In addition to some wonderful music, we found a fat nugget in Shocking the Consciousness, Amanda Petrushich’s piece on 80-year-old radical/New Age composer Laraaji in The New Yorker:
…he has taken to spreading the gospel of laughter as a transformative force. Every Thursday morning, on Dublab, an Internet radio station based in Los Angeles, Laraaji leads a three-minute “laughter meditation,” in which he chuckles, hoots, and guffaws, sometimes over pinging, atmospheric sounds. He has said that he thinks of laughter as “a luminous language, a language of lightness, of brevity, of vulnerability.” …Laraaji believes that even a forced smile can open something up in our brains. He has described a good laugh as a “ventilation of your system.”
The gold we found in that paragraph: Dublab, which plays a wide array of great, unexpected music. But ESPECIALLY Laraaji Laughs, his Thursday morning 3 minutes of laughter.
Laraaji hopes these offerings encourage you to play with your own laughter, sending the medicinal sounds into your head, chest, and abdomen.
We stream old episodes on demand and find they make us smile…and….laugh: a fine start to the day. Laughter IS a “transformative, and ultimately healing, tool.”
If you want more nuanced approach to Laraaji’s laughter therapy, this video will guide the way. Laraaji shares exercises to optimize laughter and what they do in the body. They are wonderful. At 6:57 he pulls out the big guns, belly laughter. (They take their coats off for that one.) At 9:52, you learn to stimulate your brain’s happiness center with a smile.
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