Can
help Teens and Young Adults?
By Sindhu Ravuri
“noisy” form of meditation, comprises of a few minutes of pure laughter, where the group of participants sit near each other, releasing body chemicals in the process. Sindhu Ravuri: What would you say to convince others who are not sure if they want to join Laughter Yoga? Annie Goglia: I would say that they should approach it with an open mind. Many people think ‘Oh, it’s yoga. I need clothes, a mat, a certain level of fitness to even begin.’ You don’t need any of those things. You just come as you are. We don’t do poses or anything; we are just about con- necting and laughing together. If it feels fake to you and you feel like we are just laughing for no reason, then you should approach it as a practice and a routine, just like meditation is a routine and brushing your teeth is a routine. The body does not know the difference between fake and real. If you just put on your experimental cap and try it, you will find that it does transform your mood and health in a positive way. AG: I think one of the beautiful things about laughter yoga is that it is transferable to life. It teaches lessons that can be used on a day to day basis. When we talk about just something as simple as a greeting laugh, where you’re con- necting with a person on a very basic level, you don’t need to know anything about the other person. You don’t need to know their culture or their language — the laugh itself serves as a medium for your connection. It has that capac- ity to connect people very quickly on a very primal and universal level. We can also learn to laugh at things that we don’t nor- mally laugh at. We practice arguing and we will engage in heated arguing in basically gibberish, and then practice using laughter to forgive each other. It helps us that it’s not so important to be right. Rather, it is more important to build those interpersonal connections and relationships. SR: A laugh can mean so many things; it masks our pain, it’s not just something that is a sign of happiness. Can Laughter Yoga help us confront our pain? Can laughter yoga also tap into those more difficult experiences? SR: How does spirituality and emotional betterment relate to the physicality of a mere laugh?
Laughter Yoga Instructor, Annie Goglia
The central part of Annie Goglia’s everyday experience is laughter. To her, each laugh resembles water, rippling until two strangers are forever intertwined through a mere reverberation of sound waves. To her, each laugh is a story — a mental adventure of trekking through the mountains of strength, tenacity and humanity, where each step is con- structed by the pitch, frequency and amplitude of our hap- piness. A laugh is a critical decisive moment, one where you can choose to latch onto the edge of youth’s cliff. It is a moment where you embrace emotional discomfort, freshly inflicted pain and sheer vulnerability in order to reach a new dimension reminiscent of what we felt as children. Over the past decade and more, it is this laughter that shaped the career and path of Annie Goglia, Laughter Yoga practitioner and coach. Goglia, also founder of Oakland- based life coaching and counseling service LifeFire, describes Laughter Yoga as a nonpolitical, nonreligious, nonracial, metaphysical experience that exploits laughter as the primary form of exercise; relying on a theme such as a trip or similar adventure, Goglia mentally transports her clients, ushering them into a physical realm of laughter meditation and laughter flow. Laughter flow, a rather
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Summer Camp Special 2017
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