My Critique of Laughter Yoga

Greetings all,

I did Laughter Yoga for the first time tonight. It was something I've been meaning to try. Basically you are guided through various activities where you are forcing yourself to laugh. The theory is that your body can't tell the difference between a fake laugh and a real laugh so either way, laughing is good for you. Forcing laughter generates real laughter. For me I didn't find that happening. In my own life yes sometimes forcing a smile makes me smile but I felt this whole one hour was forced so it didn't make me genuinely laugh. It was much too long.

I thought I would like it, but I just found it creepy. I've been doing improv for over 10 years and this laughter yoga had some similarities but it felt very contrived and actually odd. I prefer doing improv over this to laugh and have a good time. We introduced ourselves by saying our name and than laughing. There was one guy who has been tried to be a laughter yoga leader and he was quite the extrovert and overall annoying because he'd be talking back to the instructor. I think he was just being his extroverted self but I felt he was being disruptive. It just didn't jive with me.

There was one guy who also was trained to be a leader and he laughed so much. I think he had a good laugh but it just made me wonder. I forced myself to laugh but at the same time, I felt myself retreating inside my own head. It was just weird!

At the end they have us lie down in a circle where our heads are in the middle and we were to laugh for 10 minutes. I found it hard to laugh that long and probably after 3 minutes, my laughter was so fake and my jaw started to hurt as well because of my wisdom teeth. I think I took a break from the laughing because at that point it was annoying!

One of the games we did was to double high 5 someone and say 'your alright', although at some point I wanted to say 'you're awesome' because that's what I tell myself.

We also played some game where we were mud slinging and than we had to hug each other because the mud covers what we look like and so we are all the same. Again, it seemed really contrived to me.

I don't think I'd want to go back. It wasn't my thing and I prefer improv. Laughter yoga is like the creepy older uncle of Improv. The games aren't really that fun like in improv and it just seems like a lot of forced laughter. At least for me, I'm not a believer in forcing things and I think that takes away from the humour. I feel like I'm in that fake laughter mode and hopefully I'll get out of it. My qigong practice makes me feel good for the most part and I feel pretty happy in life because of it. I don't feel I am repressed. I guess laughter yoga isn't for me. It just was too creepy and I'm definitely one not afraid to step out of my comfort zone so if I find something creepy, it usually is because it is since I am not one that gets creeped out too easily.