I usually organize a large public event where everyone is invited to join me in celebrating World Laughter Day by laughing together for an hour.

But this year, since World Laughter Day coincides with my current Laughter Yoga Teacher Training in Canmore, Alberta, I’ll be laughing with a group in our majestic Rocky Mountains! I know… it’s hard to teach in such magnificent places, but what can you do? You just have to do it!

I was discussing the social and spiritual effects of laughter with someone a few days ago and found myself imagining a situation to demonstrate my point.

I explained to the person that, when two people laugh together and look into each other’s eyes, there’s no room for anger, argument or fear. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and imagined myself laughing with a terrorist (or at least my image of one). We were looking into each other’s eyes and laughing out loud, together, heartily… And laughing some more. Until our eyes were wet, our legs a bit limp, our cheeks pink…

And what I observed then really amazed me.

If I felt fear, resentment or anger towards this person BEFORE, there was no trace of it AFTER we had laughed together in my mind! All traces of barriers between us had disappeared, replaced by a feeling of closeness, complicity and affection.

Now, you’re going to tell me that it can be a lot easier to pretend to laugh with our “enemy” than to do it for real. Maybe it is. But what I felt was that, by imagining us laughing together, the thing had really happened in the invisible! And that MY feelings had changed. I was no longer sending the same aggressive thoughts to this person… What I was sending now was something like “Ah thank you! I’m glad I went through this with you… It was good to laugh together, wasn’t it?”

So this year, I’m proposing a little DO-able challenge for World Laughter Day: to imagine yourself laughing out loud with people who perhaps need to laugh more and let off steam… Whether you see the results or not, you’ll have done it WITH them.

The intention of WRD is world peace through laughter. Do your part too!

I’ll be in a public park, somewhere in the Rockies, and I’ll be sending my laughter out to countries where the shit’s really hitting the fan. Not just to countries, but also and above all to individuals. I’ll see myself sharing a laugh with them. To send out vibrations of complicity, brotherhood and love. Because even if we can’t see them with our eyes, our hearts feel them.

… the flutter of a butterfly’s wings… We can change the world, one laugh at a time!

Make the HEART LAUGH at 1 p.m. on Sunday, May 7. Open your arms, raise your head to the sky and let the laughter flow from your heart to surround the planet with this beautiful energy.

Laughter, joy and health

Linda