I feel sorry for my friends.
If “we age not by years, but by stories” over the weekend, I aged.
* * *
During the yoga teacher training program we had some keynote speakers. Michelle went over cueing and being a “bad” student so our cueing could be on point.
I. Could. NOT. Stop. Laughing.
She was turning purple because she was holding her breath, due to lack of breathing cues. I actually thought she was going to injure herself because she was contorting her body in wild ways. We spent hours trying to adjust and cue her correctly and she spent hours being the “worst” student we’ll ever come across.
It might have worked if I could have stopped laughing long enough to fix my cues. But it was SO funny.
The next day we had a different speaker. She is a Paddle boarding, yoga instructor, reiki healer, qigong practicing badass! She talked to us about listening to the Universe and following energy. I was so inspired by her I went home and researched some of the things she talked about.
The first thing I researched was qigong. I’ve had a meditation practice for a while and the qigong stuff just sounded interesting! As my luck would have it, there is a qigong center in Minnesota AND the next meeting was a month away with a guest speaker talking about laughter yoga!! If this wasn’t following energy and signs I have NO idea what is.
As with most things, I planned on going solo. I learned a long time ago, my “jam” is not to the same liking as everyone else’s and sometimes it’s just easier to go alone. Sometimes alone adventures are fine and sometimes you need to share adventures to get the most out of them. This was one of those adventures.
My BFF, recently divorced, is always up for my crazy adventures. She was the first one I told about this event and the first one to want to go with. The third member of this adventure is a newer friend, but one I know I’m supposed to be friends with. Her daughter has been in my sons class for the past two years in a row AND we both went through the same yoga teacher training program. She, like me, has a solid meditation practice and was interested in the instructors energy following.
None of us knew what to expect, we all agreed to bring a mat, notebook, coffee and good vibes.
We were greeted at the door by a guy named Bruce. He was at least 15 years our senior, had very friendly eyes and some dental issues. When we walked into the room and looked around it felt more like we were in a senior home than a college. Everyone was SO nice and inviting. The morning started off with a 20 minute guided meditation with movement while we were standing, closely followed by another meditation with moment standing and coming to a seated position in chairs toward the end of it.
Our friendly greeter, feeling VERY comfortable, laid down on the ground, started snoring AND farted during the meditation.
Yep, you read that right.
To this day I don’t have a clue on how the three of us young ducks didn’t crack up laughing and ruin the end of the meditation.
The keynote speaker was late, while we waited one of the founders brought out some black felt and placed it on our laps. She was talking about energy, how we are all made up of it and if we pause long enough, you can see it radiating from your fingertips. No joke, I saw the rays of light coming out of my fingertips almost instantly! I just tried it right now and didn’t see the energy but I’m not surprise, it’s been one hell of a week; and I’m feeling drained.
Before we went any further with the energy light, our speaker arrived.
She walked in wearing purple and immediately made me think of my BFF. When she mentioned grabbing her list (which was laminated) I looked at my BFF and said, “she’s your soul sister!”.
Although I’ve seen a documentary with clips of laughter yoga, it was not what I expected.
During the introduction the speaker mentioned that your body gets TONS of health benefits from laughing and your body can not tell the difference between real laughing or faking it. Sometimes fake laughs turn into real ones, but everyday you should do something that makes you laugh.
We spent the remainder of the meeting doing different exercises from the laminated list. We pretended to be talking on the phone hearing the funniest conversation we’ve EVER heard. We mingled around laughing at people using eye contact…this one was particularly scary for me because my dental issue friend cornered me with crazy eyes, laughing and lifting his eyebrows. I didn’t know if I should laugh or be VERY frightened.
The most ridiculous laughing exercise was the gibberish circle. She had us form a GIANT circle and play a sort of telephone game. The first person would talk to the second person and the second person would have to start their conversation with the third person using the last thing the first person said and so on. The catch was it had to be in gibberish.
Yep, you read that right too…
I thought this exercise would take the least amount of time. I mean, how long will it take a group of people to say, “blah, blah”, “blah, eeep”, “eeep, smoork” and so on? Well it turns out the retirement community that showed up MUST have been a bunch of retired actors because the gibberish conversations lasted F.O.R.E.V.E.R. they ad-libbed body and arm movements and took this activity to the next level. Just when you thought it was over, they reversed the circle and we had to do it ALL over again.
For the last exercise we laid down on the ground slumber party style. All of our heads were toward the center of the circle, we were shoulder to shoulder with our meeting mates. During all of the mingling I lost my friends, but somehow ended up shoulder to shoulder with my BFF.
As we lay there on the floor, I apologized to my ever forgiving friend. Real tears streamed down our face as we re-counted all of the things I’ve gotten us into over the years. That was definitely the most entertaining part of the entire meeting. As we left Bruce came up to me and said that he feels a strong connection to me, we’re both serious.
Hmmmm…
Not so much, Bruce, not so much…
Much love, Namaste,
Jes xoxo