Ailon tells the story how Clown Healing was born. He’ll be facilitating the process next at Osho Leela in Dorset, UK, 19-21 April 2024
The whole of life is a great cosmic joke. It is not a serious phenomenon – take it seriously and you will go on missing it. It is understood only through laughter…
My definition of man is that man is the laughing animal. No computer laughs, no ant laughs, no bee laughs…
It is only man who can laugh, it is the highest peak of growth. And it is through laughter that you will reach to God – because it is only through the highest that is in you that you can reach the ultimate. Laughter has to become the bridge.
Osho, The Revolution, Ch 10, Q 5
The Birth of Clown Healing
What happens in China doesn’t stay in China
In 2012 I began teaching for Skyros Holidays – a Greek holistic holiday resort. Initially I went as a yoga teacher, but while there I asked if I could also teach a humour course entitled ‘The Power of Laughter.’ It was a look at the four broad aspects of comedy performance: improvisation, clowning, sketch and stand-up. The following year I retired as yoga teacher (well, it’s too much hard work) and came back as a comedy teacher. Friends from that community therefore began to associate me with comedy, which meant that it was not a total surprise when, on my 47th birthday, I got an email from my colleague Jo who was a 5Rhythms teacher:
“Hi Ailon – would you be interested in teaching a comedy workshop in China?”
“Well, why not?” I thought. “I’ve blagged most things in my life.”
Indeed the only qualifications I have are a BA(hons) in History, a holistic massage qualification and a forklift truck license. Try putting those three together! I digress. It must be the beer I’m drinking while writing – but God it’s good. The China project took nearly a year to materialise. The organisation in question were running personal development workshops and they were interested in running a course called ‘Improv Wisdom’. It was going to be a five-day course for up to 100 people – with each day running from 9am-5pm. My previous courses at Skyros had only been a handful of 2-hour workshops for approximately 8 to 10 people. Not too different really, wouldn’t you say? I prepared diligently for eight months – researching, planning, visualising. I prepared an in-depth eight-day course, just so that I would have enough material.
When we arrived (we being myself and my ex-partner Jacqueline) we were absolutely amazed. Not only were we treated like VIPs, but the people who came to the workshop were so attentive, so grateful for what we had to share. It was like giving them drugs – the drug of laughter. Games that would’ve made a Westerner curious for 5 to 10 minutes were played for 30 or 45 minutes and even then it was a fight to get them to stop. These were simple, fun, childlike games that would amuse a seven-year-old. I will never forget the delight and the joy on their faces as well as the belly-rippling laughter that ensued.
The real magic was yet to come. Unlike in the West where comedy is comedy and therapy or self-reflection is a separate entity, here we were asked to combine the two. Every hour or so, we were instructed to pause the exercises and allow people time to share their inner process – either in a pair, as a group of six or with the whole group sitting in a giant circle. This is where everything changed. As people shared their genuine personal experience of feeling what you might call their inner child, we began to find a place where laughter and tears met. Person after person revealed the fact that for their whole life they had been suppressed. Some said they had not played this way since they were kids. Some said they had never played this way as kids.
The workshop became intensely moving because we were able to travel up and down from the mountaintop to the valley – from the peaks of laughter to the depths of sensitivity. Emotional richness became the territory we were exploring, because these brave participants were totally prepared to be vulnerable and authentic. Perhaps it was the organisation we were working for who had instilled this quality of what they called ‘Self-reflection’. This comedy workshop had developed a profound dimension – we were not only playing for the sake of it, we were also commenting on our own lives, reflecting on how as people we move in and out of the depths of joy, and how sad we are when we cannot play.
As I write this (in 2018) we have now made seven trips to China in three years. Very quickly we realised that rather than teaching improvisation, what we really needed to offer were the hidden depths of clowning. Clowning is a practice that not only offers the opportunity to laugh and play – it puts one in touch with one’s inner vulnerability, tenderness, innocence and childlike aspect.
On our second trip we experienced the mind-blowing depth of where clowning and therapy could meet – provided that participants are ready to go there. Halfway through the five-day course, we set up an exercise where each individual would come onto a stage area that was empty, except for a few props or toys. In the West this would have been an opportunity to improvise – however, over here in China, simply stepping out in front of the group was already provoking the release of emotions, and possibly trauma in many individuals. People started having mini-meltdowns. I did my best to hold the space and guide them to be both true to their self, yet also to find humour. However, this all changed with a woman I will call Deborah. I have no idea what her real name was, but she was a beautiful woman with dark brown eyes, beautiful long hair and an air of wisdom. She definitely looked like a Deborah to me.
As she walked onto the stage, she began to interact with the mundane props that we had left her. Very slowly and subtly she began to hide the objects underneath a little blanket, to stuff them underneath in an ever-increasing crescendo of terror, panic, and fear. Tears streamed down her face. As she looked out, everyone in the audience became connected to her – many of them releasing their own tears and emotions in a silent recognition of something that was very clear, yet totally undefined in words. It was clear that symbolically many things in China had been ‘shoved under the carpet’.
Holding the microphone, I began to whisper some sort of guidance for her. I have no idea if it was objectively correct, but it seemed that everything I said she responded to – and it soon felt as if we were in a direct emotional rapport. At first I invited her to embrace what was happening. I asked her questions – to which she either nodded or shook her head. She could not talk – she simply sobbed, but her sobs spoke more than all of the words in a Shakespeare play.
Her process continued for around 20 to 25 minutes. After some time, she began to remove the objects from underneath the carpet – to look at them and to emotionally straddle the place from which she wanted to both embrace and repress them. These objects represented aspects of her trauma – she was enacting a ritual, a psychodrama in which her hidden aspects were coming up for expression. Somehow my commentary seemed to guide her and lead her through this tangled murky web of emotional schizophrenia. She was releasing. After a certain point, most of the objects were removed from under the blanket and brought into view. Almost every Chinese person in the room was now in tears, sobbing out loud in synchronistic empathy. It was as if she had tapped into some collective trauma that all Chinese people were connected to. My guess is that it was grief, but we will never know as no words were used.
After some time, her release was over. All I could do next was bring everybody together to stand in a circle, holding hands – and let us silently acknowledge what had taken place. Even my eyes were streaming now, my nose was dripping snot and my belly quivering in some hidden recognition of the magnitude of what had just taken place. Echoes of sobbing rippled around the circle. I mouthed a few words. We supported each other with hands on backs, and then even the occasional laugh began to creep in. Having taken part in many Family Constellations workshops, I realised that a deep therapy had taken place here – something I would later call ‘Clown Constellations’.
At the end of the 5-day workshop Deborah came up to me and said that what had happened to her was incredible, a profound release; and something had shifted inside – she felt lighter.
“What do you call this workshop?” she asked.
“I don’t know… ummm… Clown Healing?” I replied.
“Well if you bring this workshop again to China, I will bring many people back to see you.”
That promise came true.
Since then, I have been continuing to develop this therapeutic process called Clown Healing – a veritable mix of playfulness, catharsis, emotional expression, vulnerability, and silliness, all wrapped up in a therapeutic blanket and invisibly blessed by Osho’s vision of love, life and laughter.
There’s not a lot like it.
Clown Healing workshops are being offered at Osho Leela in April and November 2024. Book with osholeela.uk or tickettailor.com/schoolofplayfulness
About Ailon Freedman
Growing up, I felt like the most emotionally straightjacketed person you could ever imagine. For the last 35 years I have been weaving a journey between humour and self enquiry, and, somewhat foolishly, I think I’ve hit the nail on the head: “Don’t take yourself seriously, for the same amount of time that you take yourself seriously.” Clown Healing is a practice and a teaching that has emerged in my life as a yoga teacher, a comedian, a sannyasin, and above all a Neurotic Jew. linktr.ee/AilonFree
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