Fifty three – Teddington Laughter and Relaxation

I roughly knew the route: a scooter ride on the South Circular to Clapham, picking up a road that eventually leads to the south coast, coming off at a junction that heads towards Kingston.

Kingston is a part of London that I used to know pretty well; I grew up there as a teenager. I had been expecting the early morning traffic to be dire, but I made steady and consistent progress. A part of the journey gave way to a short stretch of dual carriageway; a geographic reflection that I was starting to explore the boundaries of the city.

My destination was the Langdon Down centre, which was apparently known for its Victorian theatre and the Langdon Down Museum of Learning Disability. Despite living in the area for six years and cycling past the centre every day, I had no idea it existed. John Langdon Down was a physician who was born in 1828. Down set up a home where the well to do upper classes could send their relatives who had learning disabilities. Today the centre that bears his name is also Headquarters of the Down’s Syndrome Association.

I parked my scooter and walked to a large entrance. I knocked on the door. A woman was stood on a chair, fiddling with a fire alarm system.

‘Do you know if Nina is here?’

The woman appeared confused.

‘I’m here for the yoga’.

‘Ah, you want to go into that room; down there, on the left’.

I asked a few more questions. Since I was early I thought it would be interesting to have a quick look around the museum. It was closed. It opened again in February and could only be visited on a Saturday. I made a mental note.

‘Are you Chris?’ It was Nina, our laughter yoga teacher. ‘Thanks for coming! It’s great to have you here! I did ask one of the other men in the group whether he could come down, but I think you might be the only one – is that okay?’ I smiled and said it was fine. I was in two minds about going to another yoga class, mostly because the previous one I went to was insufferably weird: new age talk of energy and supernatural healing powers isn’t my thing.  I was slightly worried about anything that was called yoga, but a quest is a quest.

Ten minutes later, we were all assembled. There were eight of us. I estimated that the average age of the group was around fifty five. One member stood out; Cath, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties.

Nina can only be described as a force of nature. We began with some stretches. ‘Pretend that you’re grabbing all the negativity from the previous year, and you’re throwing it away, so you’re making a whole new start’. As we stood, we made extravagant swimming motions, pretending to do a front crawl. I didn’t mind the stretches: I had been to the gym the previous day, so was feeling a bit stiff. The Kundalini yoga didn’t have any stretches. This was going well.

We moved onto some chants which combined with an ice breaker: ‘ho ho ho, ha ha ha, my name is Chris, and I had porridge for breakfast’. Nina had come armed with a black bin bag filled with balloons. ‘Grab a balloon and walk around the room, hitting yourself with it! Like this!’ demonstrating clearly what was expected of us. ‘Make eye contact with the other people who you pass!’ For some, the chanting had given way to spontaneous laughter.

‘Now what I want you to do, is to pretend you’re talking on a phone, in gibberish, and at the end of the conversation throw down the phone as if in disgust with a big ‘HA!’’. Everyone walked around the room talking on an imaginary phone, the ‘ha’s’ of disgust echoing from the ceiling.

It was time for us all to assemble in a circle. ‘Now, each of us can either have a cheer, or you can have a balloon massage; it’s up to you. With the cheer, cheer like you’re celebrating that the person in the centre has made it to the new year.  Who wants to go first?’

I asked the inevitable question: ‘what’s a balloon massage?’

‘Ah, you’ll see.’

Fran stepped forward into the centre. Everyone moved around the circle. Everyone flicked their balloons at Fran, who started to giggle. When we had returned roughly to our original location, we all cheered in unison.

‘I’ll have a cheer!’ said Sophie.

Sophie jumped into the middle of the circle and we all clapped and cheered. Sophie punched the air as if she had won a spectacularly challenging sporting event.

‘I’ll have a balloon massage’ I said. I gingerly stepped into the centre of the circle, and seven women hit me with balloons whilst cheering. It was strangely gratifying, and certainly worth the five pound entrance fee.

Each activity was punctuated by an infectious chant: ‘very good, very good, ahhhhhh!’, whilst at the same time stretching our arms above our head. There were never more than two ‘very goods’, which seemed to be strangely appropriate. Two were just right; three would have been overkill.

We were then told to lie on our backs. We could either row, or cycle; the choice was ours. In the end, we did both. Our legs made cycling motions in the air, and then we changed posture to make forward and back rowing motions. It was tiring but fun. We then were asked to lie back, and relax, where Nina started to speak in a slow calm voice.

‘Feel where your feet are touching the ground. Move this attention higher to your legs. Stop for a moment, and sense it’s connection with the ground; the solid ground. Move your attention higher, to you lower back, to your shoulders. Feel the connection with your neck and head, sensing its position. Relax any tension you feel…’

After a few moments of silence, Nina rang a bell; a pure sound resonated throughout the whole of the room.  When the ringing had stopped Nina told us that we were all amazing, that we were beings of love, and that we were awesome.

The truth is, I loved it! The balloon massage was the clear highlight, but I enjoyed the exercises, the stretching and the general messing about. I appreciated the opportunity to ‘be a little bit stupid’. In a world where we’re always trying to behave in a socially acceptable and sensible way, laughter yoga struck me as an appealing antidote. Although Nina did, for a few moments talk about ‘energies’, she did it in a way that didn’t raise a cynical eyebrow. It had a joyful innocence that was different from the mystical nonsense of the Kundalini group and had none of the coy weirdness that emanated from the Orgasmic Meditation group. This Meetup was fun.