About Beth

Beth Bongar is a Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher & Leader

Beth leads Soul Sparkle as well as more extensive Laughter Yoga Workshops and provides One On One Laughter Yoga coaching.

The Laughing Diva (aka Beth Bongar) has been laughing her whole life. At a young age she ran away and joined the circus, where she became a professional clown and learned to juggle not only 5 clubs and fire, but marriage, children….and her hair. She also twirled sharp knifes, walked on stilts, sawed kids in half and did what all good lefties and middle children do: anything to get attention! As part of her training Beth studied mime with Marcel Marceau, theater arts at California Institute of the Arts, and acting with numerous well-known coaches, including Stella Adler, Sheila Gray and Elizabeth Browning.

Beth first began to develop her stress-management skills through laughter as Rosie the Clown, of the dynamic duo Rosie & Herbert. Together they traveled the world making audiences of thousands roar with laughter. They produced corporate workshops and team-building events for MTV, IBM, AT&T, Viacom, Ronald McDonald House, Estee Lauder, and many more. They also lectured in universities and schools on the history of laughter and clowning, and led physical comedy workshops.

A few years later, Beth became a “clown doctor” in the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit. As Dr. Funnybone at Harlem Hospital, St. Luke’s, Columbia Presbyterian, New York Hospital, and Sloan-Kettering, Beth began to gain insight into healing illness through laughter and learned to appeal to the healthy part of a person, not their dis-ease.

In 2003, Beth found herself in her first laughter yoga workshop. She was soon featured in the documentary film about laughter yoga, “Praise Ha!”. Around that time, Beth also wrote and performed in her one-woman show,  Jews Don’t Join the Circus.

Last year, an old friend asked her “So what are you doing with the third chapter of your life?” At the time, Beth was working as a successful (and stressed) commercial real estate agent. After much soul-searching, Beth found her way back to laughter yoga, became certified as a Laughter Yoga Leader with Sebastian Gendry–and now that third chapter has begun.

In the process of studying Laughter Yoga, Beth learned that she no longer has to tell jokes or do tricks to make people laugh. Now when someone says “Make me laugh” she can respond with “Do you want to laugh?”

So far, Beth has led Laughter Yoga workshops for a number of companies including Adventures for Women (Colorado), the Big Cat Habitat (Florida), Open Assembly and other tech startups in New York City. She is also working with a fabulous group of seniors on Park Avenue and has just started a new laughter club on the Upper West Side.

The Laughing Diva feels honored to help others find their own joy with LAUGHTER YOGA, which enables anyone who wants to laugh–to laugh.