
Laugh Yourself Silly, Heal Yourself with Hilarity
The belly laugh is one of the best medicines one can possess. It is an expression of the taproot, the root of all roots. The feeder to all things. The great trembling. The hysterical howl that awakens the deeper nature of all living creatures. The belly laugh is the place where all seriousness is left to the dogs so they can gobble it down and bring us back to the bone.
There was that time I fell down on the grass and rolled around like a hyena in hysterics when my grandma called out to the woman ahead of us on the sidewalk and asked her for directions. The woman was my aunt wearing a ridiculous clown mask that she’d had on when we all left the house together. My aunt was ahead of us, looking at house numbers for my grandma so we could find her friend’s house and visit her on Halloween.
There was that time we started calling each other food names, my sister and I — my little avocado, my little rutabaga, my little cube steak, my little French loaf. We went on and on until we couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t hold our pee in. We went on so long my sister went into labor and my first niece was born hours later. Lamb chop and kumquat stuck and are what we call each other today.
There was that time that old horse, Bago, who wouldn’t move no matter how hard I kicked him, turned toward home and took off. It was so unexpected I bounced right off the back of his horse butt, hit the ground, and got a hoof to my shin as he kept on running. I should’ve cried. Instead I rolled and wailed and howled in laughter. No one who came to help me could tell if I was injured or not, and neither could I.
There are so many times I’ve laughed myself silly or healed something with hilarity they are too numerous to name. The belly laugh is my best precious medicine. It soothes me, opens me, shakes me, and heals me like no other.
This is how I talk from the guts. This is how I tell the full truth of myself. Sometimes even when I’m crying, I feel laughter moving in my belly because my body feels them the same way, only the mind makes the distinction. Each one comes from the great trembling, from the mother root of all aliveness.
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