Laugh­ter can be so con­nect­ing.  I’m sure you’ve had those moments…moments where you’ve started to laugh, and it’s taken you to a very good place.  It’s like you can feel the stress leav­ing your body, like every­thing seems a lit­tle bit lighter, like at at that moment all is good and right in the world. 

Today I have a spe­cial guest and per­sonal friend here with us — Katie West, from The Lev­ity Project.  Katie’s life mis­sion is all about bring­ing more joy and lev­ity into our world. She does this in a num­ber of ways — every­thing from coach­ing clients on incor­po­rat­ing laugh­ter into daily activ­i­ties to pub­lic events of bring­ing laugh­ter and light­ness out into the world.

Is laugh­ter easy for you?  Per­haps some­times it’s not.  Maybe it feels awk­ward to laugh in some sit­u­a­tions.  It’s one thing to laugh behind closed doors.  And it can be another alto­gether to laugh in a pub­lic place.  What will peo­ple think? 

Below, Katie shares a part of the jour­ney she has been on to get to where she is today.  And today that is a place that is very much laughter-filled!  Was it always this way for her, though?  Con­tinue read­ing, as Katie shares.…

The Prac­tice of Say­ing Ha Ha!

photo credit: Drewski Mac

“I will not play tug o’ war. I’d rather play hug o’ war. Where every­one hugs instead of tugs, Where every­one gig­gles and rolls on the rug, Where every­one kisses, and every­one grins, and every­one cud­dles, and every­one wins.” ~ Shel Sil­ver­stein

More than three years ago, I invited my hus­band to come with me to a laugh­ter class as a date. We had never heard of it.   Upon arriv­ing at the class, the leader, Jen, explained how laugh­ter yoga was the prac­tice of laugh­ing for no rea­son and that it was a body-mind well­ness approach.   Jen told us that our brain does not know the dif­fer­ence between real laugh­ter and fake laugh­ter, so by just say­ing, “Ha, Ha, Ha”  we feels as good as if we have really been crack­ing up over a joke or with a good friend.

Imme­di­ately, I loved the concept.

But halfway through class, when we began the laugh­ter yoga exer­cises, I was wide eyed with dis­com­fort.  Hav­ing always shied away from the stage or doing any­thing in which I looked “fool­ish”, I found myself qui­etly going through the exer­cises hop­ing no one would see me.  Peo­ple all around me were hav­ing a grand time, some really laugh­ing and some just prac­tic­ing say­ing “Ha Ha Ho Ho.”   I was still trapped behind a forced smile of awkwardness.

Then, a petite woman came up to me and started doing “hum­ming laugh­ter”. It was if she could read the dis­com­fort in my eyes and was encour­ag­ing me to have fun as she hummed exu­ber­antly.  Her easy pres­ence made me burst out laugh­ing.  She was not caught up in what I thought of her or what any­one else thought. She was caught up in sim­ply hav­ing a good time for no rea­son at all.

I mar­veled at this free­dom.   Then, moments later, a man came up to me and shook my hand excit­edly as part of another exer­cise.  Only, he did not let go when I tried to and just kept shak­ing and shak­ing until I was laugh­ing so hard, I could barely stand up!  It was as if he was help­ing me to shake away any ner­vous­ness or self-judgment.  Finally, I began to relax into the joy of it all!

By the end of class I was rolling on the floor with every­one else in hys­ter­ics over NOTHING!  The laugh­ter was real and felt so free­ing to just laugh with­out think­ing some­thing was funny, yet at the same time every­thing felt funny.

I still remem­ber vividly the ener­getic shift in my body as my hus­band and I re-entered the cold, win­ter air that night.  It was a buzz that lasted long into the spring.  That was the first win­ter I loved liv­ing in a cold climate…I kept laugh­ing to stay warm!

In the years since that class, I have watched time and time again, how laugh­ter frees me up from wor­ry­ing what I “should” do to what feels right deep within me to do.   I find that prac­tic­ing laugh­ter allows us to con­nect to our­selves deep within so we no longer put the same empha­sis on what oth­ers are think­ing or say­ing or doing.
 
Instead, we have the unique oppor­tu­nity to live within our hearts in this very moment. And I believe when we are able to do that, we have all that we need to approach each moment of our lives from an open and grounded place.
 
By bring­ing more laugh­ter into our lives, even in the chal­leng­ing times, we are invit­ing abound­ing joy to enter our expe­ri­ence.  From here, we can cel­e­brate the good that is present so much more easily.

I love look­ing back to that blus­tery laughter-filled win­ter night as a great shift in my life in which I stopped liv­ing the life I felt com­fort­able liv­ing and started liv­ing the life I knew I deeply wanted and had always dreamt of living.