LAURA GENTRY, USA : A few days after my mother’s hip replacement surgery, she reported some unusual symptoms to my dad, who took her to the emergency room. There, they discovered she had a life-threatening aortic aneurysm and the decision was made to transport her by medflight to a nearby hospital for emergency heart surgery. As we anxiously awaited the outcome of her operation, I called ...

Khushmita Sanghvi, India: As soon as I completed my Certified Laughter Yoga Training (CLYT) course in June 2010, I felt a distinctive shift in my perspective in life. I had already made a huge leap of faith last year by quitting my corporate job and becoming a full time yoga instructor, but Laughter Yoga took my journey ahead by a thousand miles! I felt so light and clear in my head when I retu...

Cathy O’Donnell, USA: I have been working in the fitness industry for 20 years as an Aerobics Instructor, Personal Trainer and now as a National Fitness Presenter. I first heard about Laughter Yoga while watching an episode of the MTV reality show “Celebrity Fit Club”. One of the celebrities was having a very hard time, she was really stressed out and her coaches suggested she ta...

Gaga Barnes, USA: My true nature is playful and I laugh easily. Yet, since my high school years, I became serious. I squished my joy and laughter inside and shared it only with people very close to me. I found out about the laughter movement in September 2006 from my friend Sarito Sun. I attended her Laughter meditation class and laughed so hard that tears were rolling down my cheeks and my bel...

Edna Granot, Australia: I am a happy and positive individual who treats people for colonic irrigations and guides them about general aspects of life as well as health and emotional issues. In 2009, I attended Dr. Kataria’s Laughter & Silence Yoga conference for 5 days in Melbourne, which helped me to resolve some important issues in my personal life. The first was my hatred towards th...

Alex Eingorn, USA: Laughter Yoga has definitely changed my life. In fact, you can say it saved my life. I first became aware of Dr. Kataria’s work through a patient who said to me, “When you made me laugh, you saved my life!” At the time, I was being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and taking two different anti-depressant Serotonin uptake inhibitors, as well as ...

Fletcher Holliday, USA: I grew up in Houston, Texas in a middle class family and was mostly surrounded by hardworking and good people. As a kid, my brother and I would make up crazy games to play, have a mud fight, or play with the neighborhood kids. We would laugh like it was the last time we would ever get the chance. As time went on, we grew older, started going to school, and making other frie...

Sylvia Pencheva, Bulgaria: Since I graduated, I’ve been working as a software developer. Every day I spend at least 8 hours in front of the computer. You can imagine how you get used to it – the virtual communication, the piles of information, which distract you from what you really need to do. I soon realized that the only people I was talking to were those who were also hooked on to ...

V Malar, India: Since the last two decades, I have been training people from all walks of life in different areas like Health &Safety, Reproductive Health, Human rights etc. But, after some point of time, it started feeling monotonous and I wanted to give myself a break. In December, 2010, my brother saw a poster of Laugher Yoga leader training being conducted at Tiruvannamalai and insisted...

Karen Sze Tho, Malaysia: Even before attending the Laughter Yoga training in India, I was conducting short laughter sessions whenever there was an opportunity to share laughter. However, I felt I lacked full knowledge about the concept and was somehow not able to apply it to myself. There were times when I was really stressed and had migraine attacks. The Laughter Yoga training gave me the solu...

Ana Banana, Portugal: Portugal has been known as the ‘land of sadness’ for a long time and people found it difficult to laugh. But today, it is a perfect example of how Laughter Yoga can change attitude and even culture. It was introduced in 2004, but was faced with a very hard start and a reluctant community. Gradually, the dam of centuries of repression exploded and a tidal wave of l...

Loretta Bert, Italy: After graduating I worked as a technical trainer in the IT industry for a short while, after which I became an Education Manager, and since 2000 have been working as a free-lance in training and coaching for companies and universities. In my job, I’ve always tried to have a positive and smiling attitude. With NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) I modified my view of lif...