Meditative Laughter?

"Laughter is the spark of the soul."

Girls, girls, girls...

Last night's yoga class was a push and pull. I had three tired girls and two very energetic girls, and one tired but energetic girl. We did yoga for about half the class. When I saw that a couple of the girls, who had apparently been to lacrosse  tryouts and had to run three miles earlier that day seemed a little out of it I decided to finish up the yoga part and move on to a game and a guided meditation. 

The girls asked to play the PLAY With Me game again. That's the questions game. One of the questions was, "What does the word 'Love' mean to you?"

"Love is when you would do anything for the person and they would do anything for you," answered my tired but energetic girl.

"Yeah, what she said," said energetic number one.

"Rrrrrrrooomance," said another energetic girl.

"I like what Anna said," said another one.

"Love means love," said one of the Gigi's.

"Love is....love is being able to say anything to a person," said one of my quieter girls. 

I love hearing what these girls have to say. I love when they are able to express thoughts that might not come up in conversation without the little nudge from our game. I love their thoughtful answers, I love their silliness, I even love when they just say, "Yeah, what she said," I think that shows at least they were listening to another person's thoughts, which is a skill all on it's own.

So we finished up with some guided meditation.  

My four tired girls lied there so quietly and listened and let their bodies relax and just be. My two energetic ones got the giggles. They couldn't stop. I understand that completely. It's distracting but sometimes it happens. It happened to me one time in savasana because some girl fell asleep and started snoring and it was the most bizarre sounding snore that I actually had tears streaming down the sides of my face as I shook with silent laughter. It just wouldn't stop. As much as I tried to imagine myself in a firey plane crash or stuck at the bottom of a well to stop laughing, I couldn't.  So I had the two gigglers walk out in the hallway so the other girls could finish up quietly. It was at that minute that my dog Mickey got in the room and started yiping and jumping around and making weird noises. Little grins were starting to crack on everyone's faces.

There is a quote...

"Laughter is the tranquilizer with no side effects."  Arnold H. Glasgow

So perhaps that was a good meditation.

Right?