La Traviata

When the waiter casually asked us how we were today, he wasn’t at all prepared when I announced “Actually we’re all emotionally drained from the opera we just left.”

The table exploded into one big laugh, no one more than me.  Save the waiter, who took about 30 seconds to recover.  Clearly he’d not gotten this response before.  But he got back at me, repeatedly teasing me for the rest of our lunch.  Not a problem.  I love to laugh.

It occurred to me later that probably no one needed that laugh as much as me.  I am definitely what you call “the sensitive one”.  I feel things deeply and was truly spent after that amazing opera.  Verdi’s Traviata is such a wrenching mess of a love story.  Like opera always is.  And like life can be, though gratefully not so dramatically.

Comedians are generally very sensitive people.  They are the ones who feel things the deepest, need the cathartic release the most, and so make the laughter happen.

I definitely needed to laugh after that amazingly powerful Traviata.*

*Simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera.

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Rx - Laughter Yoga

    

  Recently a new laughter club member appeared who was just diagnosed with cancer.  The wonderful thing was that her doctor at Virginia Mason Medical Center prescribed Laughter Yoga.  It’s a great new world!

Photo:  Laughter Yoga International

Thomas' Feedback

I got the most wonderful feedback from a student in a class that I was co-teaching at a local university - Laughter in Life - with Laughter Yoga.  This is from a young male college student, not the easiest population to win over:

“Teresa made the class click.  Any less of an instructor would have handled the circumstances (a room full of kids who don’t know each other) awkwardly.  It takes a special person to be able to command the type of respect needed for something as silly as laughing at the sound of vowels.  I always felt that whether or not I came to class ready to laugh, Teresa would be ready to get things started.

Often during the sessions I would think, “Does this lady ever not laugh hysterically at anything?”  I could never tell if she had mastered the art of faking a laugh to get everyone else laughing, or if she genuinely thought everything was hilarious.

Slowly I started to realize the genius of Teresa.  At first she comes off almost as a different breed of person (I mean this in only the nicest way possible.)  She made the most uncomfortable situations seem effortless and easy, and often was the source of laughter in the room as much as the activities.  Sometimes I wonder how it would have been if someone else had been leading the sessions, and it almost doesn’t seem possible.  She literally might be the most perfect person for her job possible.”

A heartfelt thank you to you Thomas!

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Quote

“If you can laugh at your own troubles you’ll always have something to laugh at.”

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April 1st

I met someone recently who was born on April 1st, when that date was both April Fool's Day and Easter.  What a great way to come into the world!  On a day both sacred and silly.  

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The Laughing Sutra

In Mark Salzman’s book, The Laughing Sutra, it is said “The reason the Laughing Sutra had been ignored was that few could recognize its true value.”

How often true of laughter itself.

911 Laughter

 The flames were rising 25, 30, 35 feet in the air.  No fire trucks anywhere and no sirens either.  This was the 2^nd fire I witnessed from my balcony.  The other one far worse, black smoke filled the sky and some died.  This one - no casualties, no injuries, but it was much closer to me.  Only two streets away.

Fire scares me.  It accelerates so fast and gets out of control so easily.

The 911 worker was very professional with me – efficient with that stay-calm tone in her voice.  The fire trucks came, the fire went out, eventually all the smoke dissipated and all is well, save for the fire damage.

I know one of those 911 workers from another city in another state.  I’ve marveled that she must have nerves of steel to take those life and death phone calls for a living.  What she told me was so surprising at first, but then made complete sense.  She and her co-workers laugh, they laugh a lot.  Once the crisis is over and everyone is okay.

I’ve said it many times: the higher the stress, the greater the need to laugh.  I have great appreciation for those who take responsibility for those emergency phone calls and I’m equally happy to know they use the power of laughter to help them do what they do.

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