I am not proud to share that my father was an alcoholic and another member of my family was as well for quite a few years. Little surprise then how delighted I was to be asked by Jenni Furby, the Team Leader at Sharc, to do a session of laughter yoga for the about a dozen residents.
Sharc stands for Self Help Addiction Resource Centre, situated in Carnegie and “provides housing, education, advocacy and family support to members of their community affected by addiction and related problems to recover and achieve meaningful, satisfying and contributing lives.”
Their website is http://www.sharc.org.au/ and it is so good to know of this program for me personally, as it is dear to my heart and we all know that drugs and alcohol effect not only the participant but the whole family. It can lead to so much destruction over a lifetime on many levels, including the most basic one of shame and lack of feelings of self worth, feeling alone and wanting to hide from the world. Of course then we cope the best that we can and I am grateful, I say this even though it may be repeating myself, that such a wonderful self help program exists and that the residents are given this support up to a year if needs be.
Returning to my part in all this. Well it was a fantastic session and several staff members joined in as well, which was terrific to experience laughter yoga, as it is still a relatively new concept, to laugh for no reason, other than that it is of great benefit to you. We began with a circular breathing exercise, which helped to ground everyone, coming into the moment and more mentally and emotionally settled, ready to begin the laughter exercises.
Some were over the top with the laughter and everyone who shared were positive and the following day, checking withthe head staff member on the day, Matt Rothman the feedback was excellent.
We finished with laughter meditation, where most were lying on the carpet and a couple were sitting in a chair , when we did laughter meditation, a free form laughter, leading then into a full body relaxation and short meditation.
I would like to share the testimonials which I gratefully thank Jenni Firby for acquiring for me; always a good thing to have positive words to share on.
“The teacher was lovely”
“I appreciated the concept of it”
“It was outside my comfort zone but was good to try something new”
“It was a good experience, I enjoyed myself and remained open minded to it. The lady who ran it was nice”
“I really liked the meditation at the end”
Thank you staff at Sharc once again for calling me in to share the joy, energy and upliftment of laughter yoga. I appreciate the opportunity and would ask and welcome anyone reading this post to put me in touch with similar organisations or pass this on to someone on a team with whom you feel it could benefit.
Wishing you much love and laughter.
Lynette Mitchell xxxooo