Dr. Kataria’s Laughter Yoga Diary

Alex Sternick, leader of Jerusalem Laughter Club-Rose Garden writes about a wonderful event, a laughter workshop with Jewish and Arab artists participating together in a conference called “Speaking Art” organized by The Jerusalem Foundation and the Inter-Cultural Center for Jerusalem.

Together with yoga leaders Nitza Arbel, Nurit Tal, Orelia Or, Noam Leshem, Anne Rakover, Bat Shachar Weinfeld a laughter yoga session was held to open the conference.

Over 80 people including Jews from all over Israel and Arabs from East Jerusalem and the Gallilee participated in the conference. “It was amazing to see Jews and Arabs laughing, shaking hands, being childish, giggling and being foolish together, forgetting for the moment the conflict in which they live” says Sternick.

After the success a teacher in the bilingual school in Kefar Kara asked for laughter yoga to be introduced for the Jewish and Arab students there.

The success of this event highlights how well laughter yoga works to bring together people from disparate cultures and backgrounds, breaking down barriers and enabling shared joyfulness and communication.

These photos from laughter yoga teacher John of his first training session in Taiwan last month.
He writes that they had a great time, they not only talked gibberish but also sang gibberish Chinese opera!

Keep up the good work John!

Nasik is a town about 200 kilometers from Mumbai. The 32 local laughter clubs decided to promote laughter yoga and organized a laughter rally to bring awareness about laughter yoga to school children and the general population.

Nearly 1000 children from different schools and 700 laughter club members gathered in a stadium at 7 AM in the morning. They took their “Laughethon” through the streets of the city. Children were dressed in colorful clothes and were dancing along with a band.
Local police regulated traffic while the marchers chanted ho ho ha ha slogans through the streets. Scores of people from the shops and buildings cheered the procession and laughed with them.

The laughter rally lasted for one hour and ended with a cultural program in the stadium.

    
The event was organized by Dr. Sushma Dugad, the chief anchor person of Nasik Laughter Clubs.

Mahendra Shah from Ahmedabad, India was invited by Dr. Sushma Dugad to attend a Laughter Rally and public seminar in Nasik on 15th December 2006 which I attended.

I was extremely touched when Mahendra Shah said he was planning to stay in a hotel and was offered home stay by our laughter leader Dr. Sushma in Nasik.

I asked Mahendra Shah about his home stay experience. He started crying and said that he was treated with more love and kindness than he could have imagined. He was treated like a star and was taken to different laughter clubs every day where he was greeted with garlands, a Christmas cap and a warm shawl. In 3 days he visited 8 laughter clubs, one orphanage and 3 schools for laughter yoga sessions.

We are starting a world wide laughter exchange program and would like to see more and more experiences like this.

Laughter leader Kamlesh Masalawala from Surat, India has been appointed as laughter yoga teacher, or in local parlance “Laughter Sir”, in a Sanskar Bharati Vidyalaya, a high school in Surat, India.

Laughter Yoga has been introduced in many schools in Bangalore, Mumbai and Surat, but this is for the first time any school has taken the initiative to appoint a laughter yoga teacher.

Earlier they has ‘PT Sir’ for exercises, ‘Music Sir’ for Singing and playing music and now comes ‘Laughter Sir’. Kamlesh has been officially appointed is on the payroll as as Laughter Sir. His duties are teach laughter yoga for 10 minutes to 1000 students 3 times in a week after morning assembly.

Mr. Paresh Patel, the principal of the Sanskar Bharati School is very pleased with the outcome. He believes in laughter yoga and has set himself the challenge of doing laughter yoga with 25,000 children in a stadium within 2007 to set a new official record.

This is a milestone in the development of laughter yoga, one that we see as the beginning of a worldwide trend.

In the last weeks we have heard about laughter yoga being introduced at an international school in Hawaii, at Harvard University, and at a university in China.

In January I visited Aarey Laughter club in Mumbai.

I always look out for people who are different in their own way: meet Mansukh Shah, a 58 year old laughter club member from Mumbai.

Every morning he gets up at 5.30AM and makes 40-50 phone calls from his mobile phone to remind his fellow laughter club members to get up and come to laughter club.

Even if the other person says YES I know and I am coming to laughter club, Mansukh calls just in case he has forgotten. This is his routine for the past 4 years and he does it every single day. Nobody get irritated by his repeated phone calls, in fact it seems that he is the darling of the laughter club.

Mansukh is a very successful business man and doing extremely well. During rainy season every year he donates 200 umbrellas to the poor who can’t afford to buy an umbrella.

Hats off to Mansukh Shah - VERY GOOD, VERY GOOD - YEAH!

The photo shows one of the 160 laughter club in Bangalore, India.Why does it look like they’re fenced in?
In the year 2000 a laughter club was started by a retired couple at 4T Block in Bangalore, India. membership soon picked up and soon 80-100 people gathered every morning for their laughter session between 6.30am and 7.30am.

A retired engineer living in an apartment in the neighborhood complained to the police about noise pollution from the laughter session. A police inspector came to the laughter club and found nothing wrong with the laughter noise levels — in his opinion the traffic noise from the road was much louder than the sounds of the laughter club.

Frustrated by the attitude of the police, the man filed a court case against laughter club with the metropolitan magistrate. The magistrate started laughing when he discovered that the wife of the complainant was attending the laughter club. After 2 hearings the case was dismissed and the magistrate referred the case to Municipal Corporation of Bangalore.

Several meetings where held with the corporation and local ministers and who were amazed to find that laughter clubs are helping thousands of people to maintain their physical and mental health.

Instead of banning the laughter clubs, a special order was passed to the Municipal authority to reserve a special area in each park (or garden as they are locally called) in Bangalore city for a laughter club. Bangalore is also known as the “Garden City” as it has more than 200 well maintained gardens.

What you see in this picture is a special enclosure provided by the municipal corporation for laughter yoga sessions only. This is a landmark judgment in the history of laughter movement where laughter clubs were recognized and given special status by the local government for their benefit to the local population.