Pamela Wener, Canada: Training to be a certified laughter leader has changed my life in so many positive ways. To begin with, I would have to say that I truly feel different inside. I am a much happier, grateful, upbeat person who is able to share this easily with others. Being a pre-school teacher for almost 30 years and the mother of twin sons and a daughter, I have always loved kids and have fo...

Nancy Weil, USA: I became a laughter leader in 2002 and ran Laughter Clubs for senior citizens. After the Laughter Club ended, I stopped offering any laughter programs. Several years later, I started to work at a cemetery working with the families. Part of the job was to offer programs to community groups. Most of them were cemetery related topics, but I also offered Laugh for the Health of It. Th...

Gary Hahn, USA: For me, the sound of laughter has all not always been pleasant. As I lost my father at age 1, and my mother at age 12, I spent a large majority of my childhood in an orphanage. Unfortunately, the laughter was often directed towards me by being made fun of at school and at the orphanage. I chose to overcome this bullying by developing myself physically. I later transformed the initi...

Ana Banana, Portugal: I am a professional clown who spent 30 years making people laugh, but that does not mean I can still do it. On the contrary, my life became darker and darker, eventually reducing me to a depressed and severely ill person. I couldn’t find the light at the end of the tunnel, with my marriage ending, practically homeless, my little 4 year old daughter, Zara, looking at me ...

Sylvie Dagenais-Douvill, Canada: I had the chance to discover Laughter Yoga 4 years ago and have been promoting it full time for the last 2 years, after I lost my job unfortunately. I have since published a book for teenage parents with a full chapter on Laughter Yoga and how to use it has a tool. Shortly after losing my job, my 23 year old daughter moved away from home, and I know that it is with...

Natalie Lui, Hong Kong: Do you believe life composes different magic moments which lead you to the path of your dream? I do. I chanced twice upon Laughter Yoga before finally ending up in the Laughter Yoga Teacher Training Course in Bangalore. Few years ago, I went for a social work seminar to Vancouver, which initially was quite a mess as I faced some visa problems and was not allowed into the...

Cedric Komar, USA: I came across Laughter Yoga through the Internet several years ago. Though the idea was very appealing, I told myself that I would look into it later. And then my life started changing two years ago with my first trip to India for an Ayurveda retreat. The reason why my wife and I went to India was fertility treatment as a last chance to have a baby after 6 years of unsuccessful ...

Ulrike Bauer, Switzerland: One day my daughter invited me to come with her to a Laughter Yoga session as she had already tried it and was all for it. At the beginning, the exercises, especially the ones where I had to force myself to laugh, were so embarrassing that I promised myself never to come again. But as I wasn’t brave enough to leave, I stayed till the end and played along. At the en...

Matti, Canada: It happened spontaneously for me a few weeks ago, after two and a half years of Laughter Yoga practice. I had bought a magnifying lens for reading the fine print on supplement bottles and for reading in bed at night. At work one day, I realized I needed to print something so I got out my lens but instead of using it properly, I unintentionally relaxed my eyes. For a while I could no...

Julie Whitehead, London: I am a Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher and I have practiced Hatha yoga for over 30 years and thought I had a very positive attitude to life – but in 2001 when I saw Dr Kataria on the TV laughing on a beach in Mumbai with John Cleese – I realised that I wanted to get more laughter in my life! Shortly after that I saw a magazine article saying that Dr Kataria was...

Margaret Mason, USA: Margaret Mason was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome (RSDS). It is a very painful chronic disease with possibly no cure. The pain is very intense and at times unbearable. She has been laughing all by herself. She and her partner watched Dr. Kataria’s Laughter Yoga videos on YouTube and then she started laughing alone. This has really helped her to g...

Michael Stretch, England: This story shows different aspects of my life; before and after my Laughter Yoga journey. Since an early age, I was a little aloof and had an occasional pattern of waking in the night amongst horrific deliriums that left me scared beyond belief. After a difficult parental divorce, I had a fairly normal childhood until before high school, when I began using substances as a...