Laughter Meditation

Laughter is infectious! When you laugh, the whole world laughs with you. It is truly the best medicine. Try this laughing meditation for 3 minutes every day. And challenge yourself to do it for 21 consecutive days to see the transformation in your life perspective, even though you may have tried this meditation before. If the laughter doesn’t come naturally and hasn’t taken you over yet, try again. This mean that this trick didn’t worked out for you yet. This isn’t unusual, so give it another go. As we say fake it till you make it.

Children often laugh without any reasons. That’s the innocence and spontaneity in laughter, something we all can do, we all can laugh.

Over the years I have noticed that we have become very stiff in life and I have often seen spiritual people becoming very serious in their search for truth and in their meditation practices.

We don’t need complicated techniques to unwind ourselves. A simple meditation technique or tool can do magic if we allow it to. In my experience, laughter meditation is the quickest meditation technique that I have come across which can bring you to the ideal no mind space.

Like many exercises you try for the first time, initially it might be an effort to enter the flow of laughter meditation. This might be because you have been told your whole life either to laugh politely or to not laugh loudly. In fact, expressing ourselves or our true emotion has turned into a taboo in many cultures around the world.

All the different do’s and don’ts we are programmed with from birth shuts off our true authentic expression and even blockages may appear in our bodies that can eventually lead to sickness. So to unleash these years of pent up energy, I suggest laughter as the best medicine.

How do we do it?

Imagine an overweight Buddha laughing or a large joyous woman laughing from their bellies. Try to go deeper with your laugh and not just laughing from your throat or chest area.

The best suggestion I have is to laugh as soon as you wake up, after having done a few cat stretches or asanas. Follow it up with deep belly laughter for at least 2 minutes. Do this on an empty stomach in the morning.

There are many physical, spiritual and energetic benefits of using laughter as a therapy:

Physical: it releases happy hormones such as serotonin and helps the circulation of blood.
Emotional: though you might carry the belief in that moment that there is nothing for you to laugh at, making the sounds and movements of laughter for no reason take hold of your emotional state. That’s the purity and innocence of laughter. It doesn’t have to be any good reason to laugh.

This meditation is a meditation for the second chakra. When you are able to laugh from your belly or your sacral chakra, it helps you to open up and to expand. If you are in a woman’s body and are hoping to conceive a baby, it could be a very effective tool to guide that process. Laughing helps your womb to cleanse, open up and prepare to invite a soul in. I actually got pregnant when I was doing my 21 days of laughter meditation practice every morning.

The laughter meditation also allows emotional fluidity. It’s not that you laugh in good times or when it’s something funny. You can laugh for no reason. Suddenly you will find yourself waking up to the cosmic joke. The leela, the illusionary world, shows the feeling of impermanence for us, for this body and for the whole of existence.

Another benefit is of this potent meditation is awakening any parts of you that might have gotten numb over the years, for whatever reasons. Perhaps you have past traumas, or wounds that need healing, but have gone numb from being ignored, supressed or even forgotten. As you go through this practice, over time you may find yourself one day laughing freely, that harmony and joy have once again settled into your life like the moment when you were a child.

Energetic benefits: In tantra, you would have heard many times about opening up to being a multi-orgasmic being. I’m sure you have wondered how that is possible. This is possible only when energy moves and flows freely through the body. This meditation truly supports your sensual energy to awaken and move the joy through all the cells in your body.

Spiritual benefits: Through this laughter meditation you might find yourself laughing at your whole existence or existence of life. This will help you to understand non duality and non-attachment. As I said before it’s like waking up to a cosmic joke. You might find one day laughing yourself through pain, through sadness or sorrow as it’s the same energy as pleasure or joy.

Don’t be scared if you find yourself crying while laughing and then coming back to laughter.
Let yourself be surprised, don’t try to achieve anything through it. Just let the laughter take over!