'The best medicine' is no joke

Star Tribune

Jim Hall along with other members of the group point at other members and laugh during the Laughter workshop at Brooklyn Park Community Activity Center.

Brooklyn Park city workers and others try laughter yoga.

By JIM ADAMS, Star Tribune

Last update: November 10, 2009 - 5:16 PM

"You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants."

--Stephen King

Most of the folks who attended a noontime class in Brooklyn Park last week probably would agree with author King. The group of 35, a mix of city workers and area residents, guffawed, chortled and snorted their way through a half-hour laughter yoga session.

"Lots of time when we go to work out, it is a chore," Michelle Margo said afterward. "This way we can go in and have fun with it. My stomach hurts from laughing."

Margo, a recreation supervisor for Brooklyn Park, was one of those who paid $10 each to bolster their laugh muscles during their lunch hour, and not just for laughs. Fitness instructor Mary Anderson Fay, who led the class, said research has shown that vigorous, deep laughter improves circulation, infuses oxygen into the blood and organs, lowers blood pressure, produces pleasurable endorphins, and reduces the stress hormone cortisol.

City staff members received credit for the class in the city's employee wellness program. Residents received what the poet Lord Byron called "cheap medicine" and actor Peter Ustinov described as "the most civilized music in the world."

Pat Busch, a city recreation specialist who arranged the class, said she thought it could be a stress reliever for city employees in a time of economic uncertainty, although that wasn't her initial impetus in scheduling it. "In this day and age, anything that involves laughter is a good thing," she said.

Anderson Fay says her yoga and fitness business in Plymouth has held steady since she started leading laughter workshops four years ago. She said she averages about one a week, and last week also led laugh classes for General Mills and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She told the Brooklyn Park class, seated in a big circle, that laughs erupt from "contagious, kooky behavior and good eye contact. ... I don't make you laugh," she said, but your body benefits just from hearing others laugh.

There was plenty of kookiness and hand-clapping, "ho, ho, ha, ha" cheers between playful laugh exercises. They included pretending to ride a high-handle motorcycle inside the circle of chairs, then strolling and peering at others while laughing like a mad scientist and later like a grinning Halloween skeleton. There were breathing exercises and a minute of meditation with eyes closed.

Before class, Anderson Fay said she was trained in New York by Dr. Madan Kataria, who developed laughter yoga with his wife in India in 1995. Kataria found that the body doesn't know the difference between real and fake laughter. And as the class learned, faking it often becomes the real thing.

Resident Linda Holden said she "was really down" when she came to the class after spending several days trying to get her mother into Medicare without much success. After class she said, "I feel lighter," adding that she will use the zany "ho, ho, ha, ha" cheers when she gets angry.

The class "was definitely out there," said Jack Montague, city human resources director. "It is a mood lightener. If people take the time to practice the ho, hos when they feel in a sour mood, it puts things in perspective and you realize it is not the end of the world."

Jim Adams • 612-673-7658

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