Laughing? NOT Funny.

Once I was in this writing workshop, and the professor was being really weird and not making any sense, and then while a student was trying to explain his work, the guy fell asleep. The professor fell asleep in an eight person workshop, where we were all sitting around a table, and nobody else noticed until I nudged my friend Kate. And then she busted out laughing, which made me laugh really hard, and we were whizgigging for about five to eight seconds, when the professor woke up, and then asked whether or not he'd missed anything. Which just made me laugh harder. So then I tried really hard not to laugh, and I explained, I said, "No, you didn't miss anything. It's been a long day, I don't know why I'm laughing, I have absolutely NO reason to be laughing. I'm sorry." And I just kept on laughing and could not stop. The harder I tried not to laugh, I'd just look at Kate, and we'd bust each other up and laugh at each other trying not to laugh, and this went on for about fifteen minutes, when finally it just got really annoying and I started to get mad at myself for laughing, but I couldn't help it. At the end of class the professor asked me if I could keep it together, and I promised him it wouldn't happen again. I felt really bad for disrupting the class, but I hadn't laughed that hard in so long... or maybe ever at all, and I felt really good for a couple days.
Then two weeks later the professor died of congestive heart failure and liver disease, and the last class he ever taught was the class where he fell asleep and Kate and I couldn't stop laughing.
So, you see, sometimes laughing is not funny at all. But it still feels good.

Last night I went to this laughter yoga workshop with the inventor of laughter yoga--Dr. Madan Kataria. He is the Merry Medicine Man. In 1995, he was writing an article for a medical journal about the medical benefits of laughter for, like, cancer patients or something. And he was finding out that laughter was just so beneficial, that he decided to start a laughter club in Bombay, and everybody thought he was bananas. So he had a couple friends who were willing to join him, and they started out by telling jokes, but they quickly ran out of jokes, and as Dr. Kataria the Guru of Giggling will tell you, he has a very bad sense of humor. And it's true, he's not kidding. I asked him to tell me a joke, and it wasn't that funny. It was sorta funny, I guess, about how you never stop paying for marriage. But that's kind of tragic. Which is I think why Dr. Kataria is really on to something here with the whole fake laughter. So they started just laughing for no reason at the laughter club, and soon started inventing different exercises to get people to laugh, added in some meditation and breathing, and on the fifth day there was laughter yoga, and Dr. Kataria saw it, and it was good.

You've got to be a little bit of a whackjob to think of the idea of getting a bunch of people together to laugh for no reason. But I'm not so sure that Doc really cares too much about the ironies, and layers of humor contained within the idea itself. Each session starts off with everybody in attendance saying their name, laughing, saying where they're from, laughing, and saying what they do, and then laughing. An example is, "Hi, I'm Gabby...tee hee heee heee heee I'm from California and Germany... ehhehhh heheheh and I'm UNEMPLOYED BAHBAHBahahahahahahh!" You laugh at who you are, where you're from and what you do--so right off the bat you admit to the absurdity of all the labels you use to identify yourself, and can let go of what you think of as your position in the world and your expectations for yourself. Now in my case, there's a slight element of tragedy in that, because I think it's kind of sad that I'm unemployed, so that's why I laughed so hard at that part. My name is funny and where I'm from is funny, too I guess, but in a different way. That stuff is funny in the way that Dr. Kataria thinks things are funny--the unemployed part is funny because everybody else there was an accountant, and I felt a little silly so I diffuse the situation by laughing at it. There was that German hip hop group that sang about how comedy is reflected tragedy.

So what Dr. Kataria is hitting on here, I think, with his fake laughter thing is that humor and laughter are two different things, and are not married in any way. Sure, they're related, they're not mutually exclusive, but they are not codependent. We were sitting around fake laughing, and the doctor's fake laugh is really super super good and gentle, and I realized that my laugh is really vocalized, and sounds a lot like my cry. Dr. Kataria thinks this is ok, and he says often people cry and laugh at the same time at laughter clubs, and this is healthy.
After we introduced ourselves and sat in a circle laughing for no reason for exactly one minute, Dr. Kataria showed us a bunch of slides on a power point presentation he had, with all these tables and graphs charting endorphins and cortisol. Really dry stuff. And I realized: this guy is really serious about laughter. It's not funny for him at all. It's something you do for your health, like drink green tea, or take vitamins.
When you're laughing at one of these sessions, it's hard to tell what's real and what's fake, and who's laughing at whom or at what. We did this one exercise where you go up to someone in the group, and then stick out your tongue and lion-laugh at them. I really liked that one. Also, we were on the floor holding our knees in to our chests laughing, and when you laugh like that your laugh sounds really funny and makes you laugh extra hard. Which feels extra good. That's the thing, is that the more you fake it, the better it feels. Supposedly the body can't tell the difference between fake and spontaneous laughter, and it's in fact been demonstrated that fake laughter has more health benefits because it is often sustained for longer periods of time. Just giggling a little here or there throughout your day isn't as good as doing it with a group of people for ten minutes straight.
I supposed spontaneous laughter is often associated with humor, and that's why we think it's more authentic. But so often comedy is so closely connected with tragedy, or something incredibly humorous incites not laughter, but a smile accompanied by a thought "oooh, that was so smart and funny." Dr. Kataria wants us to be laughing in the driest sense--for absolutely no reason at all.

Now, I skipped open-mic night at Takeout Comedy Club to go to the laughter yoga workshop. I'm gonna have to say that I'm really confident that I made the right choice. Even though I think the best gift in the world is telling somebody a funny story, and one would think going to a show where a bunch of people stand up on stage trying to make you laugh would be better than fake laughing with a bunch of accountants, I laughed WAY more in that yoga studio than I ever have at open-mic night, and felt way better at the end. Even though I was menstruating.

I just saw three construction workers walk by carrying coconuts with straws sticking out of them and unwrapping cigars. All three of them the same--coconut and cigar.