دار بيبليون
Laughter in the Arab-Muslim tradition
and Laughter Yoga
Speech by Dr Lwiis Saliba on Zoom
Wednesday 20/10/2021
We rarely laugh, especially in these difficult days: the days of the Covid pandemic and the serious political, economic and financial crises in Lebanon and the Arab world. While our Arab culture and Lebanese traditions insistently invite and encourage us to laugh. This is reflected in common Arabic proverbs.
The first of these is the one that says: “Laugh and the world will laugh with you, cry and you will cry alone”. This old proverb expresses a scientific fact that is now proven: laughter is contagious and communicative by nature. This is what we always experience in our meetings and conversations. As soon as someone laughs, the rest of the people present start to laugh.
There is also a deep-rooted Arabic proverb that says: “The evil of calamity makes you laugh”. This is an explicit invitation to laugh when calamity strikes, instead of crying convulsively or getting angry. Let’s hope that we can acquire this reaction, this reflex, because it avoids a lot of tension and protects us from the stresses we are prey to in our daily lives. We must not forget that laughter is one of the characteristics of man. Animals do not know laughter, whereas convulsions, irritation, anger and violence are all animal reactions that we have inherited from our previous Homo sapiens ancestors, and that we have not experienced to date. How can we free ourselves from them? Because they rule us and even control us.
People often avoid a grumpy person and even run away from them. Whereas they are attracted to smiling and laughing faces. And the Lebanese proverb says about a person who often grimaces: “His face does not laugh at a hot loaf of bread”. This is a clear and explicit invitation to laugh in the face of sustenance in order to attract it, and bread is the symbol of sustenance, so it is called ‘living’. The popular rule is: “Be optimistic about the good and you will find it”. This is a parallel and synonymous rule to the above-mentioned proverb: “Laugh, and the world will laugh with you”.
Another Arabic proverb is the invocation that laughers repeat after each laugh: “May God grant us the good of this laughter”, which is another proof that laughter in the general sense is ‘good’ and auspicious.
Today, scientific research has proven that laughter releases the hormones of joy, such as endorphins, dopamine and others. And that there is no difference between simulated and spontaneous laughter, as their positive effects on the body and its physiology are the same. Hence the importance of the collective practice of laughter: it is enough to laugh in a session, as we have mentioned, for others to laugh. Thus, in the congregation, the period of laughter practice is prolonged because laughter is communicative and contagious in nature, as we have indicated: as soon as one person finishes, another begins and so the laughter continues and hardly ends. This is what a person does not have when he or she laughs alone. Everyone knows the importance of the atmosphere of joy in spreading happiness, so everyone seeks it. It is also noticeable that it is enough for a person to force himself to laugh first, for his laughter to continue spontaneously. A simple effort at the beginning is enough to enter the world of laughter. The point, or the short period of transition between the two worlds of seriousness and laughter, requires some effort on its own, and then things follow naturally. Collective laughter brings those present on the same wave and harmonises hearts, hence its importance in spreading non-violence and peace.
I conclude with my experience in this field. It goes back to February 2001. It was then that I lived in India in the ashram (or monastery) of Chandra Swami, the wise and silent ‘yogic’ Muni Master. With his blessing I remained silent for a period of about a month, during which, in his way, I just wrote down what I wanted to say without uttering a word. At the evening meetings of the ashram audience, I often had spontaneous bursts of laughter. It was the slightest gesture, movement or smile on his part that made me burst out laughing. At first I was very embarrassed to laugh in the presence of an accomplished Master, a wise and venerable old man, especially as we had been brought up on a strict and unjust rule of conduct which forbade laughing in the presence of the elderly, and which said: “Laughing without reason is bad manners”. As for him, his first spontaneous reaction surprised me. He wrote to the people present, saying: “See how he is absorbed by laughter and how his whole body reacts to laughter and expresses it”. He was simply inviting them to laugh as I was laughing. And once, encouraging me, he wrote: “In silence, it is forbidden to speak, but laughter is desirable”.
To this day, whenever I recall those laughter moments in the presence of Chandra Swami, I feel an inner joy and a smile, or even a laugh appears on my face.
Just a word to conclude: laughter costs less than electricity, which is very often cut off at home, but it gives just as much light!
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