Sunday was celebrated as World Laughter Day. And for the occasion, about thirty people were able to learn about a practice that does not leave anyone indifferent: laughter yoga.
“It’s a method that allows us to laugh even if there’s nothing funny,” says Linda Leclerc, founder of the School of Laughter Yoga. “We won’t make jokes, we don’t try to be funny, we just make people laugh physically, and then what happens is that the action leads to the emotion. »
Everything works a little by mimicry. “When you hear the others laughing, you start laughing too,” says Ms. Leclerc. And indeed, someone says “ha ha ha”, the neighbor answers “ho ho ho”, in an endless echo. The important thing is to “let go”.
“I feel liberated,” says Asmae Gaizi at the end of the session. For an hour, his zygomatics were put to the test by various exercises: silent laughter, heart, vowels, cell phone, laughing gas, or even laughter at oneself.
Training sessions, there are “hundreds and hundreds”, explains Linda Leclerc. The practice is even part of the news: Sunday was tested a new laughter, the laughter of the king’s greeting.
Each exercise lasts about twenty seconds, and is separated by a kind of decorum, a rhythmic cry of “oh oh, ha ha ha”. The session is also composed of breathing exercises, then a lying down laughter meditation.
Laughter “teachers”
It was during long physiotherapy after a car accident in 2003 that Linda Leclerc discovered laughter yoga. “One of the days when it feltit less well, I took a magazine next to me to hide, because I was preparing to cry in the waiting room, then I didn’t want people to see, she says. So while hiding, I opened my eyes to an article that talked about the benefits of laughter, then laughter yoga. »
Her curiosity piqued, Linda Leclerc enrolled in a training course in Montreal. If she “never” thought of making it a full-time activity, twenty years later, the roles have been reversed, and it is today she who trains the new “animators” and “teachers” of laughter.
Present throughout Quebec, these experts form the Laughter Brigade, which intervenes in “schools, businesses, and residences for the elderly”.
“No side effects”
The founder of laughter yoga — also the originator of World Laughter Day — is Indian doctor Madan Kataria.
“Whether I’m laughing for real or pretending, my body doesn’t know. It’s fantastic, as a method,” says Linda Leclerc, who attributes many physical, immune and mental health benefits to laughter. “There are no unwanted side effects. »
However, a warning is placed at the entrance to the room, indicating that laughter yoga “is contraindicated for people suffering from uncontrolled physical conditions and major psychic disorders”.
“The laughter of the other, it’s magic”, says Hélène Albert laughing. After a first laughter yoga session on Zoom, Ms. Albert invited her friend Linda Leclerc to intervene in her workplace. Since then, during the bad times, she looks at the “oh oh, ha ha ha” that she wrote on her computer, and that makes her “immediately change energy”.
Juliette Payer was “a little embarrassed” at the start of her first session, but she “loved pushing the limits of [sa] comfort zone “. “After the first “oh oh, ha ha ha”, […] I laughed the whole time”. “There is no judgment,” adds Asmae Gaizi.
More and more people seem to be letting go, notes Ms. Leclerc, who has seen a greater “openness” to the practice after two decades, even though laughter yoga is still unknown to many, adds -She.
The videos she shares on TikTok as “lindahahasister” are viewed thousands, if not millions, of times. On Sunday, around forty people followed the initiation session live, on Facebook and on YouTube, some from France.