Cary Reed (left) and Jennifer Sayre start with tiny laughs that increase to large roaring ones during an exercise.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

The Laughter Club of the New River Valley laughs for five minutes straight during the final part of the session held at the Blue Ridge School of Massage and Yoga. Tod Whitehurst (bottom right) founded the group after learning about the yoga at an ashram in Yogaville.

Matthew Mauldon has been participating in laughing yoga for about a year. Laughing yoga participants are reminded that laughter is healthy, but shouldn't be done at others' expense.

BLACKSBURG -- What's so funny?

Nothing, really. But it doesn't matter. When Tod Whitehurst laughs, others laugh along.

Which is, by the way, kind of funny.

"The whole thing is so ridiculous that it kind of makes you laugh," explained one of the laughers, Matthew Mauldon.

Or as Whitehurst put it: "It just starts and feeds on itself."

Whitehurst is a laughing yoga instructor. Think of him as the lead laugher.

Twice a month, he guides people like Mauldon through a half-hour to 45 minutes of strenuous hilarity, under the premise that it is good for their emotional well-being and their physical health.

"It's laughing for the sake of laughing," Whitehurst said.

Oprah does it

Laughing yoga is all the rage. There was an article about it in Time magazine Sept. 13. Even Oprah does it.

Whitehurst, a certified massage therapist who also works in information technology at Virginia Tech, was introduced to it at Yogaville, a religious community between Charlottesville and Lynchburg. It was about six months after the Virginia Tech shootings, and Whitehurst, who had been working just one building away from Norris Hall when the shootings occurred, was still suffering from post-traumatic stress, he says. Whitehurst attended a laughing yoga workshop at Yogaville out of curiosity.

"I started laughing, and I never stopped," he recalled. "This, to me, was what got rid of my post-traumatic stress. It worked for me."

Whitehurst started offering the free laughing yoga sessions in Blacksburg to help others. When people leave after a session, he said, "They all have a big smile on their face."

There is evidence that laughter is good for you, but not everyone agrees forced laughter has the same benefits. "Sustained mirthful laughter" has been shown to improve blood flow, lower stress hormone levels and boost the immune system, according to the Time article by Harriet Barovick, although, she adds, "The benefits of fake laughter ... are scientifically murkier."

Whitehurst, on the other hand, insists the body can't tell the difference between real and fake laughter. "If you just go ahead and pretend to laugh, you get all the health benefits," he said.

Trouble is, most of us need something to laugh about. And White-hurst points out that, although children laugh freely and often, adults do not.

"We try to stimulate it through laughter games," Whitehurst said. "I think of it as exercise."

Laughter 101

On an afternoon late last summer, in a room of a Blacksburg office complex, four laughers were having little trouble connecting to their inner child.

A Virginia Tech professor, a graduate student, an ex-preschool teacher and Whitehurst sat on the floor with their shoes off. They began by throwing pillows at one another.

And then, like opera singers practicing their arias, they started on their repertoire of laughs.

There was the small-to-big laugh, which starts with a chuckle and builds to a guffaw. The sneeze laugh, which goes like this: "ah-ah- ah -- HAHAHAHAHA!" The rocking laugh, in which everyone rocks back and forth on the floor while howling with laughter.

There was the library laugh -- a kind of behind-one-hand snicker that slowly slips its bounds. And the football game high-five laugh, the bust-out laugh, the giggle. And the meditation laugh -- in which all the participants lie on their backs and say "ommmmmmmm" together before breaking into prolonged laughing, which sometimes sounds like the yipping of dogs.

"The body can't really think of anything else when you're laughing," explained Whitehurst of the meditation laugh. "The laughter becomes the meditation."

There are rules. After every laugh, everyone present claps their hands three times and cries "Yay!" to underscore the element of childlike play, Whitehurst said. And no one laughs at anybody else.

"We don't laugh at the expense of other people," Whitehurst said.

He ended the half-hour laughter session with a Buddhist blessing:

"May all beings be well.

May all beings be happy.

Peace, peace, peace."

Feeling good

Afterward, the group paused a minute to talk about their laughing before returning to the world of stress and frowns.

"I love to laugh," said Jennifer Sayre, the graduate student.

"It feels good," said Cary Reed, the ex-preschool teacher, who was stressed from dealing with car trouble and looking for a new apartment. "I was looking forward to this all week."

"It's essentially a high point in the week," said Mauldon, a Tech engineering professor. "It's just this wonderful aerobic exercise."

Said Sayre: "It lifts my spirit and makes me feel good about life."