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Yoga instructor presents The Laugh Is On Us
Library wellness event creates laughter and wellness
By Anelia K. Dimitrova
3/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
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Laura Gentry, laughter yoga instructor, has been helping adults and children get a great workout with her Laughter Yoga sessions. On March 13, she will come to the Cedar Falls Library for an hour-long challenge that uplifts your spirits while energizing the mind, body and soul.
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Are you ready to giggle in the company of strangers? How about cackle, snort, guffaw, chortle, snicker or hoot without fear that your likeness may end up on YouTube?
How about doubling over and roaring with abs-tightening laughter when no one is even telling a joke?
If you are up for the challenge, the Cedar Valley Laughter Club has the perfect grin for you.
On March 13 at 6 p.m. at the Cedar Falls Library, laughter guru Laura Gentry will give you a great workout with an hour-long session of Laughter Yoga, titled, The Laugh Is On Us.
The experience will cleanse your lungs, uplift your spirits and wage a war on your daily stress with an energizing dose of infectious fun.
The club’s founding mothers are convinced that this unique event will not only help you battle the winter blues, but will leave you craving more – the two-day Laughter Yoga Certification Course Gentry will lead on April 18.
A Lutheran pastor, an author and an artist, Gentry got interested in Laughter Yoga after she watched a documentary about the human face.
Later, while working on an article about joy, she decided to take a joyful action in her own life.
“I want to go to laughter school and start a laughter group,” she told her congregation at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Lansing, Iowa, in November 2006.
The parishioners obliged. They sent Gentry to Los Angeles for a two-day seminar led by Laughter Yoga’s founder, Dr. Madan Kataria, of India.
A certified Laughter Yoga leader, Gentry founded Iowa’s first laughter club upon her return from California. In the meantime, educational psychologist Bea Koontz was looking for a laughter forum in Cedar Falls.
Talking with friends Jen Christiason, a school nurse at Price Lab, Cyndie Franklin, a medical social worker at Family Practice Center, Kate Hall, an illustrator, and Eliz Guyer, a manager at the Target Distribution Center, she decided it was high time for the Cedar Valley to have a laughter club of its own.
For months, the women had gathered at Granny Annie’s in Cedar Falls to discuss books. But once they changed their status from a casual group of friends to a club, they knew it was time to deliver on their less formal name, which, depending on the winds, vacillates between the Laughter Goddesses and the Ha-ha’s.
“There is a lot of heaviness in the world,” says Koontz, “and we can all benefit by learning the techniques of laughing. Even if you pretend to laugh, your body does not know the difference.”
Christiason, who went to Luther College with Gentry, says educators, guidance counselors, church and business leaders, nurses and therapists can benefit from Gentry’s class.
“We can’t wait to take Laura’s seminar,” she says. “Laughing with a bunch of strangers is the best way to get connected.”
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