Can you imagine me doing laughter yoga?
It was like a whoopee cushion at a funeral
#45. Laughter Yoga
There was little joy to be found in Little Ilford Park.
A great electricity pylon strained under the metal November sky. The air was heavy with the sickly smell of Autumnal decay and the rush of a nearby motorway. Under the pylon, kids were playing cricket next to a pavilion furnished with tents and soiled mattresses.
It was an odd setting for laughter yoga – a modern fad where people get together in a group and make themselves laugh out loud. As I half-jogged around the park, I realised the session would be out in public. I felt relieved when I couldn’t find anyone. If they were here, surely, I would have heard them. Maybe I’d missed it – I’d arrived twenty minutes late after all (the North Circular traffic was no laughing matter) – or maybe it had just been cancelled. A different session in Hemel Hempstead had been called off the week before. Not much demand for laughter in modern Britain.
As I headed back to the car, I thought about Ilford and the other new activities I could do here instead. Get stabbed in the guts, for instance.
‘Patrick? Patrick? Are you Patrick?’ came a voice, quiet at first. I spun to see a stout woman beckoning from a distance. Oh jeez.
We met, and she beamed, introducing herself as Sharon. A quick Google tells me the name means ‘fertile plain’ (she was one out of two). She had a large, pierced nose, and sad, brown eyes. About her neck was a scarf in Palestinian colours, and her phone read ‘Boycott Israel’ in a faded sticker.
‘It’s just the two of us, is it?’
It was. She had waited for me, and me alone, for twenty minutes of her own time, on a Sunday. I’d paid £6. She told me to find a bench.
‘Go to the other one,’ she called, ‘if that one’s covered in tinnies.’
We sat on the cold bench – me, her, and a duffel bag full of colourful balls and scarfs – hunched for comfort under tin clouds. Caw, caw, warned a pair of crows. A hooded man loitered nearby.
She assured me she was legit: she had insurance, a qualification, and a DBS check. Then, she encouraged me to get into teaching it myself. ‘Anyone can do it,’ she said.
From her duffel bag she withdrew a rainbow ball: my warm-up was to bounce it up and down the path.
‘Off you go,’ she cheered. ‘Oh, but don’t bounce it there, there’s broken glass. Health and safety comes first.’
Next, she handed me a small footbag, which I was to launch into the air, clapping five times before catching it. Then six, seven, eight, nine and finally ten claps. With another two balls, she told me to juggle, all the while motivating me with Wii Fit stock phrases and no eye contact.
‘Yes. That’s it. One more. Go on. Yes sir, good sir, very good sir.’
We did some stretches, each climaxing in a ha-ha-ha or a hee-hee-hee. We stretched our left hand from our right hand, to elbow, to shoulder, and away (hee-hee-hee!). I struggled with this one, and Sharon’s analogy was beyond my frame of reference: ‘Imagine you’re shopping for fabric.’
We bounced a ball to one another on the floor; then, we punched it between us, laughing with each wallop.
‘Punch it,’ she gasped, ‘Smash it like you’re angry at someone from work. You can’t say it to their face, even if you want to. You hate their guts. You can’t say it to their face, not after last time, but you can work out your aggression here.’
We played with those little Velcro hands you get on holiday, forcing a ha-ha-ha with each pitch and catch. A woman in a formal black jacket jogged out of our way, laughing as she went. Our positivity was contagious. Even the three Slavs drinking vodka on a park bench smiled when Sharon invited them to join, as we paraded past twirling hula hoops. She brought brightness to somewhere that needed it.
We passed them and she leaned in, conspiratorially, ‘I don’t think they’ll come. They’re too busy with their drinks.’
Back at the bench, we did some final stretching and laughing. Sharon punctuated each laugh with a shout.
‘Hee-hee-hee. There’s a cost-of-living crisis! Ha-ha-ha. We’re all suffering financially! Ho-ho-ho. Our politicians are doing nothing!’
And I couldn’t help but laugh.
To end, we sat with our eyes closed as Sharon played a YouTube video from her phone: A Guided Meditation for Letting Go of Anger.
‘Do you know if you’ll come next week,’ she ventured afterwards, as I was thanking her and saying goodbye. ‘Or going to think about it? Going to think about it. OK. Bring your friends.’
It was a strange experience. It had been like taking a whoopee cushion to a funeral, or performing French mime in a prison canteen, I chuckled to myself – as I got into the car, locked the doors, and trundled far, far away from Little Ilford Park.