A Shero Gets Reborn - Everyday!
This morning I introduced an expecting mother to the laughter therapy in the yoga class post which she shared that the last time she laughed out loud (for no reason) was when she was in the 7th Grade and over the years, she had just lost the habit of laughing. A hearty laughter was replaced by a suppressed smile for expressing all positive emotions. Infact now she stops her son from laughing out loud. She feels laughing is so strange ( "weird")!.
After hearing her, I was a bit intrigued to know why she stopped doing something which if I say is every individual's right, a necessity to feel alive, will not be an inflated expression of my own thought.
I did not make any conscious effort to know more as when we laughed together, somewhere we broke the inhibitions of not letting our inner self show to the other. My Yogini is a successful Senior Marketing Executive with a global tech organization, blessed with a caring husband, is a doting mother to a son and is on her way to bringing another beautiful life into existence shortly. However, recalling her childhood, she shared that she was brought up in a conservative South Indian family culture. She feels proud of getting equal opportunities and mentoring from her parents as she grew up but was often left suppressed and clueless when she was reprimanded for laughing loud at the dinner table or among friends and family.
"You are a girl, don't laugh out too loud"...
"Why are you laughing, are you mad, tone down"...
Were just some of the instructions that she was given time and again. In the beginning, she used to forget the rules but as she was repeatedly reminded, it started settling into her system. Such a time came after the 7th Grade that it became a way of life for her. Suppressed smiles with a subservient body posture took over those hearty laughter bouts, unconditional giggles and free body movement. She further shared that today, after so many years she is naturally doing the same to her son what she herself experienced in her childhood. So much so that not only she suppresses her own laughter, she strongly restricts her son from declaring loud that he is happy.
She could never get a clarity as to why shouldn't she laugh. What's wrong with laughing like that? Eventually, she stopped looking for answers and just started following the rules for herself and now for her child.
As I introduced her to the concept, I could see, she was a bit hesitating maybe wondering as to how to laugh but had a little willingness to trying this therapy for the life developing inside her. Submissively, she started with a chuckle, as I comforted her into the therapy, I started to hear her laughter gaining a tempo and exactly after five minutes into the healing session, I saw her rolling on the floor, laughing with open mouth, closed eyes in only one expression - the expression of letting go, of feeling relieved and free! This continued for twelve minutes without interruption.
"Wow! What a Shero feeling.. I made someone laugh this morning..
As she left the room with gleaming eyes, an expression of freedom on her face with a promise to laugh and even make her son laugh more often, I saw - A Shero was Reborn!
