Health & Science
Don't Laugh
Textile entrepreneur leads guffaw-inducing therapy sessions for the stressed-out
mt1254@nyu.edu
Vishwa Prakash was chasing a bus, waving his arms wildly to catch the driver’s attention. But the driver took one look at him and pulled away.
Curiously, Prakash burst into a fit of laughter.
That’s because it was just a simulation. Prakash was leading another session of laughter therapy, a yogic stress-relief technique from India he’s helped spread in Asia and is promoting in the United States.
“I’m not out here to change the world,” said the 55-year-old textile firm owner, taking a break from leading 10 participants at an after-hours session in his office in New York’s garment district. “But if I can do something that will bring lightness and laughter and joy and healing to people, I think that’s more than I could ask for.”
Prakash’s office, Soimex Denim Magic, is also the unlikely official headquarters of Laughter Yoga International. Over the past five years, he’s founded laughter clubs in Hong Kong, Macao and China, and has trained other “laughter therapists” who go on to run clubs of their own. Though the concept of the laughter club began in Mumbai, India, the movement now claims 200 clubs in the United States, and some 5,000 in 40 countries. Since many are linked to yoga studios, there’s often a fee — but Prakash’s sessions are free.
“You start to laugh without real reason, and you pretend, and you feel like a kid and it just makes you feel so good,” said Arlene Papeir-Brickman, a regular attendee from Forest Hills.
Melissa Bryant, 29, an employee of a New Jersey fashion company, reported that she and her uncle were sharing jokes in her grandmother’s hospital room, while her grandmother was in a coma-like diabetic shock. Suddenly, her grandmother emitted a low-sounding laugh, and within a few days, began to talk and recover.
The man credited with founding the laughter movement in 1995, cardiologist Madan Kataria, happened to be in town, and was helping lead that morning’s session.
Prakash, born in Sonipat, India and an MBA-educated son of a civil servant, was living in Hong Kong with his family in 2002 when he read an article about Kataria’s laugher project in the South China Morning Post.
“I wrote to the editor, saying I admire Dr. Kataria’s work. And I thought that was the end of that,” Prakash said. “But it wasn’t.”
The editor forwarded the letter to Dr. Kataria in Mumbai. The next day, Prakash received a phone call from the master, who asked if he would like to learn how to become a laughter leader.
“I said of course not,” Prakash said. “I put the phone down and I deleted the email.”
But a few days later, Prakash couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing his calling. He soon visited Dr. Kataria in Mumbai, staying in his home and spending about $500 on a week’s one-on-one training.
“Vishwa was a hardcore businessman,” said Dr. Kataria said. “I found that he was very stressed out…he had no way of understanding how to laugh.”
Prakash’s wife and two children were puzzled by his new calling, but decided to support him at what he loved.
“He has become much more positive toward negative situations and negative people,” said Dr. Kataria. “He has also given me the platform to launch the laughter movement in the U.S.”
Sessions focus on laughter-inducing breathing and yoga exercises, plus, at least in Prakash’s studio, a bunch of loopy jokes. Laughter therapy isn’t political or religious. Besides reducing stress and improving circulation, it’s also pitched as a chance to forget one’s troubles, at least for an evening.
Participants mimic Prakash as he belly laughs: “Ho! Ho! Ha! Ha! Ha!” and everyone claps. He pretends to be a lion, then to lift weights. Not laughing yet? Maybe it’s the idea of getting together in a room with strangers just to laugh that’s so funny. It’s unaccountably easy to crack up. One participant dropped to the floor in irrepressible laughter; Prakash had to help her up.
“The point is, I am about lowering the threshold of laughter,” Prakash said. “That is to say, that if you’ve been here three or four times, then you have become a person who laughs easily. Suddenly, they find the laugh lines on their face again.”
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BOX
Some U.S. Laughter Clubs
Arizona
Tucson Laughter Club - http://www.tucsonlaughterclub.com/
California
San Francisco Laughing Wildflowers - http://www.laughteryogawisdom.com/
Napa Valley Laughter Club - aha@napanet.net
Colorado
Boulder Laughter Works — ebrown91@netzero.net
Florida
Largo - YLaughclub — http://www.laughteryogaflorida.org/
Massachusetts
Boston - Greater Boston Laughter Club — http://www.laughterforhealth.com/
New York
New York City - Vishwa Prakash’s Laughter Therapy — http://www.vishwaprakash.com/
Texas
Austin - Leona’s Laughter Club mli@lcsvs.com
Sources: http://www.laughteryoga.org/ and http://www.worldlaughtertour.com/.
Textile businessman Vishwa Prakash works from his New York office to spread laughter therapy around the United States.
Participants in an after-hours laughter therapy workshop.
Dr. Madan Kataria, who founded the laughter therapy movement in India, demonstrates a technique.
Photos by Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad.