I have decided that people do not laugh enough. They don’t smile enough for that matter, either. Yes, I do realise that I now live in the BIG CITY and not the small suburban town where the same cheery, toothlessly grinning, little old man would greet me daily with a jovial “Good Morning!” on my way to the bus stop, but really, is it that difficult? One woman today looked scared witless when I smiled at her, as if I was some sort of deranged lunatic, or about to rob her. Neither assumption, of course, being true. (Well, definitely not the latter.)
Anyways, upon pondering this sad realisation, I got thinking about the past summer. I was at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire (Go, go, go- Best thing since,well,anything. GOOOO.) with a dear friend, whom I somehow managed to coax into taking a Laughing Yoga workshop with me. Safe to say that once she stopped giving me the WHAT-THE-@*$!-ARE-WE-DOING-HERE eyes, it was heaps of fun. And crazy. Mainly crazy. The workshop involved different breathing exercises to help loosen up and engage the different parts of your body used to laugh (all very techy, indeed). Soon enough, we were all “Ho-Ho-Ho-ing” and “Hee-Hee-Hee-ing” around the tent like a mixture of Father Christmas’ after one too many sherries and teeny tiny pixies on crack. I kid you not. The very best part was at the end, when we all had to lie on our backs and release any of the laughter we had left. For a good twenty minutes, there was utter uproar, and any second’s silence would quickly descend into a cacophony of giggles once more. Passersby looked baffled and bemused, most likely believing we were all about to be carted off to Bedlam. Thankfully not. We left feeling invigorated, light, wonderfully hippyish and above all, happy.
So here is what I don’t get: the workshop was basically a big group of people being silly and having fun and laughing lots. So why doesn’t this seem to happen very often outside of such things? Maybe people just don’t have the time to laugh anymore, or life is just too stressful. If only they’d realise that there is a blindingly obvious and simple solution: LAUGHTER. It’s free, reduces stress, and makes you happy and beautiful.
Just do it, people! It works. Promise. 
