Laughter Therapy

I have suddenly become very health conscious :) So, I have begun swimming lessons and also do some rigorous walking. Now, there is this park opposite to my home where I take my morning walk.

This park is where one can find a lot of activity going on at any time of the day. There is a nice music system which plays tunes according to the mood of the day. Every morning I can remotely hear some devotional songs and night times are meant for old kishore kumar songs :) When I walk in to the park, there is this girl in one corner, sitting in one of those make-shift wooden benches, hard at work preparing for some competitive exam. And there are 3 housewives who sit diagonally opposite to her, catching up on their daily gossip. And I also see a young man, doing Pranayama inside an enclosure in the park.

Now, the centre of attraction is this group of old retired men and a bunch of plump old women. They form a circle in the centre of the park and practice laughter therapy (or whatever it is technically known as). They are members of 'The Laughing Club'.

I have been doing daily rounds for about a fortnight now. And from day 1, I couldn't help observing their routine, to the extent that it has become imbibed hard in my mind! The first thing they do before every laughing exercise, is like a warm up to it. It goes like this "Oh Oh Ha Ha Ha" (x 4) followed by a count of 1,2,3 and 4 after which they laugh loudly. There is a leader of the pack standing in the centre (and whose laughter is the loudest of all!) who instructs (mumbles rather!) them as to which exercise they should do (read laugh). And there is one elusive old woman whose laughter just rings at a very high frequency, sometimes drilling into my head - I still haven't found the source! Here are some names I hear from the leader - 'Silent Laughter', 'Laughing at oneself' and the more interesting 'Chinese Laughter'and 'Japanese Laughter' etc..The group also takes small breaks inbetween their exercises to go for a stroll. But of what use will a laughter therapy be, if the laughter is not natural, from the bottom of the heart and instead, induced out of force, I wonder!

The bottomline is this - whether the exercises benefit the old people who stand there everday practicing it, or not, it sure gives me enough laughter therapy to last through the day :)