Lauren Naughton, University of Idaho student and Laughter Club member, said she’s a goofball, but everyone can benefit from being a little bonkers.
file photo by katherine brown | rawr
During a Laughter Club meeting, club adviser Matt Wappett, far right, warmed up the group with fake laughter, which he explained would lead to genuine
laughter later.
“I’m kind of a goofy person,” she said. “I enjoy (LCUI). I don’t take myself too seriously … I just think college is a time when you can get really stressed out, and it helps to just learn to laugh at things.”
The club began in 2011 after Matt Wappett, adviser for LCUI, taught laughter yoga in one of his classes to help students relieve midterm stress. Word of the exercises got out and a student approached him to advise the new club. He said he attends every meeting he can, usually multiple times per week.
“We just do exercises till we start to laugh,” he said. “And we laugh for about 30 minutes.”
Wappett said he trained in laughter yoga during clinical mind/body medicine studies at Harvard Medical School in 2010, but the idea goes back to a movement in India in 1995. A medical doctor there experimented with jokes but switched to fake laughter when the comedy became offensive and lost steam. Medical research supports the idea, Wappet said.
He said children laugh at least 10 times as often as adults per day. Children are typically healthier and less stressed than adults, and laughter increases dopamine and serotonin levels.
“The good stuff that makes us feel happy, feel well, the stuff we all want,” he said. “(New club members) kind of don’t know what to expect, but after it’s over, people almost unanimously say they are less stressed and feel a lot better.”
LCUI member Jenna Putnam said the club isn’t for everyone, but she wants new attendees to feel welcome. She said it freaked her at first.
“We encourage newcomers to laugh at us until they find it funny,” she said.
Putnam said They use various types of laughter exercises – some from India and some they’ve created., Putnam said. The “caterpillar laugh” is her favorite, and she said Pilates fans may enjoy the “Superman laugh.”
She said the ease with which laughter can be coaxed depends on one’s day, but she remembers how the meetings have made her days better.
“After doing it, it’s so much easier to laugh and not take things as personally or seriously, (and you) kind of have a better attitude, she said. “That’s definitely a psychological aspect I liked about it.”
Naughton said the “crappy day laugh”–where people recall something recently negative and laugh about their troubles as a group–can be therapeutic.
“(It’s) kind of a release, like ‘this isn’t something I’m going to be down about, this is something I’m going to laugh about,'” she said. “And I think that’s a good attitude to have in life–you can either let stuff bring you down or you can just laugh at it.”
Putnam said the laughter itself can be fun, and sometimes she just needs a reason to giggle.
“(Some) days I just need a good laugh, and it helps me out because I need an excuse. Otherwise I’ll just be standing around and start laughing and that looks really silly,” she said.
Putnam said the meeting schedule will depend on the semester and club attendees. Find LCUI on Facebook for details about the club and meeting schedule.