Many farm families pride themselves in their ability to weather adversity,.
Some become so hardened by a life of never-ending toil and disappointment that they not only start to look like American Gothic, they start to feel that way, too. The iconic painting from 1930 by Grant Wood shows a dour-faced older man holding a pitchfork alongside his wife in front of a house.
In trying times, it’s easy to fall into the trap of humourlessness, says Rolande Kirouac, a laughter yoga instructor and expert in stress management, leadership development and team building who gave the keynote speech at the 2008 Manitoba Farm Women’s Conference.
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A morose outlook on life is a learned behaviour, and if allowed to continue unchecked, it can spread from families to neighbours, and eventually poison the collective attitude of an entire community, she said.
Every day spent in that woeful state is a day wasted, said Kirouac. And since laughter is free, there’s no reason to be stingy about it.
In fact, she added there’s no real reason why you should have to wait for something funny to happen to let loose a giant, knee-slapping guffaw.
“Have you ever noticed that at most of our meetings and get-togethers, we’re allowed only one laugh? Something funny happens and everybody laughs once. If someone continues laughing, it’s like, ‘What? Enough already,’ ” she said.
Through practice, Kirouac has developed the ability to giggle, chuckle and bray uproariously for up to 15 minutes at a stretch for no reason. She now teaches others how to heal themselves with mirth, and has released a CD entitled Ha!
Laughter yoga is a nonreligious, nonsectarian, nonpolitical yoga technique that was first developed in India in 1995 by Dr. Madan Kataria. He proposed that getting together in groups to laugh for no reason offers mental and physical health benefits. Since then, about 5,000 clubs have been formed in 40 countries.
When she first started attending laughter yoga sessions about five years ago, Kirouac was only able to conjure up a single laugh at a time.
“And then I would get a second laugh and let it go. And then all of a sudden there were more laughs that would come out. So if you’re a one-laugh person, the next time you do it, you want to try being a two-laugh person, and then a three-laugh person,” said Kirouac.
“That’s how you build your laughter muscles, and that’s how you get to 15 minutes.”
Bringing playfulness back into farm life pays dividends in the form of reduced stress and an environment in which all family members can relax and enjoy life, especially the children and grandchildren.
Kirouac recalled how as children, she and her siblings would roll around on the floor laughing for the sheer joy of it.
When her parents went out, they would put Yellow Rose of Texas on the record player and then play follow the leader around the house, under the table and over the chairs.
“We would just go up and down and sing along and just be happy. My brothers and sisters, we still once in a while get together with no kids and we do all the stuff that we tell our kids not to do,” she said.
“We run with scissors … and have a good time together. We realized that we needed that brother-sister bonding because it was good for us.”
