Laughing Meditation

One of the suggested methods of meditation that I came across that felt the most strange when I tried it was what I call Laughing Meditation.

The technique is super simple: laugh on purpose for one minute.

Early in the beginnings of my entry into daily meditation, I would only meditate for two minutes. Like most drawn to meditation, I wasn't exactly in the best emotional or mental state when I began. Two minutes was about all I could muster, but even that short amount of time provided me with some relief. I often say my brain was a muscle that hadn't been un-flexed for seemingly forever. Two minutes was enough to give me a glimpse of what it might be like to relax that muscle.

But it was deeper than that and I was struggling with some heavy and negative emotional states.

Just laugh for one minute.

It was the most awkward thing to try. Especially considering one minute was already fifty percent of my total capacity to formally practice at the time.

It was awkward. It felt fake. It was just weird. I won’t attempt to explain the feeling much more than that.

But it had a positive effect. And I was reminded of it recently and tried it again, and -- yeah, you feel a little bonkers. It's not hard to imagine the padded room and men in white coats you might unintentionally be manifesting.

But there is no risk here. Yeah -- this is one you'll want to do on your own, away from the ears of others. But laugh. Laugh out loud. Give yourself a minute to sit down and laugh. If you're anything like me, you'll be faking it. You don't have to find anything funny, you just have to do the physical process.

One way it's so powerful is it shows you how much emotion actually lives in the body. I had always thought emotion was a mental thing, I suppose. Laughing is one of the most direct ways to experience emotion in your body, where most emotion actually takes place.

Call me crazy, but my suggestion for today is go off somewhere and sit as you might for a meditation practice, set a timer for one minute, and laugh away.