Yoga teacher promotes benefit of laughter in SACPA livestream
By Herald on April 5, 2021.
Certified Laughter Yoga teacher Cheryl Ann Oberg as part of the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs weekly YouTube livestream speaker series. SACPA/YouTubeTim Kalinowski – tkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com
Certified Laughter Yoga teacher Cheryl Ann Oberg was a fitting guest for a special April Fools Day edition of the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs weekly YouTube livestream speaker series.
“Even when we don’t feel like it, when we start smiling other people look at us and smile back, and all of a sudden it becomes real,” she stated with, of course, a big smile on her face.
“It’s the same with laughter. Laughter comes from here,” she said pointing at her nose, from here (throat) and from here (stomach).
:So you have your hehehe, your hahaha, and your hohoho. When we combine it, we have a beautiful sound of laughter.”
Oberg said if you simply try to laugh every day, even when you sometimes don’t feel like it, you can eventually change your mental outlook and actual brain chemistry until you feel legitimately happy. In other words, she said, “fake it until you make it.”
Oberg also in her uplifting presentation touched on her own personal experiences which have led to her to always look on the bright side of life. She once broke her back in an accident which led to a prolonged stay in Foothills Hospital in Calgary. While in intensive care, she had a conscious altering revelation about the close and interconnected nature of tears and laughter.
“Have you ever laughed until you cried?” she asked. “Or cried until you laughed? There is such a fine line between them. We have a laughter/ tears meditation we practice, and it helps bring you into a balance so you can balance the two: Laughing and then crying and laughing (again) and crying helps bring you into balance. So when I was laying in the hospital bed with my back broken; yeah, I had some tears, but I also had laughter because my brain flipped over to: ‘what can I do to create a more peaceful moment?’”
That’s when some of her clown friends brought her a bottle of bubbles, she recalled.
“I would sit there and blow bubbles, and this one particular night – we have all had mystical, magical moments in our lives, and this was a mystical, magical moment for me. I was blowing these bubbles and I was laughing as they were landing on me, and I was doing this probably about 25 breaths, and each breath I took 25 bubbles escaped. So these bubbles were touchable – they don’t pop when they land, they just sit there.”
Some of those bubbles eventually ended up in the hospital hallway bouncing across the floor, Oberg recalled.
“(The nurse) saw these bubbles bouncing down the hospital hall,” Oberg remembered. “They were coming out of our room, and I had asked the nurse to open up my curtains. It was 10 o’clock in August in the evening as the most beautiful sun set over the Rocky Mountains. She thought my area was on fire because the sunset was coming in and reflecting in all the bubbles that were going around. She opened up the door to our room and my whole curtain area that was closed was lit up like there was some fire happening behind there. So these nurses came running into my room and ripped open my curtains around my bed.
“The looks on their faces,” Oberg recalled with a chuckle. “I had this bubble wand in my hand, and I am laying there blowing bubbles. I was covered in bubbles. They looked at me and said: ‘What are you doing?’ I just looked at them and said, ‘I am just having a bubble bath.’”
But seriously, explained Oberg, laughter is serious spiritual medicine for all your troubles and cares.
“I would like you to love like your heart has never been broken,” she concluded. “Dance as if no one is watching. And remember; don’t take life so seriously. None of us are getting out alive anyways.”
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She actually has paid customers?!