Laughter

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." ~e.e. cummings

I've been laughing a lot these days. A friend of mine turned me onto Laughter Yoga on the Phone. You call a phone number at certain times of the day for a live 20-minute laughter yoga session. Sometimes the moderators leads you in specific laughter exercises and sometimes they just laugh. They also have prerecorded sessions that you can listen to whenever. I like to call in when I'm driving to work. Traffic is just not a problem when you're in your car cracking up. I told my sister that I was doing laughter yoga a couple weeks ago and she just rolled her eyes.

Yesterday I was driving with my sister to run an errand. When I looked at the time and saw that it was 5 pm and a laughter yoga session was about to begin, I decided to call the number. "Hand me my phone." I told her. She grabbed my cell phone out of my purse and handed it to me. When we were stopped at a red light I dialed the number and entered in the code. She eyed me suspiciously. When the light turned green the laughter started on the car's blue tooth. "Oh you did not just call the laughter yoga people." I just smiled at her and started laughing. She rolled her eyes and started laughing at me. And her laughing made me laugh harder. Then she started listening to the silly exercises and that made her laugh harder. Of course that made me laugh harder. And we started doing the exercises and laughing, tears streaming down our faces. I was laughing so hard it was almost dangerous for me to be driving. But I needed that laugh. It felt so good.

The same friend who introduced me to laughter yoga sent me this little video: Bodhissatva in Metro. It's a great one if you need a laugh.

So in addition to laughing, I've been having fun in other ways. On Friday I had a girl's night with Katie. We went to Urth Cafe in Beverly Hills for a delicious dinner and then headed a couple doors down to Color Me Mine for some painting fun. I did a Dr. Seuss-themed mug and she did a little serving dish with an eye theme. It was a perfect little evening.

On Saturday I did my second Road Runner's long run -- we ended up running about 5 1/2 miles. I went into a faster group this week and I felt good. Today I was supposed to do some cross training, but I caught the cold that had already caught every other member of my family. All I could do was lie in bed. I've decided to take a break from my bed for some blogging and laughter yoga. They do say that laughter is the best medicine.