Finding the Funny

I was chomping on a veggie burger in the break room at work when one of my coworkers asked me what I thought about laugh therapy-I'm known as the funny one at my job. She went on to describe an Oprah show in which someone on the production staff went to therapy where the participates stand around and laugh and laugh. About nothing. Then they look at each other laughing and start laughing-that's funny so I started laughing. I told my co-worker that fake laughing seemed really stupid and one should just, "find the funny," it's everywhere.

Just got back from googling, "laugh therapy and Oprah" and discovered laughter yoga, an organization dedicated to promoting the benefits of laughing for no reason and imparting techniques of laughter in order to create spiritual understanding. According to the website the movement which began in 1998 has expanded to 4000 "laughter clubs" in over 24 countries. The therapy combines yoga movements with simulated laughter exercises. Of course we all know about the medical benefits of humor, but why must it be fake. The website proudly touts that the sessions prove that, "you do not need a sense of humor, be happy, or have a reason to laugh." Damm, why do I feel so sad now. Life has become so complex that people need to go in a room with other comically challenged to laugh themselves into a gaseous explosion. Maybe my parents raised me wrong but I thought the whole point of being a human was laughing my ass off.

It's is not my intention to belittle this organization-I am sure there are plenty of people who really need a good chortle- but I am troubled by the simulated part of the therapy. Why fake a guffaw or chuckle? . The banner on the website states that they are a, "Global movement for health, joy and world peace." I'm not touching the last article in that triad except to relish a memory of Sandra Bullock in the movie Miss Congeniality. Dr. Mandan Kataria says that the human body does not know the difference between emotional laughter or simulated laughter and that the health benefits are the same: lower stress, better immune system, lower blood pressure, etc. No argument from me there. But what about joy when the class is over does the person return to his/her original humorless state. Can they achieve joy without focusing on the reason they are joyless? The idea of feigning the byproduct of an emotion seems off to me. Why not work on rediscovering the happy gene. The therapy claims to free those individuals from their fears so they can cackle and snort when the opportunity is presented. If it works then more power to them, on the other hand, the movement appears to be another one of those," they're is something wrong with you, pay me money, and I'll give you a twenty minute laughter high." The laughter clubs are free but the classes are not.

Finding the funny
My revolutionary therapy involves looking at the world for the express purpose or laughing at it or those within it. There is funny everywhere, we just need to be alert or we may miss it: the man obsessed with his blackberry who walks into a light poll on Madison Avenue; the woman stuck in traffic on I-95 extracting a hardened snot from the upper reaches of her nose; and the child on the subway smirking at the contorted face of a stranger. I recommend we all watch people trying to parallel park an SUV into a space to small for a Yugo. The starts and stops and 90-point turns are hilarious. One time my dearest friends and I drove home after a video-store induced fight. We all had our own opinions on what to rent that night. Now, I can't recall who won, but a sofa positioned in the exact middle of the road dissolved the tension into an epic giggle fit, the kind that only need to be recalled by a simple, "remember the couch."



I've changed the banner on the top of my site, I figured people may be tired of my fart joke. The picture, which I took in Placencia, Belize, illustrates my mission for this blog; consider it for a moment and find the funny. DO IT NOW! Good, thanks. I realized that is what I do. No matter what I write about, or think about I always find the funny, the strange, the weird, and the quirk.
The laughter train in Finland, courtesy of laughteryoga.org. Now, that is funny.