LAUGHTER YOGA IS EMPOWERING

I would like to share with you a most exciting experience from my week. On Tuesday, I presented laughter yoga at the Iowa Empowerment Conference in Des Moines. This annual event is for adult consumers of mental health services, transition-age youth and families of children with severe emotional disturbance.

This year's theme was Stepping Up and Stepping Out. The literature for the conference explains that the goal of was: "discovering the importance of each of us to step up and take responsibility for our own wellness and recovery and to step out into vocational and volunteer activities."

Laughter yoga was the perfect thing with which to kick off the gathering. I talked about the importance of laughter as a wellness tool to help people achieve optimal mental health. Then, we laughed our heads off!

One of the organizers, Lori Goldsmith, wrote the following to me about the effect of laughter yoga on the 215 people attending the conference.

"There are no words to express how your presentation on laughter yoga affected the conference attendees! You kicked off the conference in just the right way. They want you back. They want to become trainers, themselves. They wished they could have started everyday of the conference with laughter yoga! Many conference attendee's told me how they were already using the techniques you taught them at the conference.

"One lady told me about how she went up to 3 hotel guests who were eating breakfast and seemed very serious (this was the day there was flooding in local communities) and she went up to them and just started laughing. She said they looked at her strangely and she told them to laugh and they would feel much better. They did laugh with her and told her that yes, indeed, they DID feel better!

"Many others said your session made them feel good and relaxed. Laura, I can't thank you enough for being the opening keynote for this years Iowa Empowerment Conference. I sure hope we see you again next year. I am also hopeful that by then I will be trained in laughter yoga. Thanks again for all of the laughter you brought into our lives!"

Below are photos of the laughter session. You can certainly see the joy that we were all experiencing. How exciting that laughter yoga can empower us to live out our full potential.