A Laughing Matter

"The earth laughs in flowers."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love this sentence. Not only do these five words serve as a succinct reminder of the fact that we are surrounded by opportunities to experience joy, it also links to the notion of how contagious joy can be. When we hear others laughing, verbally giving expression to delight and mirth, we find that the corners of our own mouths begin to turn up in preparation for sharing in that expansive, liberating, breath-driven experience.

Years ago, I was able to spend a few days touring literacy projects in Kolkata, India. While the projects were beacons of hope and came out of one woman’s desire to do what she could to improve the lives of people living in poverty, touring the neighborhoods they served and witnessing extreme poverty was heart-breaking. Sensing my sadness, one early morning my host, Sucharita, took me to a local park. As the morning mist cleared, a group of people began to gather, wearing a mix of jogging suits and saris, murmuring quiet greetings. Suddenly, the crowd began throwing their heads back and their arms heavenward, letting out great guffaws of laughter. “Ho ho ho ho”s and “Ha ha ha ha”s rang out across the park. The group was there to practice “Laughter Yoga”, a program designed by Dr. Kataria Madan, an Indian physician who believed in laughter’s ability to oxygenate the body and reduce stress.

By the end of the session, I felt alive, playful, connected to others, and resourced enough to continue learning about and visiting Kolkata’s neighborhoods. It was first-person proof that information about our emotions flows in two directions, from the brain down into the body, and also from the body up into the brain. When we create the physical sensations of joy and laughter, our brain and nervous system pick up the cue and believe that we are happy.

What does this have to do with Mindfulness and Meditation? By keeping our eyes open to the world around us - not just the much smaller, filtered mental world we tend to inhabit - we can begin to see all the causes for joy around us: the earth’s laughter as expressed in flowers, the giggle of a child, the circular tail wags of dogs as they sniff noses…. It takes some effort to widen our attention to take in what is actually happening around us, not just the “what might happen”s or the “what has happened”s of the mind. Once we discover something delight-fun, we can purposefully pause, and let our body fully engage with the moment so that the brain catches on, and echos back with a greeting of joy.

We invite you to put on your joy goggles and head out into the world. You may make a plan to look around every hour to see if you can find a sign of joy wherever you are in that moment, or you might take a less structured approach and weave moments of joy-noticing into your day more spontaneously.

Wishing you awareness of abundant joy in yourself and others!

Your CMP family