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Humor at your desk

Weekly ‘Laughter Yoga’ among new programming from CovParks
Here’s a screen shot from a “Laughter Yoga” session sponsored by Covington Parks & Recreation earlier this year.

COVINGTON, Ky. — Is your daily schedule “infected” with virtual meetings and video conferencing that threaten to put you to sleep?

Here’s an online session that’s guaranteed not to: Beginner Laughter Yoga with CovParks.

Beginning Tuesday Sept. 8, the afternoon weekly video session is a series of light stretches, breathing exercises and silly expressions to get people “to smile and laugh together,” said Jess Link, recreation program coordinator for Covington Parks & Recreation.

“The phrase ‘laughter is the best medicine’ is a cliché but it’s also true,” Link said. “Even just 15 minutes of laughter can turn your entire day around, giving the body an opportunity to take in more oxygen, get your blood flowing, and an extra bit of dopamine moving.”

A certified Laughter Yoga Instructor since 2015, Link has facilitated in-person and online sessions for Cincinnati Public Schools, the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio, and Day Yoga in Dayton, Ohio.

The sessions in Covington are free and do not require registration. Just use the sign-in information contained in the weekly Facebook events calendar listing, the first of which is HERE. The weekly sessions begin at 3 p.m. and lasts for an hour, but you can check in at any time and “stay” as long as you like.

This year, different things
“Laughter Yoga” is just one of several new programs and activities that CovParks has sponsored since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March. Through the summer, CovParks organized a weekly family activities drop-off event, and it sponsored a four-week Laughter Yoga session earlier this year that was “attended” by people as far away as the Czech Republic, Link said.

Soon CovParks will begin a series of weekly pop-up events for children that will rotate at parks and playgrounds throughout Covington. These will center on activities such as soccer, Frisbee, jumping rope, and sidewalk chalk painting, they said, and families should watch the CovParks Facebook page, HERE, for information.

“We’re disappointed that our programming schedule has had to look different this year and that because of social distancing guidelines we’ve not been able to do some activities that we’ve historically done,” Link said. “But CovParks has seen this as an opportunity to get creative and connect Covingtonians to different kinds of programming.”