Hi everyone, and welcome to xlnt Conversations,
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disrupt the cycle of chronic stress
through food, mood, and movement.
I'm your host, Heather Lynn Darby.
The title of today's segment is "Laughter Yoga:
A proven path to relieve stress."
I'm talking with expert Cristina Lorifice about
Laughter Meditation and Laughter Yoga.
Christina, aka "Giggles," is BACP accredited counselor in the UK,
and the founder of LOL4health.com.
We'll be discussing all about
the critical skills someone needs to be successful with laughter
without feeling conspicuous,
new developments in the area of laughter meditation,
and exploring how to practice,
and some strategies and secrets
every stressed out professional needs to know
when starting a laughter meditation practice.
And possibly, some misconceptions about laughter.
So, Christina is a hands-on expert on the benefits of laughter.
When she learned about laughter wellness,
and it gave her the freedom to express joy, playfulness and presence.
Her passion for laughter inspired her to create LOL4health
to continue spreading the benefits of laughter, one giggle at a time.
And now Cristina offers a Laughter Wellness program
that produces lasting changes for
individuals, groups, and couples.
You can check out LOL4health.com.
So, welcome to Cristina. Thank you for joining us.
for joining us.
Thank you. Heather, it's a pleasure to be here today.
Yea, for sure, thank you.
I often approach things from my nerdy science-y background,
so the neurology and physiology of different practices,
so I'm really excited to talk with you today
about the practical and real-world implementation.
Let's get started, so you can share your latest ideas
about how to help stressed-out professionals
and helping them start to get the benefits
of regular laughter.
My first set of questions is about your background and
experience in the field, so our audience and get to know
who you are where you're coming from
and how you can relate to where they are right now,
then we'll discuss about the reasons people might be interested
in trying out laughter meditation.
Then we'll jump into your latest ideas and thoughts about
an effective laughter practice so that our audience
can understand how they can apply
what you learned to their situation
in today's world.
And then finally, we'll jump into the cool stuff
with some, maybe, tips and tricks,
and possibly try out a laughter exercise.
so our audience can get the real inside scoop!
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself in terms of
background, education, and experience in this field?
Yes, absolutely. So as you have already mentioned,
I'm an accredited counselor with the BACP,
which is a professional body in the UK,
British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy
and I have been a counselor for decades.
I was a manager for mental health services in the UK,
and I used Laughter Wellness, Laughter Meditation as one of the modalities
to deal with the depression and anxiety.
And I found that it works really well
with people with depression and anxiety
because depression, as you may know, is living in the past.
so, we ruminate about the past.
And anxiety is living in the future, the fear of the future.
and what may happen in the future.
So laughter is a great way to be present and grounded in the moment.
So it's a mindfulness practice, so to say.
Yeah, that's really
super powerful...
When did you get started, tell me again when you started
incorporating the laughter modality?
Yes, so around about 2008.
in London, in the UK.
I started and then I
Went on into my journey to further the practice, and experience,
and to spread it also.
And when I came over here in the US.
I couldn't practice is a counselor as such, while here.
So I had to pull out all my other skills.
You know, I'm also a mindfulness teacher,
trained teacher, and I'm
A Laughter Wellness practitioner
and so I thought "Which one do I want to do?"
and then I thought, "You know, I fancy doing more of the Laughter Wellness,
Laughter Yoga some people call it also, Laughter Yoga.
And, so
I just threw myself in it, and I found that it's really transformative.
And I myself was puzzled,
and then pleasantly surprised of the benefits,
not only my life because, you know,
moving to a new country and
not knowing where you're going,
and there's a lot of private stuff that's happened that I'm not going to go into details with,
but it has really help me
and helped others that I've met on my path,
to transform their lives.
Wow, that's a really great story! Moving...
moving home, moving country even,
and the culture differences, and navigating that...
that's one of the biggest stressors that
people experience in their life.
And so you found that laughter
really helped your resilience guide you through that process.
So that's an incredible story, you know,
clearly you're the right expert for us when it comes to getting the...
implementing the benefits of laughter.
Yeah, sure.
So, can you tell us, can you expound on some of those benefits?
Yeah, sure!
Laughter Yoga, or Laughter Meditation,
I like to call it Laughter Meditation,
because I go more towards
Laughter Mediation practice,
because I've been practicing meditation for decades.
and so I use laughter as part of the
being in the moment, and being in the zone of meditation, in the gap.
In fact, they say that laughter produces the same
brain waves as meditation.
You produced the gamma waves,
just as if you were to go in deep meditation,
but with the difference is that with laughter meditation
you skip the monkey mind.
Often when people meditate,
Unless you've practiced meditation for a long time,
Then it's easy or it becomes easier.
It's always a journey, of course,
because the mind... we cannot cancel out the mind,
the mind is always there, you know.
So, with laughter you go right into the zone of "No Mind",
because you can't laugh and think at the same time.
So that way you just bypass that monkey mind.
What I found is that,
with laughter meditation, there is this thing I call it The Drop.
So, you have to fake it till you make it, so we fake it first.
So that we fool ourselves. In a way you fool the brain to believe
that this is real laughter,
but the brain doesn't understand the difference.
So you would fake it at first, and then naturally you will
experience the drop, that's what I call the drop,
where from fake, you go to real laughter.
Oh, that is so interesting! I have practiced smiling meditation
in the past and it's a very similar thing...
On my nerdy science background again...
there is a lot of nerves that run primarily from the body to the brain.
So if you put your muscles in the same position
as natural laughter or a natural smile, your brain is like
"oh, well those signals are coming in, that must be right."
So it kind of entrains your brain into that.
And I really love that laughter bypasses the thinky brain
that distracts people during conventional quiet meditation,
and it makes it a lot more accessible.
So please go on. I'm just like, things are clicking together for me!
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot easier. So although it may feel a little awkward,
you know, it's the beginning of practicing because
we're not used to laughing for no reason,
we're used to laughing for a reason.
I'm just going to give you a little bit of background.
Where does this Laughter Yoga come from? Where did it all start?
It started in 1995 in India, by a doctor called Dr. Madan Kataria,
and he started to laugh in the parks, because he knew the benefits of laughter.
So after a while, he found that people have different senses of humor, you know,
not everybody would laugh at my jokes. I'm Italian and I may have a
different type of humor than you, Heather, you know.
And some people find jokes offensive.
If I start to tell a joke about blondes,
or age or, you know, gender, people get offended, so
he figured, I got to find another way to make people laugh.
and he found that... "ok, I'm going to use our laughter as a physical exercise."
Just like when we go to the gym,
our biceps, you know, and
Same way we use our laughter muscle
to train our emotional muscle
so that we become more lighthearted, less rigid, more fluid.
and that's what he found; that by doing those type of laughter exercises,
you gain a lot of benefits for mind, body, and soul.
And it feels awkward at the beginning, because the mind goes "Why you doing this? There's nothing to laugh about!"
And it's like, "Whaaat? Shush! Wipe that smile off your face!"
I love how you characterize it as an exercise though,
because that kind of gives you,
"oh, I am laughing for a reason. This is an exercise. I'm practicing."
so I mean that is... so connected.
Yes, you got it. You got the essence of it, absolutely yes.
And so when I explain that, people find it a little bit easier,
you know, to say "Okay. I'm going to the laughter gym now,
exercising my laughter muscle,"
rather than going full in and being surprised by...
because it can feel awkward at the beginning.
I've had people say, "Oh, it feels awkward,"
but the more you practice the easier it becomes.
Like with everything else, and then it becomes the way of life.
Laughter becomes your Mantra.
So instead of going "Ohhmmm," you go "Hahahahaha"
Awesome, that is fantastic.
So I made a few notes of some of, again, the physiological benefits of laughter
and it seems very related to the breathing and the diaphragmatic movement
that is creating, you know, the rhythm of the laughter
so some of that is similar to physical exercise, you know,
your heart rate is increased, your respiratory rate is increased,
your O2 consumption is increased,
and there's been some studies that show that a reduction and inflammation occurs,
from you know the deeper breathing,
and the extended exhales, lend themselves to the anti-anxiety and anti-rumination.
So I was super interested about, in that...
Do you find that in practice, in the real world setting?
About the benefits?
Yeah, about that if there's an increased heart rate, and that the rhythm of the laughter,
and the deeper breathing with your diaphragm.
I mean, I read that in studies. How do you find that in the real world practice?
Yes, I do find that. Like, I do, when I lead the classroom.
I often tell my participants to put their hands on their heart.
to feel their heart rate, and they really find that the heart is pumping a lot harder. Like, we're sweating.
So I usually,
you know, invite them to become aware of their heart rate at the beginning of the classes,
and then while we do those exercises and also the breathing is, like you say, from the diaphragm,
so we breathe and lot more effectively.
In fact, when we do those laughter breathing exercises,
over time, you'll find that your respiratory system
will work a lot more efficiently.
so yeah, I... I myself noticed that my...
I can hold my inhale and exhale a lot longer
and my cardiovascular... I'm fitter!
in a sense, by just laughing.
Yes! That is great to know that the...
that it plays out in a real-world setting that people can get these real benefits.
So here is a question. How long...
So when you're starting out like it's an exercise,
should you start out with a little bit at the beginning, to get used to it,
and then have longer periods of laughter later.
Like as you get more experienced? Or how does that work?
Yeah, you know, it doesn't really matter.
I feel my experience that what is most common,
is that to overcome the awkwardness, and the weirdness of,
"Why am I laughing?? There is nothing to laugh about."
Because the brain (the ego),
the brain always wants to find the reason why we're doing something, constantly analyzing.
You say, you know, "Should I be doing this or not?" It's trying to figure out.
So laughter is counterintuitive, because it brings us in the moment,
in alignment with the moment, and so the moment has no meaning.
The moment has no way to analyze anything. The moment is just what it is.
There is no thinking in the moment
if we are truly in the moment in that sense.
And so laughter helps you
to be more mindful, and to really to start enjoy just laughing.
You know, have you ever, I'm sure you have watched on YouTube,
There's a lot of baby laughter.
Oh yes!
On YouTube, right?
Yes, I have!
baby laughing? Tons and tons of baby laughing.
And they don't need a reason to laugh... they don't need, you know,
to watch a funny movie or hear a joke, they just laugh.
So, it's to be able to go to that place of child-like
you know, of just joyfulness and playfulness,
without the thinking brain.
Does that make sense?
Oh, I love that. So when someone starts a laughter practice,
how long, like in a day or in a couple weeks of practicing,
should they start to notice those benefits?
Of the relaxation and anxiety starts to fade.
Yes, well...
you notice that right away.
Yes, after a laughter session, your whole body is relaxed, and calm
After even just one session they can start to notice.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
That's very encouraging.
It is very encouraging.
I often ask my participants
Tell me how you feel. At the end of the session I say,
in one word describe
this experience. And the words that keep coming up are: Calm.
At peace. Relaxed.
Energized
In the moment. Joyful.
Present. Liberated.
Relieved.
Released.
I have a, I forgot now, but every time they tell me the word,
I write it down so that I can keep track of them.
So I have hundreds of words
that people have shared with me about how they feel afterward.
Wow. That is great.
Those are just some of them, but they keep coming out, you know,
the calm. to be at peace, refreshed. Reenergized, released, liberated.
Oh great. So how frequently should someone...
well, how long should someone laugh at a time, do you suggest?
I say a minimum of like
5 minutes in a good
belly laughter, it's very individual.
but of course
You know you can laugh...
you cannot laugh like 20 minutes on... in one go, you know,
it's unrealistic...
Right.
but it's easier when we are in a group. So the session
that I do in a group,
can last up to 20 minutes of ongoing laughter,
and that is very cathartic.
And so it's easier in a group, because as you probably know,
laughter is very infectious.
Yes.
One starts to laugh, the other starts to laugh,
you know, the whole room is laughing and it's easy to go on for 20 minutes.
And so, when when we're alone
we can still laugh, but it's not...
certainly not 20 minutes. But as long as you get that
bursts of laughter throughout the day.
And so this is why I encourage joining...
There's a lot of laughter calls that you can join,
or laughter clubs all over the US.
You know, that's helpful. At least then you start to create that community.
You go to the laughter club and then,
you can meet other people and you bond,
and it's a great way of bonding and connecting
and creating a community because, think about it...
think about a time where you, when you laughed
a real belly laugh, one of those Buddha laughter with somebody.
What was the feeling that you had, Heather,
when you were laughing with that person, at that level?
Ohhh... Connected. Like we both were on the same mental wavelength.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So when we do that, when we have the
joyful, true laughter with somebody
to the level that we cry, tears of joy...
There cannot be anger, there cannot be judgement,
there cannot be blame. None of that.
So we learn to be more loving, we learn to be more kind.
Are there any major misconceptions that you encounter
when sharing about laughter?
Yes. Lots.
Tell me about that.
Yeah.
Alright, so I'll give you a quick example. So we were in Sedona,
doing a laughter meditation in the beautiful Sedona vortices.
People were looking, you know, "What's going on?"
We were laughing, and people were looking at us.
This is really... I don't know what they were thinking about.
They were looking at us like this is weird.
So I said, "Come on over, come on over,"
and they were like, "Nooo..."
So what I'm trying to say is that, If they...
if we are probably crying and being miserable
and in trouble or whatever,
people would have been perhaps more likely
to join and say "Oh my God. Why are you crying?
What's happening here? How can I help?"
So what I found is that
it's easier for people to go down misery lane than
to take responsibility of their own happiness and joyful heart.
and
And society is a little bit
designed like that...
the drama, the misery.
You got to be serious in life.
You can't be playful.
Playful is not for us... It's not for adults! You know?
So we have learned to be very rigid.
and in a square, in a box. We live in boxes, you know.
And so... our playfulness, our creativity,
our inspirational side... all of that is diminished
with the lack of laughter.
And so I see people that
have misconceptions and say, you know, "Well, how can this work?"
You know, "This is stupid, this is silly," because they are very rigid people.
So you've got a break through those
blockages of people, so to say.
I can tell from somebody where... if they have a blockage I can
tell by the way the laugh, or not laugh.
and
So if they have a blockage
and they cannot laugh,
then that's great material to explore. Well, what happened there?
How come there's no inspiration to laugh?
How come there's no joyfulness.
How come there's no creativity.
How come your laughter is blocked? What happened?
You know?
Because laughter is a natural thing, like crying
So if there's a blockage what happened? What happened.
Where's the rigidity? Where have you lost your fluidity, in life?
And that stress that everyone experiences...
an overwhelm in our everyday life...
creates that rigidity, and like you were saying
it's not only our culture but it's our biology that
we have that sympathetic response, that Fight or Flight response
that's meant to keep us alive,
and that is kind of been permanently put on... like, ON.
And we don't have the back and forth to the Rest and Recovery
and connection... social connection with people, that is the
parasympathetic response. And I have found, like when you were
talking about laughter being contagious and infectious to other people,
and again back to my neurology and science interest,
The vagus nerve...
There's an older part of it which kind of shuts you down
when you're too stressed.
And there's another part that is "Tend and Befriend,"
and when we see someone else laughing,
our mirror neurons in our brain make us also smile.
When you see someone smiling...
Or, this is a great experiment, if you smile at someone
more likely than not they're just going to
intrinsically just automatically smile back at you.
And it also it gets up into the eyes, and making
eye contact with other people creates that social bond.
So I really see how group laughter can be extremely effective
in stimulating that parasympathetic recovery response.
So when you're exercising like yes, we need stress sometimes
but we also need to go the other direction
and that's what creates the resilience,
and that fluidity that you're talking about.
So this is just such an exciting conversation.
I'm glad you're sharing with us.
I am loving it. I'm loving it. Let me just show you a few things here.
Because they're doing a lot of...
I love the fact that you're you know, your nerdy like that
you call yourself. I love that. I'm not that nerdy.
I'm more like let's get down to it, let's laugh.
Yeah! The practical application is where, you know, the rubber hits the road, that's where
the action happens.
Right, action!
So they're doing a lot of research on Laughter...
I love that, you know, they're really getting deep into it.
And here's another one, the Science of Happiness.
Yes, I've seen these!
You've seen these?
Yes I have, I'm so interested that this is like new...
new interests that are coming into the public awareness,
for benefit of everyone,
to deal with our complete overwhelm in our society.
Yes, there's a lot of stress, and so whatever we can offer to humanity
to ease that stress.
It's all good.
And I'm so yeah, I'm there for that.
to just spread my modality.
Yes, it seems like there's a lot of developments that are
coming into the field and things are about to get shaken up,
I think, and have a major impact with helping people deal with stress.
Yes.
Yeah. Can you maybe give us
an example exercise that we can try out right now maybe?
to show our listeners like what
a laughter Yoga exercise might be like?
Sure, let's do it like a little laughter breathing exercise.
So this is very simple and it will energize you straight away
so you can,
sit down in a relaxed manner,
just as if you were to meditate basically,
shoulders relaxed and just sit upright,
and then you can either close your eyes,
if you want to, you don't have to... if you want to close your eyes, you can.
And then it's very simple, you're going to just Breathe in...
Hold it there to 4.
Then let it all out through laughter.
[laughter]
That was a full breath! You can hold a laugh longer than I can.
Is that from practice?
Yeah!
I want to try one more time!
Okay, let's do it again. Breathe in...
3... 4...
Let it go.
[laughter]
So that's one.
That's lovely. So these kinds of... and you have a variety of
different kinds of exercises that you use with your clients or
people that you're practicing with?
Yes, we do have.
Ok, so nice! So people can get...
join these clubs or work with you and find out about
the different types of exercises
and then either practice on their own,
maybe 5 minutes at a time... every day?
Every day, yes!
Every day... and start to see this benefits of
letting worry and anxiety kind of fade and
and roll off you as you gain that resilience.
Absolutely, and at the moment I'm actually offering a few
"Discover Your Joy" one-on-one sessions,
where people can have a one-on-one session with me
and during those sessions
we connect, I connect with my clients on a daily basis, and
We just laugh on the phone for a couple of minutes
as well as doing other things too, you know, more exploratory work,
but one of the things that I do with my clients
is to laugh on the phone every day.
So they don't have to be in your local area.
People can access your services over the internet, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That is so great.
It's similar with my coaching practice.
I love that we're able to reach the exact people that
need the benefits of our services, over the Internet!
So, yay technology!
We live in those times, right?
Yeah. So do you have any final thought that would sum up everything we've discussed today
or any last bits of advice to all our listeners?
Sure, well.
I feel that
it's important to try it out.
If you don't try it out,
people don't really get the juice and the essence of it.
So I would encourage you,
to either reach out to me,
or to join any laughter clubs available nearby,
because there's a lot of them.
and so that you can go back into your joyfulness
that you were given at birth, and that we have
often forgotten about.
But it's a very effective method to
to just live a life that is more meaningful
and connected and loving.
So, yes, thank you so much.
Thank you Cristina for sharing your expertise
and experiences is so graciously.
I'm sure all the stressed out professionals in our audience
learned a lot about getting started with laughter meditation
and how they can apply to their own situations,
now that you've laid it out pretty clearly.
And thank you everyone in our audience, for joining us
on this amazing presentation
about the information and strategies for getting the benefits
of laughter, that can massively improve your life.
So again, thank you for sharing with us,
the amazing discussion about the benefits of intentional laughter.
And I'd like to invite you to check out LOL4health.com
today, for more information on how you can succeed with adding
regular laughter to your wellness routine for relieving stress.
Once again, I'm Heather Lynn Darby. Thanks for joining us for an
xlnt Conversation sponsored by xlnt Nutrition and Fitness.
Visit my website HeatherLynnDarby.com
where you can access free resources
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where we're exploring how to
Disrupt the cycle of Chronic Stress through Food, Mood, and Movement.
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