Lock yourself in a room for an hour with one mission in mind: to laugh. I discovered this concept, called rigology, in one of Squeezie’s videos entitled “Who’s the impostor?” “. And I wondered who could practice such an activity. The idea seemed incongruous to me, not to say embarrassing. But because you mustn’t die stupid (and because I never miss an opportunity to strengthen my zygomatic muscles), I took advantage of the arrival of World Laughter Day, this Sunday, May 7, to participate in a session laughter yoga.
If between noon and two, some sit down on the terrace with colleagues or decide to go to the gym to push some cast iron, they find themselves close to the Opéra Garnier, in Paris, to split the pear. Among the seven participants of the day, Fanny Pioffret, the teacher. Red hair, short haircut and laughing blue eyes, the forties spent twelve years in marketing before converting to shiatsu, sophrology and… laughter yoga. “It’s about yoga, but without yoga posture,” she begins by explaining. And I must admit that it suits me well…
Laughter exercises for no reason
On the program, to start: twenty minutes of continuous laughter. Although I’m naturally jovial, my last memory of phoning around for so long was during a fifth-grade chemistry lesson with my girlfriend Jennifer, which earned us an hour of glue. The program therefore seems slightly ambitious to me. “We call it laughter exercises for no reason,” continues Fanny. At first, you can force yourself by making gestures that encourage letting go, until it becomes natural. Only one prohibition: not to make fun. “Don’t judge yourself. Neither yourself nor others”. Second instruction: look each other in the eye. We start gently with a muscle warm-up, starting with the jaw. Alternating duckface and mouth wide open, I try not to think about the face I throw back at others. Because in my opinion, there is something to laugh about (yes, that’s the goal, but we said that here, we weren’t making fun).
Second step, therefore, after the warm-ups: the famous exercises of laughing for no reason. To make training more fun, Fanny plunges her students into different atmospheres every week. Today is western. With my sneakers and my wide pants, I try to slip into the skin of a cowgirl. First exercise: talking to my fortunate companions in an incomprehensible language. I’m going for it. If the first seconds (or even minutes) are tinged with fear of ridicule, I quickly get caught up in the game. Quickly, laughter burst out. Seeing all these people laughing while looking you straight in the eye can be unsettling. I also learned that this type of yoga was not recommended for people suffering from attacks of paranoia. We have to get away from the idea that everyone is cheerfully making fun of us. Because here, people curl up for one thing only: the pleasure of laughing.
It must be admitted, the benevolence of my comrades of the day helps me to feel safe. The exercises scroll. I have to pretend to catch a bull with my lasso then 1,2,3… I have to laugh. We then close our eyes, separate into two groups. One imitates the cries of cows, the other of goats. We must then regroup without opening the slightest eyelid. I feel like I’m going back to kindergarten, but in a good way.
Laughing gas… without laughing gas
For the moment, although I sometimes sketch a slight smirk, I force myself to snicker. Despite this, after ten minutes, I’m already starting to feel my abs (which aren’t often stimulated). And I understand the usefulness of the jaw warm-up. I come to wonder if I am fed up often enough on a daily basis to be in pain in such a short time. And it is after these ten minutes of exercise, at the moment when I put my hands on the shoulders of Marie-Hélène, a young retiree with a chestnut bob and chic clothes, who happily imitates a horse (like me thirty seconds more early), that I let my guard down and laugh for good. The situation seems so absurd to me that I can only let go. And it feels good.
Usually, my way of laughing is described as not very discreet (even frankly noisy). Here, I am here in my element. Hervé laughs out loud. Fanny does it very frankly, shaking her shoulders. Looks like a cartoon character. When I see all seven of us, hilarious, running around, I have the impression that we have just taken nitrous oxide. Except that unlike laughing gas, laughter has no ill effect.
Reduce stress, bond and relieve pain
“The benefits of laughter are many. It releases endorphins, relieves pain, improves sleep, reduces stress, creates bonds with others and boosts self-confidence,” promises Fanny Pioffret. And it is not his students who will say the opposite. Mathilde tells me that, during confinement, she needed to cheer herself up. Looking for a moment of joy, she types “funny videos” on Google and comes across a laughter yoga session. “I was first like, ‘what the hell is this?’ “. But very quickly, she catches the virus. She’s been coming every Wednesday for two years. “I think it’s great to see people laughing. It feels so good. Marie-Hélène agrees. “Why is laughter only reserved for children? »
It’s time for the third part: the laughter meditation. Everyone takes a carpet, a towel or a large sarong and lies down on the floor, to let themselves go. And to let myself go, I let myself go. I can’t stop laughing anymore. As soon as I try to catch my breath, I hear Fanny’s little laugh, on the left… and it starts again. The impression of being 10 years old, of participating in a pajama party where you must not make noise because the parents sleep next door. Except that there, we have the right to giggle. It is even the goal. So I withdraw my hand in front of my mouth and there… it’s the tragedy. I let out my most frank laughter: that of the pig. Because this delicate noise is a real truth serum, we can say that I had a good laugh.