Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

We all chuckle.

“Any newcomers?” Alex asks.

I raise my hand.

“How’d you hear about us?”

“The Internet,” I say.

A wave of laughs and titters. I like this room. This isn’t what you’d call a tough room. This room could, in fact, be the easiest in New York City. I’m not sure why “Internet” got such a big reaction. Its association with porn? With geeks? Who knows. I’m just happy “the Internet” was considered an Algonquin-worthy quip.

Eingorn asks us to go around the room and say our names and occupations. And, he adds, somewhat unnecessarily, we should respond to each other with laughter. That will break the tension.

First guy: “I’m Tom. I’m an accountant.”

There’s some laughter.

Second guy: “I’m Steve. I’m a consultant.”

More laughs.

Third guy: “I’m also Steve.”

Big laughs. A callback.

There was a psychoanalyst (good reaction), plumber (huge one), and then me.

“I’m A.J. and I’m a writer,” I said.

Everyone busts out at that one, rivaling the response for the plumber. This time I have mixed feelings. What’s so funny about a writer? Is it really as humorous as the plumber, an occupation known for clogged toilets and low-riding pants? Intellectually, I know the group is just following orders, but a deeply buried part of me feels as though they are mocking me. A writer? In this day and age? Time to dust off the résumé, pal.

For the newbies, Eingorn gives a quick intro to laughter clubs. The movement was started by an Indian physician named Madan Kataria in the mid-1990s. It soon spread all over the world, with a reported six thousand clubs in sixty countries. (A poster in the corner shows a record-breaking ten thousand people in Copenhagen chuckling in a plaza on World Laughter Day, the first Sunday in May.)

We don’t tell jokes, says Eingorn, because humor is subjective. We just laugh.

“We like to say, ‘Fake it till you make it.’ Force yourself to laugh in the beginning, and you’ll eventually start laughing in earnest.”

The health benefits are huge, he says. Laughter lowers the level of the stress hormone cortisol. It boosts immunity and reduces pain. A University of Maryland study found that big laughers had a 40 percent lower rate of heart disease than nonlaughers. (Though, to be fair, that could be because heart disease doesn’t put one in the jolliest mood.) And it’s even good exercise. A Vanderbilt researcher found that fifteen minutes of laughing burns forty calories.

I didn’t want to bring it up, but Eingorn was slightly overstating the case. Some studies have shown that laughter does indeed lower stress levels. But what about fake laughter? No one has any rigorous studies on that.

Enough warm-up. Time for the laughter yoga. There isn’t so much yoga, actually. Just a handful of stretches.

Instead, the experience is like a cocktail party, where you mill around the room, exchanging witty repartee with the other guests. The only difference is that there are no cocktails and no witty repartee. Just the laughter.

And to keep it interesting, you laugh in different ways. We go through about ten different laughs over the course of the hour. In no particular order, there was:

• the “oops, I dropped a vase” laughter. Here, we mime fumbling a vase, then shrug our shoulders and laugh.

• the “I’m late” laugh. We point to our invisible watches and shrug our shoulders and give a carefree laugh.

• the explosive laughter.

• the snort-filled laughter.

• the “no-no-no” laugh. In this one, we wag a finger and remonstrate with our fellow laugher for an imaginary transgression.

• the laugh of retribution. “Sometimes in life you feel like a heroic statue. And sometimes you feel like a pigeon who is looking for statues to take a dump on. So we’re going to be the pigeon.” Here, we flap our arms, say “bok, bok, bok,” momentarily squat down, then laugh.

I am faking it, not making it. I force myself to emit laughing sounds so I won’t look like a grump. But I am mostly experiencing a blend of emotions: fascination that this throaty exhalation of air has evolved into a signal for joy, mixed with embarrassment that I’m making such a spectacle of myself, even if others are making the same spectacle. And occasionally I feel jealous at other people’s laughing skills. This one guy—the psychoanalyst with the ironed oxford shirt—has a wonderful basso profundo laugh. One of the Steves—the one in chinos—is a full-body shaker.

“Good laughing,” everyone tells them.

Most people’s laughs fade slowly at the end of each two-minute exercise, but the redhead with tights can turn it off suddenly, like someone had tripped over her power cord. Her discipline makes me nervous.

“Ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha!” we chant as we do at the end of every round.

During the next exercise, we laugh while miming pouring water into an empty cup. I am laughing face-to-face with a sixtyish woman in purple sweatpants, when she leans in and says, “You look more like you’re yawning than laughing.” At least I think that’s what she said. There’s a lot of background noise. But I think she is criticizing my laugh, which does not seem in keeping with the laughter club ethos.

I purse my lips, annoyed. I don’t like her technique either, frankly. Way too shticky for me. Lots of eyebrow work and jazz hands.

“Ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha.”

“Woody Allen said that ‘I’m thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose,’” says Eingorn.

No one laughs, not even in this room. I feel bad for Eingorn, so I muster a cackle.

Eingorn reiterates the importance of positive emotions: “As Norman Cousins said, we all know that negative feelings make you sick. If you’re depressed, you can have a heart attack. Or you can die of a broken heart.” Alex mimes a heart coming out of his chest and splattering on the floor. We laugh.

And now the sumo laugh. We all put our hands on our thighs and stomp around the room, giggling. At this point, I have a thought. What if an actual four-hundred-pound