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<\/a><\/p>\nOn a Monday evening, I arrived at Better Health Chiropractic, on the tails of two elderly women who were having trouble navigating the door buzzer. This confusion elicited the first laughter of the evening\u2014the kind of nervous, conspiratorial chuckling that mitigates awkward urban encounters. As I waited for the class to begin, surrounded by brochures about back pain, I eavesdropped on my fellow laughter yogis. \u201cSo I\u2019ll be laughing at the U.N. at noon tomorrow\u2026.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m always happy to meet anyone who laughs.\u201d \u201cOh, he\u2019s a natural!\u201d \u201cDo you know Laughing Laura? She was on the World Laughter Tour.\u201d There was talk of people named \u201cVishwa\u201d and \u201cKitaria.\u201d One man spontaneously stripped down to his LAUGHTER YOGA T-shirt and gave me an encouraging grin.<\/p>\n
The chiropractor, a cheerful gray-haired man in a white lab coat, ushered about a dozen of us into a small exercise room. We stood in a circle and introduced ourselves. Most were white professionals in their mid-thirties. There were three rules: (1) make eye contact, (2) go with the flow, and (3) \u201cfake it till you make it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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After an introductory speech, the class began. We were set loose in the room to interact with our fellow yogis. The exercises involved building from a giggle to a full-blown laugh, producing a snort-laugh, pretending to laugh and then pretending to suppress it, walking like a penguin, and speaking gibberish. I tried to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. At the end of each exercise we chanted, \u201cHo ho ho, ha ha ha!\u201d in unison and returned to the circle to receive instructions on the next exercise and information on the health benefits of laughter\u2014which kind of killed any levity the exercises may have kindled.<\/p>\n
I definitely felt self-conscious and was happy to be able to resort to the common vocabulary of fake-laughter gestures to ease my path around the room: raised eyebrows, sidelong knowing looks, throwing back the head in a \u201cgale\u201d of laughter, leaning forward conspiratorially, clapping each other on the shoulder, holding one\u2019s stomach or slapping one\u2019s knee, jabbing an elbow. At first it was hard to tell whether my classmates were \u201cfaking it\u201d or \u201cmaking it.\u201d But then I noticed heads turning toward one woman, who was obviously overcome with real laughter: tears streamed down her cheeks, she had to lean against the wall to stay upright, and she couldn\u2019t suppress her giggles even during the statistics. The sight of her was the only thing that brought a genuine smile to my lips.<\/p>\n
I was relieved when the class was over. Laughter is indeed a full-body workout. My neck and stomach ached, my cheeks hurt, I felt a quiver in my chest, and my throat was raw. But I didn\u2019t feel the adrenaline rush that comes with exercise or that follows a bout of real laughter. Instead, I felt the exhaustion of insincerity\u2014and relief at being free to shrug on my coat and return to my usual, humorless self.<\/p>\n