Your Original Laugh
Health is a Laugh-a-way
My name is Bharata Wingham. I did not invent Laugha Yoga. I merely made a connection between Yoga and Laughing. I later discovered that in ancient India it is called Hasya Yoga. Laughter can be used as a focus for meditation, and a form of breath-control, “pranayama.” Laughter has long been known to help us relieve tension, stress and anxiety. It was one of the first forms of therapy that man used to help himself and his fellow man to overcome depression.
Laugha Yoga is Yoga that anyone can do. It is for Every Body. To regain your Original Laugh is to touch the "indigenous" primordial part of you. The part that has been there since the beginning. Is still there, and will be there for all eternity. Just like your fingerprint is unique to your body. I'll bet that if you call your mother, best friend, or anyone who knew you really well and just start laughing on the phone they would know within seconds it was you. Your laugh is distinctly your own. My suggestion is if you want to find the real you, your true Self start with your laugh.
It is a myth that you need something to laugh about. It isn’t true. As a matter of fact, the America Heart Association did a study that proved conclusively that prolonged laughter periods had many positive physiological benefits. They included releasing T-cells in the blood stream, as well as endorphins, the “feel-good” chemical that the body produces to ward off pain. ALWAYS REMEMBER, YOU ARE PERFECTLY, IMPERFECT!
The benefits of Laugha Yoga include: BUILDS SELF-CONFIDENCE: by combining deep-breathing, and learning to quickly connect with people with laughter. LOOK YOUNGER: Laughter opens up the breathing, and helps alleviate high blood pressure and arthritis, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. BETTER HEALTH: Extended laughter builds the immune system by increasing the blood’s supply of T-cells, our body’s natural illness fighters. FEEL BETTER: Prolonged laughter releases endorphins, the body's natural painkillers, and causes the same natural high experienced by runners. HAVE MORE FUN: Finding humor in circumstances can help us to develop control over situations that disturb us.
Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath. "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take your breath away." Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its students.
Yoga is commonly interpreted to mean the modification of the mind-stuff (vritiis). One thing I began to notice in laughing meditation was that it was exceedingly hard to laugh and think thoughts at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson said, “I could not live without books.” I say, I couldn’t live without laughter! I’m so fond of it that I’ve arranged to meet with others several times a week to do just that!!
The Taoist principal of wu-wei, which translates as "non-striving" in the sense of ' "taking no action that is contrary to Nature” in other words, letting Nature take its own course."
A primary sin is to try to destroy laughter, humor, and fun; to try to make the other guy feel "This is not funny!"
[ie, guilty].
“There are no bad guys to the enlightened, only clowns.”~Homer Wilson “High Appreciation for Ludicrous” 🤡
“Into all eternity there crept a tiny mad idea at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh…For God has willed that laughter should replace each [unforgiving thought] one, and that his Son be free again.” A Course in Miracles, W pt 1. 193.9:5, T-27.VIII.6
My purpose in life is to bring healing laughter to the world, while having faith in the words of A COURSE IN MIRACLES, that the “world will end in laughter.” Which in my experience it does every time we laugh. The world of pain and seriousness comes to an end. We can’t laugh and maintain the source of all sickness, fear. We are attempting to raise "laughter consciousness,” “co(s)mic consciousness,” which truly becomes cosmic when the S of Self is realized. That is Self Real-I-zation, the real I.
We don’t necessarily always laugh outwardly, but inwardly as well, seeing the humor in our own life’s drama. You might say that laughter helps bring us to comic consciousness. Laughing at our selves brings us nearer to Co(s)mic Consciousness. Albert Brooks once said that "Comedy is laughing at the other". For example seeing an opponent slip on a banana peal. While I believe this is true, it is true only for reactive laughter. When we practice laugha yoga we laugh for no reason whatsoever.
Social life is comical, ludicrous, and tends toward hilarity because it is such a “put on,” an game of, “As If.” It’s a game-world, a pretense. So we need the strictest rules to keep the game going. Kids can sometimes cut through the masks and ask the most embarrassing questions! And the greatest pretense of all is that is it isn’t a pretense! Social life is a game of make-believe. Let’s pretend I’m a doctor and you’re a patient. I’m a lawyer and you’re a criminal. I’m a husband and you’re a wife.
We take on roles to play, to act out on life’s stage. It gets serious when we forget the made up character of our roles in life, the games we are playing. We then try to force the role beyond its ability to hold up. Just as when we will sometimes laugh involuntarily, in the middle of a heated argument trying our best to keep up the serious front.
Something in us sees the ludicrousness of the straining to uphold the artificiality of our masks. Sometimes we may fail to see the Cosmic Joke. of the seriousness of humor and play, and the humor of seriousness.
Over-seriousness is the pretense that you’re not pretending. Seriousness is a disease. Seriousness is a heavy dose of logic. But, laughter begins where logic ends. "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." Laughter and joy is the cure.
Seriousness leaves no room for laughter. Where sincerity is always open to the humorous. Room for a chuckle at least. To know why you are laughing is reasonable. But, to laugh without knowing why, for no reason, is the “peace that passeth understanding (reason).” The laughter that surpasses reason. A true Laugha yogi doesn’t laugh “because of” anything, but in spite of everything. He is in charge of his own laughter.
Practicing Laugha Yoga is a direct approach to the life of spirit and the spirit of play. It ignites our play-consciousness. Laugha Yoga is the Playground of Being. It reaches toward a theology about play, of play, by play and for play. (foreplay??) Laughter is a form of social medicine, a social lubricant and solvent in living.