The Port Townsend Laughter Club has stopped calling itself “laughter yoga” because prospective new members kept coming in with exercise mats.

Club leaders “Professor Pete” Alexander and Bill Cohill are both certified laughter yoga teachers, but each emphasized mats are not needed.

The Laughter Club got its start in September of 2022, as one of the Adult Learning Programs at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which offers such “ALPs” for a few weeks at a time, before it relocated to the Grace Lutheran Church at 1120 Walker St., where it now meets every Friday from 2-3 p.m.

Alexander (an actual professor) and Cohill agreed that the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship gave them “a great launchpad” to generate the healthy turnout that they then took with them to Grace Lutheran Church, and what the duo deeply appreciated about both venues was that they considered it essential to be able to invite anyone to attend and take part for free.

“The thing about laughter is that it’s contagious, especially when you’re in the same room,” Alexander said. “And your body doesn’t know the difference between real and simulated laughter. What starts out as an exercise in laughter can often become genuine, mirthful laughter within a few seconds, but either way, your body reaps the health benefits of releasing those positive endorphins.”

Alexander elaborated on how laughter yoga was started during the 1990s, and has since expanded to roughly 20,000 laughter clubs across close to 120 different countries worldwide, as he attested to how he’s witnessed its power to help people “loosen up” and break down some of their emotional barriers.

“We’ve had attendees who clearly didn’t want to be here, but were dragged in by friends or family, like this one lady who accompanied her daughter,” Alexander said. “At the end of the class, she told me how glad she was that she came, because she’d been feeling such pent-up anger. We always say, just show up; it’s free to participate, but the results are priceless.”

Alexander compared the chorus of group laughter to a song, which Cohill additionally asserted cuts across cultural and linguistic barriers.

“I’ve had laughter yoga sessions through Zoom where I didn’t know what anyone else was saying, but by pantomiming the act of laughter, it sparked off actual laughter that we shared in together,” Cohill said.

“People can get self-conscious about it, as though we’re grading them, by insisting they can’t laugh as well as someone else in the group, but I swear, no one is being judged,” Alexander said. “What matters is the deep breathing, and the letting go of toxic baggage.”

To that end, those who attend the Port Townsend Laughter Club’s Oct. 27 session are encouraged to show up in costume, to dress appropriately for the Halloween weekend.