All You Need is - LAUGHTER!

By Vicki Friedman
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 26, 2009

CHESAPEAKE

It's a funny little thing, this class that Katie Lawrence teaches on Wednesday mornings in the fall.

You've got to laugh, and you've got to laugh a lot.

Out loud.

That's the purpose of laughter therapy, a feel-good hour at the Great Bridge Community Center. The class is offered every fall and spring by the city's Department of Parks & Recreation.

A class to make you laugh? You're kidding me.

Lawrence tells a curious group of participants that laughter is good for your health.

"It lowers your pulse rate; it lowers your blood sugar, and it improves your respiratory system," she said.

Laughter boosts the immune system, improves muscle flexation and triggers the release of endorphins, the body's natural pain killers, according to laughter experts. It also promotes a general sense of wellbeing.

Lawrence, by the way, is a certified laugh leader. She completed a pair of seminars through the World Laughter Tour (www.worldlaughtertour.com).

Don't mistake her class for a standup comedy club, though. You don't need jokes to laugh, she stressed. The therapy uses a systemic approach to create therapeutic laughter for mental and physical health.

"Simulated laughter leads to stimulated laughter," said Lawrence, whose T-shirt is the World Laughter Tour slogan, "Think Globally, Laugh locally."

On this particular Wednesday, the good-natured group looks skeptical at first. But laughter, it seems, even the simulated kind, is a wonderful icebreaker. At the start of class, everyone forms a circle for deep-breathing exercises.

"I'm not laughing yet," said Doug McRary of Western Branch with a straight face.

"You will be," Lawrence said, and McRary laughed.

McRary, 70, is there with wife Linda, who he contends "likes to sign me up for all kinds of things."

A smiling Linda said, "I like to laugh, and I like to laugh often."


Carolyn Peek, 80, said after the class: ''I thought it was amusing. I've had a lot of things that had me under stress, and I wanted to release it.'' (Ross Taylor | The Virginian-Pilot)

Deep Creek's Carolyn Peek, 80, thought the class would do her some good, and she brought along son-in-law Dennis Kelley, admittedly in attendance, "because my wife made me come."

Lawrence doesn't care why anybody is there; she's just glad to have a group to share her version of good medicine. After a couple of deep breaths, she reminds them laughter comes from three places: the head, the heart and the abdomen.

Then she introduces the language of the class: "Hee, hee. Ha, ha. Ho, ho."

Instead of greeting someone with a handshake, pull your hand away and exclaim, "Ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha! Yay!"

Throw your arms up like an official signaling touchdown.

The group tries both exercises, and the result is... pretty silly. But know what? Everybody keeps laughing at the end.

An imaginary plane trip to Hawaii is on tap next. Among Lawrence's tactics: pretend you're walking to the bathroom, squirming like an impatient little boy, saying, "Hee, hee, hee" en route.

Once the plane lands...

"Aloha, ha, ha," is the new way to say hello.

You get the idea.

Lawrence, a psychiatric nurse at Sentara Obici, typically drives away from her night shift job repeating, "Hee, hee. Ha, ha. Ho, ho." She admits she gets some stares at stoplights.

Linda McRary tells Lawrence she feels so energetic now, she's ready to do something fun that afternoon.

She's laughing on her way out the door.

No joke.