows on the west side of the room (with no hope of a cross-breeze), and a wall-mounted fan that at present doesn’t work.  We brought out several table fans from the back office, but like that’s gonna help when you’re jumping around laughing and clapping and spinning and hopping in 90-degree heat & 100% humidity, with the sun streaming in aggressively through giant panes of glass at precisely that hour of the day? 

I am NOT whining; I am simply reporting.    

The laughter yoga leader training manual talks about certain personality types you’re apt to find in your session.  One of these is called the Laughter Blaster, the person with the loudest, goofiest, most contagious laugh. Well, we had one, a lifer who’s a huge fantasy buffoon.  He really must have needed to laugh.  I’ve attended laughter yoga sessions in public, and have never seen this kind of naked “let’s DO this!” enthusiasm for the concept.  He was champing at the bit (everyone thinks it’s ‘chomping,’ but everyone is wrong.  It’s ‘champing’) to perform the silliest exercises suggested in the manual.  And I am using the term ‘perform’ accurately. 

At one point I read to myself the title of one, the “Kangaroo Dance” and said “We have no hope of doing that one.”  This guy says “What?” as if throwing down the gauntlet to the Cosmos.  So I read the exercise description to them.  And the guy starts hopping all over the room and laughing his fool head off.  He hopped so hard, his pants fell down.  I did not need to see that.  Everyone was laughing at his pants.

Before this hot, muggy night was through, we had hopped, shouted, giggled, clapped, stretched, laughed silently, and pretended we were airplanes buzzing around the room with our arms out & laughing at each other. We were exhausted. 

Laughter is work.  The Puritans banned it on the Sabbath [citation needed].  And they knew a thing or two about stomping out the natural joy God wired us for, you betcha! [common knowledge]

Them and those Calvinists.  I think those Calvinists used to pillory people who were found smiling on the Sabbath.  John Calvin, a real barrel of laughs.  What got his knickers in a knot?  There’s someone who needed therapeutic laughter! 

I hope he’s in Purgatory now, being shown South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut on an eternal tape loop with his eyes pried open like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.