YOU HAVE TO LAUGH
Healing power of hysterics
Imagine a 60-something white farmer standing by the side of a dusty road surrounded by a dozen young coloured kids, the children of farmworkers, exhorting them to laugh. He imitates kick-starting a motorbike, he talks gibberish, he pretends he’s laughing at a joke someone told him on an imaginary cellphone. He makes himself look foolish. The children guffaw in glee. It would never actually happen, would it? But it does, every week. I know, because I am that farmer. Well, OK, I’m not a farmer, but I do live on a farm in the Cederberg, with genuine farmers all around me. And all the rest is accurate, especially the bit about making myself look foolish, which, it turns out, is very liberating. I have become a practitioner of laughter yoga, which is a thing. It was started by medical doctor Madan Kataria in Mumbai in 1995. It’s a simple, obvious concept: if laughing makes you smile and feel good, then surely the more you laugh, the better you will feel. Laughing at something funny is natural and it is free. All Kataria did was persuade people to laugh without the stimulus of a joke. If you force yourself to laugh for no reason, it often develops into “real” laughter; but if it doesn’t, no problem. Kataria cites research that shows your body doesn’t know the difference — the same healthy feel-good chemicals are released anyway.
The “laughter clubs” launched by Kataria have sprung up around the world, including in SA after he visited the country in 2007 and trained laughter leaders.
No one tells jokes in a laughter yoga session, but there are exercises calculated to get the mirth flowing, such as holding an imaginary cellphone to your ear and laughing at what you hear, or making silly sounds as you pour an imaginary milkshake down your throat.
I came to laughter yoga thanks to my wife, Lynn, who for years believed electromagnetic radiation, of the kind generated by cellphone and Wi-Fi signals, made her physically ill. So she seldom left the farm and became somewhat depressed by her social isolation.
Conventional doctors roll their eyes when you tell them you are allergic to cellphones, so Lynn looked elsewhere for relief and learnt about Kataria’s laughter yoga, which is good therapy for just about anything.
You can do it on your own, but it works better in a group because of the contagion factor, so she got together with two young sisters who work on the adjacent farm, and they brought their two primary-school-age daughters.
The effect on my wife was close to miraculous. Within weeks, if not days, her mood lifted and now she goes into the nearby town of Clanwilliam and laughs at everything, including her fears about cellphones. She used other mental exercises as well, but the laughing seems to have been the most powerful element in her recovery. She uses a cellphone now, which she had not done for four or five years.
There was a similar effect on the young girls. One of them was particularly damaged emotionally. Her mother was about 16 when she was born, her teenage father soon left and, five years ago, at the age of six, she was sexually abused by another worker on the farm.
At first she could not bring herself to laugh, but when she did, she blossomed. Again, the transformation was dramatic — she is suddenly more confident, happier, quick to smile.
I saw all this happening and had to try it myself. I had been a bit sceptical – it sounded too much like that Reader’s Digest feature “Laughter is the Best Medicine”, with its tired, unfunny jokes.
But actually it works. I forced myself to laugh, first with my wife, then with her group, and felt happier and better and more optimistic and carefree than I had for a long time. The forced laughter became real.
When you laugh with someone, you have to like them
The other thing that happens is the way you relate to the people you laugh with. I had known the sisters for years but we had seldom exchanged more than a few polite words. I gave them lifts into town and was nice to them in the kind of patronising, social-welfare way that middle-class people can afford to be.
I never thought the relationship would get any deeper. I was part of the white-landowner class; they were part of the impoverished coloured-labourer class. It’s a divide that will suck you in unless you actively resist.
Laughter yoga gave me an effective way to do so. I started laughing with the children from a more distant farm. I see them now as actual people with personalities and fears and aspirations, not just anonymous faces with hands outstretched for sweets as I speed past in my bakkie.
Many of these children come from homes where violence and abuse are part of life. Martin Combrink in Somerset West has conducted many laughter sessions with similar children. Combrink became a laughter leader after learning from Kataria in SA and in India.
He says common feedback he gets from the children includes statements such as: “Laughter yoga makes me happy and helps me to forget about my problems”; “I feel safe when I do laughter yoga”; “I like laughter yoga because I get to play with the other children”; and “I am doing better in school.”
When you laugh with someone, you automatically have to like them, even if it’s just a little to start with. You certainly can’t hate them. In a country like ours, laughter yoga should be mandatory for all.
We need to see Julius Malema, Floyd Shivambu, Steve Hofmeyr, Jacob Zuma, Helen Zille and Patricia de Lille in a circle, all laughing their heads off as Zille sends an imaginary tweet on her play-play iPhone.