Why laughing really is better.

Sweating and straining in a balancing pose the other day my yoga teacher gently reminded me – to smile. As we’ve heard numerous times in a yoga class, it’s when we breathe and smile and ease into the pose that we go further. The body relaxes and intuitively goes where it needs to. Being hard on ourselves and getting all contracted gets us no where.

As always, this was timely advice for just before the class I came across the following quote:

“To be intuitive, we must cultivate our sense of humor and look for reasons to laugh everywhere. We become so self-absorbed and serious when it comes to our problems and melodramas that we disconnect from our deeper sense of who we are as beautiful souls—we withdraw from life instead of enjoying it. Laughter brings us back to ourselves and back to life.”

~ Sonia Choquette from Trust Your Vibes

It’s so easy for us to get caught up in things when they’re not going our ‘perceived’ way. We become all serious and hard on ourselves and become critical of why we are in this perceived mess in the first place. But that’s the thing, nothing is ever that serious unless we give it the meaning that it is.

I’ll often be right up there in my head, plotting this, mulling over that, sorting through this event and that event and I’ll catch myself. I’ll say ‘I’m back’ and strive to become aware of my surroundings, I’ll do my best to get present and then I’ll laugh. When I have these moments, I truly feel like I’ve been let in on a little secret between myself and the Universe, like I’ve just gotten the joke. And I’ll think, ‘ahhhh there you again Universe, have a laugh, go on’. As far as I’m concerned the Universe has a wicked sense of humour, so there’s no use being a spoilt sport about. May as well laugh along with it.

So, paying attention to the signs I asked myself, where was it that I had been taking life too seriously?

As I’m sure you can relate, I can be really hard on myself. I have a blow out on food which I know doesn’t serve me and I become really critical of myself. I don’t get all the work done on my to do list for the day and I become really judgemental and have thoughts of failure. I think about where I ‘should be’ and I become all serious and task oriented. I become contracted and I lose sight of the goodness of each moment.

And this isn’t fun. It’s crappy. It takes the joy out of life.

That’s the thing – I much prefer joy. Things aren’t always rosy, they’re not meant to be, the non rosy makes you appreciate the rosy all the more. BUT what we do have choice over is how long we want to stay in the non rosy.

How do we do this? We laugh. We tap back into what brings us joy. We find the humour in the situation. We reconnect with what we know to be the truth, which simply is, love instead of fear.

“If you want to learn to trust your vibes, you must maintain a peaceful and relatively calm attitude. When you’re tense, nervous, or anxious, your energy gets tangled up and blocked and can’t enter your heart center, where your Higher Self and your vibes communicate.”

~ Sonia Choquette from Trust Your Vibes

This quote further reinforced the the power of taking a step back to loosen the seriousness I place around this and that. By doing so it opens me up, it allows things to flow, I feel it in my body.

Your body is the barometer for what’s going on inside that head of yours. If your stomach is clenching, if your insides are squirming, if you’re feeling tight – then energy is blocked. And it’s trying to tell you something.

When I tap into this feeling place, the lower vibration that I experience reminds me that my overly judgemental ego is responsible for me feeling not so laughy.

And so I laugh at it. I thank it for trying to protect me and for trying to keep me the way I am and then I make a choice. I make a choice to get over myself and to reconnect with my essence, my spirit – which at it’s core is love.

That’s all we have – the choice between fear and love. When we laugh we are loving, we are trusting, we are flowing. When we’re not laughing… well, you know how this feels and it certainly doesn’t feel like love.

If you’re reading this and it’s resonating, I invite you to go to the mirror and stare deep into your eyes and have a conversation with yourself. Explain to yourself that you’re taking things way toooo seriously at the moment and that nothing is that bad, and that everything shfits, so really, what’s the point of getting all antsy and annoyed?

You’ll quickly realise that there is no point.