The Laughter Club

For my Biology class, our professor provided extra credit opportunities he called "safe activities." One of these safe activities was held at SWIHA (South West Institute of Healing Arts). This place is as hippy-ish as it sounds. It's essentially a school where people can earn really strange certificates and degrees like: western herbilism, hypnotherapy, aromatherapy, Chinese Shamanistic medicine and palm and foot reading. As a part of the school itself, they also offer classes to the public. One of the classes, which was one of these extra credit opportunities was "The Laughter Club." It was taught by this older woman who was a "certified laughter leader" and who also taught "laughter yoga"...awesome.

First off Julie was extremely disinterested in attending the class, she hadn't been feeling well that day, but she finally gave in and came with me...what a sport. Then the craziness began. The instructor started off by explaining how laughter benefits our body...in fact she gave us this sweet little handout:


She then proceeded to use another handout:
to go through exercises we could do in order to use laughter as a stress reducer. Some of the exercises, which we all practiced in class by the way, included laughing as if you were a queen, laughing like you were walking on hot sand and laughing while pretending to be shy.

All of this, as awkward as it was, was exacerbated by the fact that a guy (a white guy I might add) with a turquoise turban showed up and was totally and completely unafraid of making a fool of himself. As ridiculous as he was, it was actually kind of refreshing to see someone not care about what anyone else thought. He must have got this from his mother, who by the way was there too, and who sang a solo at the end of class. All in all, we had a good time and are glad we tried it out.