Gigi Otálvaro, PhD

Public Classes Taught

Laughter Yoga

Experience

Gigi Otálvaro, PhD, is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator. She began practicing laughter yoga in 2019 at the UCSF Osher Center and soon after earned her Laughter Yoga Leader Certification, launching classes at Stanford University. During her time there, nearly 1000 students, faculty, alumni, and staff took her classes and workshops. From 2013-2025, she designed, taught, and led courses and programs at Stanford across multiple departments, most recently as Associate Director of Stanford Living Education, where she directed the LifeWorks Program for Integrative Learning. This program integrated scholarship, creative expression, mindfulness, and embodied practices.

She is also a Certified Yoqi® Qigong Flow Instructor and designs classes that weave together laughter yoga, qigong, and movement-meditation practices with theater and performance exercises. In her award-winning publications and feminist scholarship, her research and pedagogy engage Latina/x and women of color feminisms, queer of color critique, mindfulness-based art practice, as well as art and activism.

Education and Training

• PhD, Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
• MA, Visual and Critical Studies, California College of the Arts
• BA, Hybridity and Performance, Brown University
• Certified Laughter Yoga Leader, Laughter Yoga University
• Certified Qigong Flow Instructor, Yoqi® 

Personal Statement and Approach

As a wellbeing educator, I design and teach courses at the generative nexus of creativity and contemplation. My mission is to help people discover their unique gifts and to reconnect to their bodies at a time when humanity is highly disembodied. I invite them to think critically and compassionately, as well as to cultivate joy and embodied wisdom through performing arts and healing modalities such as theater for social change, laughter yoga, qigong, and other contemplative practices focused on play.  

It is especially meaningful for me to teach laughter yoga at the Osher Center, which is where I first learned about the practice, when I was a caregiver for my family who was receiving treatment at the UCSF Helen Diller Cancer Center.