Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Could Laughter Be The Best Medicine? – With Laughing Lovebugs

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

// R E A D Y • S E T • R E S E T This episode is all about what is happening to your brain as you laugh. We talk about the science behind laughing and how laughing can improve your immune system. Laughing Lovebugs, Lauren and Alik are a husband and wife team of Certified Laughter Yoga Leaders. Yes... LOL! You read that right we are "Laugh Yogis"...we are the Laughter Professionals.  In laughter yoga, we combine laughter exercises & deep breathing with childlike playfulness & movement to connect, unwind, and let go. No sense of humor, flexibility, or yoga mat required! Laughter Yoga is perhaps the only exercise routine that helps to ease physical, mental & emotional stress all at the same time. Scientific studies show that Laughter yoga strengthens the immune system and infection-fighting antibodies, alleviates pain, relieves tension, lowers blood pressure, controls blood sugar, and keeps the heart healthy. In this challenging time, we are attempting to cultivate human connection via laughter. We would love to spread the word to encourage people to participate in doing something that not only feels good but is good for them. Laughter Yoga helps alleviate, reduce, or eliminate anger, loneliness, anxiety, comfort with loss, pain, depression, and more. Laughing Lovebugs offer virtual laughter yoga sessions for individuals, groups, couples, corporations, children, schools, mental health organizations, treatment centers, senior centers, hospitals, and more. An open mind & heart is all you need to bring...you don't need to be in a good mood to receive the health benefits of laughter yoga...So come do something great for your mind, body, and soul and experience the gift of laughter. In this podcast, we cover: Why laughter is essential for your body and your mind The reasons you should laugh every single day About the "3 D's" of laughter yoga How you can reframe stress through laughter // R E S O U R C E S  M E N T I O N E D Feel the impact of Organifi - use code PELZ for a discount on all products!  Chilipad use code Resetter20 on the Ooler Book: Laughter Yoga Podcast with Bruce Lipton // M O R E  O N  L A U G H I N G  L O V E B U G S Website Instagram Facebook TikTok LinkedIn ClubHub // F O L L O W Instagram | @dr.mindypelz & @theresetterpodcast Facebook | /drmindypelz & /theresetterpodcast Youtube | /drmindypelz Please note the following medical disclaimer: By listening to this podcast you understand that this video is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Always seek the guidance of your doctor with any questions you may have regarding your health or medical condition.  

We're not laughing because we're happy. We're happy because we laugh. We still experience challenges. And we appear very happy because we laugh. We choose to laugh, even when we're experiencing a challenging moment. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders, and applicable steps that help you tap. into your own internal healing power.

The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, we are going to take a whole new twist with neuroscience and dive into the neuroscience of laughter. So I have brought you Lauren in a leak and they call them. themselves the laughing love bugs. And I'm going to give you a little background on these two. I actually found them through my husband who I found laughing in my house one day to himself. And I

walked into the room and I thought, what are you doing? And he said, I'm following, I'm listening to these two beautiful people called the laughing love bugs. And he started doing a daily laugh session with them. And I could really start to see a change not only in him. I joined in a few times. I could see a change in me. And of course, my science brain went crazy and wanted to understand what was happening to our brains as we laughed. And it is really profound. So you're going to fall in love with Lauren and Alec. They are really passionate about what they're doing. They're going to talk about different laughing exercises. In this episode, we talk about the science. behind laughing and it's really cool how laughing can improve your immune system. It's really neat.

They're going to talk about how laughing can fit into relationships, how you can use laughing in the corporate world, how we can get back to laughing like we did as kids, the part of the brain that is affected by laughing. It is really a fun episode. So if you're looking for a new stress tool. If you're looking to move your life to a happier place, I truly believe what you're about to hear will have a dramatic effect on you. And stay tuned because at the end, they took me through a laughing exercise that no doubt left me happier. And I see this as an incredible tool for all of our resetters. And I can't wait to share it with you. So enjoy. There are many reasons I wanted to bring you guys on. I, like I said, I can't imagine.

a more important time for us to be laughing. But what you may not know about me, or maybe in the little bit that we've talked about, I get called out all the time for my laugh. I have a really big laugh. And part of it is because I can't, when I find something funny, I don't know how to hold back. It's just, it just oozes out of me. And because I don't know how to laugh softly. I just know that if something hits me, I want to fully express it. And after looking at like your guys' website and kind of diving into the science behind laughter, I realize that maybe it's because it's making a physiological change in me when I laugh hard. So help us understand why laughter is so important and what is happening to us as we laugh. Well, thank you so much for

sharing that laughter story, that little laughter story with us. That is so interesting. And laughter, there's so much that happens inside of us when we laugh. We're allowing more oxygen into our bloodstream, which helps our blood to circulate better. It strengthens your heart, your lungs. It improves your mood. The better you breathe from laughing, the better you feel. The better you feel, the better your immune system works. It also increases your blood circulation. it also lowers your cortisol levels, your stress response. And your blood pressure. Yeah.

So maybe that's what's going on when you laugh. It's just like a natural response that our body does. If you notice that a lot of times when people get nervous, they start laughing. It's like the body's way, natural way of calming ourselves down. And it lowers the cortisol levels in our bodies as well. And it also releases endorphins. when we laugh, which is the pain reliever. And it does so much.

It's so interesting what laughter does, even with fake laughter. Your body and brain does not know the difference between fake laughter and real laughter. So even if you fake laugh, you're still getting those happy hormones of the dopamine, the oxytocin, the serotonin, and endorphins. And another thing, every person has a signature laugh. Yeah. So yours is your own senator. Like me, when me and Lauren first started dating, she noticed my laugh.

I laughed and I spelled my laugh out. So I say, ha, ha, ha, ha. And it was so funny, I never noticed it, that I actually say my laugh. Yeah. And so does, you know, I've actually been kicked out of restaurants before. Like, I've upset people with my laugh. I mean, not a few people. But, you know, it's just sort of who I am.

and I can't, I can't hold it back. But then some people laugh like he, you know, they're a little softer laughters. So does it matter how hard you laugh? Does it matter the style of laugh? Or does it just have to move you to want to laugh to get those kind of neuro response, neural responses that you're talking about? Well, you can laugh silently. Yeah.

Yes, and just laugh yourself. You're still laughing. Yeah. And you'll still get those happy, hard. no matter what type of laughter you're doing. So all of those happy hormones are activated even with fake laughter. It doesn't matter if you're laughing low or you're laughing loud or silently. Like we just demonstrated, you're still activating those happy hormones in your body.

And what's so interesting, since we're certified laughter yoga facilitators, it's so interesting that we help people to feel good with laughter without. waiting on a condition, without relying on humor, jokes, or comedy, which feels very awkward for many people because we typically wait for that moment to laugh. But we encourage laughter for the help of it. We always say it's for the health of it. There is a reason. We just are uncomfortable with that because we're always in the left side of our brain. That's logical, analytical, and judgmental. So we're waiting for that reason, sense of humor, level of happiness, satisfaction in life in order to laugh.

But when we're laughing in the laughter yoga session, since we're not relying on the reason, it's intentional laughter, it's unconditional, and you reap the health benefits of laughter. So although it doesn't matter the type of laughter you're doing, the length of laughter. So it has to be sustained laughter for at least 15 minutes. So duration is in.

Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, so duration matters. Yes, that's the main part of the duration of your laughter. Yes. There's actually three Ds in order to reap the health benefits of laughter. The depth of your laughter. I got that one master. The dependability of your laughter and the duration.

Yeah. So death, duration, and dependability. Yeah. So for the death, you have to do that deep belly mirthful laughter, which is expanding your diaphragm, increasing your lung capacity. you're allowing more oxygen into your body, helping your blood to flow better. And that is the depth of lack there.

So it has to be that really intense, deep belly, merchral lack. You're really flushing your lungs of all the oxygen that's sitting inside that you don't breathe. Typically, you don't exhale as much as you think you do. So when you do that murphal, you're actually contracting your lungs more and you're exhaling a lot more air that's just sitting there. Yes.

And typically, when you're watching a funny movie or listening to a joke, you're laughing very shallow. You're laughing from your chest. That was funny. But in a laughter yoga session, we stress the importance of that deep belly laughter. So you're activating your diaphragm and increasing your lung capacity, which helps to bring more oxygen into your body. So there is a huge difference when people say, oh, I laugh all the time.

All laughter is good. But in order for those health benefits to kick in, you need to have that deep belly mirthful laughter. The other thing is the duration, like we mentioned earlier, it has to be at least 15 minutes straight of laughter. You can only get that in a laughter yoke session because if you're watching a movie or listening to a joke, you're laughing for a few seconds, maybe a minute if you're lucky. But in a laughter yoga session, we facilitate laughter for a sustained period of time. So you can get those health benefits. And the last one was dependability that I've mentioned. And then the dependability really matters because in life, especially with these challenging times we're experiencing, you're unlikely to laugh.

Adults really don't even laugh often at all. On average, adults laugh about 10 to 15 times per day on average, whereas children laugh between 300 to 400 times per day on average. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, because there's a huge discrepancy. Yeah, because adults stop playing. But in a laughter yoga session, we, we, you're guaranteed laughter because you chose to be there. You volunteer your laughter and we're not relying on conditions to laugh.

We facilitate these laughter exercises in deep yoga breathing. So the powerful part is you don't rely on any outside stimuli. It's all up to the participant. Yes. It's fascinating. So, well, for starters, I can't believe that even adults laugh attended, what do you say, 10 to 20 times a day? I mean, I've seen adults that don't even do that.

It's such a simple thing that we don't do. Because as children, we all were children at one time. And what laughter yoga does is awakens the inner child within us. So we're playing when we're laughing and we do different like chants. Very good, very good. Yay. So awaken that inner child within us. And this helps to awaken that inner child that desires freedom with laughter.

And the reason why we don't laugh is because we're always in that left side of our brain, logical, analytical. We wait for that moment to laugh. The conditions. Yes. So true. So this is why in laughter yoga, we're like, you know, you can laugh without waiting on that condition. Laugh for the health of it. Laugh because it feels good and it's good for you.

So we're so passionate about it because like it really improved the quality of our lives. And we're just so excited every time we get the opportunity to share. Well, gosh, you get to go around and, like, spread joy to everybody. I can't even imagine, like, a better job. So I heard you guys on Clubhouse with my husband was laughing downstairs. And I was like, what you're laughing? And it didn't sound like a real laugh. I was like, what is going on?

And so it was really awesome because he does tend to be a more serious person. So I was like, oh, my God, what's he laughing at? So I joined in. And I had a couple of things that, like, My mind, you know, the monkey mind talked at me. One is like, well, this is stupid. Why am I doing this? I'm just being really transparent.

It's like, well, this is stupid. And then this is tiring. I'm tired now. And this doesn't feel authentic. So help me understand. But now as I'm listening to you here, I'm thinking, well, it's just like meditation. It's just like exercise. Like this, if this is as good as we think it is for the human body,

everybody should be doing it. And if we have to do it for 15 minutes a day, how do I build it into my routine where it starts to feel more fluid and just natural? So Dr. Mindy, you just thought up something so amazing. And thank you for being transparent. This is something that we even experienced before becoming laughter yogis,

that uncomfortable feeling. But as I mentioned earlier, this is only uncomfortable because we typically wait for a reason to laugh. If we were laughing at a joke, it wouldn't feel uncomfortable to laugh. If we were laughing for happiness, it wouldn't feel uncomfortable to laugh.

If we were laughing for satisfaction, it wouldn't feel uncomfortable. But the thing is about laughter and what we really teach and we empower people to laugh is that we don't have to practice stress, right? We don't have to practice anxiety, fear, doubt,

but we have to practice feeling good. And this is what laughter does. It reframes and interrupts your reaction to stress. It refriends and interrupts your reaction to that logic. You're telling yourselves, actually, when you're waiting to lap, you're telling yourself and you're telling your body that if everything is okay out here, that's the only time I'm going to let you feel good in here. But what we want to share and empower people to do is to laugh because it's so good for you.

So even when you're experiencing challenging moments out there that you can feel good in here by just choosing to laugh, especially because you can fake laugh. You can fake laugh in those moments when you feel like you can't or you don't want to is the most important times where you should laugh because those are the times where it may be detrimental to your health. since the body always remembers that stress. Those are the most needed times. When you're feeling of stress and you feel like you shouldn't, those are the times you absolutely need it. Yes. So it does take practice.

Yeah, so it probably just like yoga felt weird the first time I did it. And meditation felt weird. So if you do it more, does it come a lot easier? Yes. Because we don't only do this as a business. We actually practice it in our personal lives. This is why we're so passionate about it as well is because it really improved our relationship with each other, those around us, but most importantly with ourselves as individuals. We learn that through laughter, you can empower yourself to be in the present moment, no matter what's going on.

And it also reset your emotions. It's an emotional circuit breaker. It resets all your emotions. Like you could be in the worst situation, you can be really stressed out, and you think it's going to last forever. But you just laugh and you start to feel better and you realize all the moments in life that we thought were going to last forever are all temporary. All of those moments we had yesterday and 10 years ago when you skinned your knees as a child, when you were crying. And it felt like it was going to last forever. Those moments are over.

And you laughed after that. Yes. I interviewed a woman on this podcast who wrote a book. called burnout. And she has a concept called completing the stress cycle that you have to tell your body that the stressor is over. Just because you had a hard day and you go inside doesn't mean that your body knows it's not running from a tiger anymore. So what I'm thinking as I'm listening to you guys is, oh my gosh. So if I came home at the end of a day, I was really stressed out and I sat down and laughed for 15 minutes. it would be a way of completing the stress cycle.

Have you guys used it as a tool like that before? Absolutely. Absolutely. We witnessed it firsthand from, we've had situations where, for instance, we had our social media manager, and we had a session book maybe 10 minutes before that, after that phone call. And the discussion got pretty heated.

Yeah. We were upset and we were talking together. We were like, how are we going to do this? We're upset. And I thought to myself, this is what we do. Right. Yeah. And we started a laugh and, you know, within moments of laughing, it was over.

Yeah. And it felt good. And it was such a release because lackler serves as an emotional release. And what it does is it teaches you to own your emotions so your emotions don't own you. So you're actually allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel in that moment, but not letting your emotions swallow you, especially when they don't serve. you when that stress doesn't serve you. And what laughter yoga taught me is that, you know, you're going to experience stress

and challenges still. However, you don't have to internalize that. And I used to have very poor stress management before laughter yoga. And now it's so empowering just to laugh. And it's not always easy. And it's taught me to externalize, not to internalize, keep it all on the outside and just be the observer of the moment. Beautiful, beautiful. What part of the brain do you think it's stimulated? You talked about the right and left hemispheres. Do you think you're actually moving yourself to a

different part of the brain? Like, I'm thinking stress and laughter don't exist in the same part of the brain. Exactly. No. You're giving your right brain some exercise. And this is where the creativity sits. This is why it's good for not only personalized, but professionalized when we find when we host Black yoga sessions with workplaces that the employees report after the testimonials are, they are telling us that, you know, the team is more creative. They had all these ideas after that session. And, you know, we don't stimulate that side often. And as children, we did because we were so free.

We weren't logical, analytical, judgmental, which is that left side. That's always going, going as adults. And that it humanizes. It humanizes the employees with their superiors. And it bonds the coworkers together. It breaks up clips within the workplace where there may be on-job bullying or people may feel isolated. It brings everyone together. Yes.

It's a great way for bonding, for families, it strengthens relationships and bonds for children. Children in lack of easily. for a skill for our children. So it's just anyone that's human can laugh, can use laughter in their lives or more laughter in their lives because it's such a powerful but simple tool. Now, in one of these sessions, do you guys teach different ways to laugh? Like, again, as I'm listening to you, I'm like, okay, well, this could be really interesting to incorporate into my morning routine because I'm already doing 20 minutes of meditation.

I do 20 minutes of breathing. So what if I just put another 20 minutes on of laughing? So are there different ways to laugh? Do you want to laugh fast sometimes? Laugh slow. Like yoga, there's a lot of different things I can do in yoga. Is the same thing exist in laughter yoga? Yes, we have many different breathing exercises and many types of laughter.

Yes, because in laughter yoga, we're just doing laughter exercises and deep yoga breathing exercises. So these laughter exercises vary. We actually have like unlimited amounts of. Oh, really? Give me an example. Like would it be like everybody do it this style and then everybody do a different style? Like how, what does that look like? So sometimes we hold sessions, especially on Wednesdays,

because we have this thing called we love the way you laugh Wednesdays where our laughter yoga sessions, when we have participants on Wednesdays, we usually share different types of laughter. Alique loves the Wednesdays because he loves sharing. He did actual research about different types of laughter. We do this laughter exercise where we

share different types of laughter amongst ourselves. Like you said, you have your own personal laugh. We do an echo me type of. Yeah, we do an echo where I'll give my laugh and then the whole group does that they imitate me and we just laugh and then each person

takes a turn and they display their own type of laughter and we all do it. And I pick up different types of laughter from them. Yeah. And then the other laughter exercises, types of exercises that we do are more structured. So say if we're doing it for corporate, maybe it'll be like something more general.

It won't be like types of laughter. It'll probably be something like conflict resolution laughter. So we'll say something like we basically create a scenario. Imagine you're having a conflict. with your colleague. And instead of spewing those negative words at each other, we're going to laugh. And it looks like this.

So we'll demonstrate how it looks. Do you have to point your fingers? Does that help? Yeah. Yeah, you get real into it because you're having a complex. Oh, I love it. You imitate that, but instead of spewing negative words, you replace all of that with laughter instead.

Yes, and then we'll come to resolution laughter. So some of it goes are struck our black yoga sessions are structured according to the participants or like we love the way he laugh Wednesdays or the day that it is. So it varies from time to time. It can be a birthday and we do birthday laugh. Yeah, there's birthday laughter. We have all types for children. We have bad go, good goal. Bye. I love that. Oh my God. We have all type and all types. And all. All of these exercises that we do, these laughter exercise, stimulate different parts of our bodies, our organs. For a lining laughter, it stimulates the thyroid gland. Ha ha!

You're sticking your tongue out. We're laughing. So there are so many, even what we do after every exercise, it stimulates the acer pressure points in your hands. When you're clapping, you're stimulating the active pressure points in the palms of your hands and your fingertips. Okay. Which they activate a large portion of receptors that are in your brain that are also responsible for healing. Yes. So when we're clapping and going, very good, very good, yay.

You're activating those pressure points, these aqua pressure points. Yeah. So in laughter yoga, after every one of our exercises, we typically go very good, very good, yay. And that is happening. And what that also does, a lot of people make you uncomfortable with that. like we're not five, why are we very good, very good, yeah. But there's science behind that even, and this helps to create those childhood memories that trigger those childhood memories in our brains, where everything was free and we were

not so responsible for so many things at once. Because emotion creates emotion. Yes, the motion your body is in creates that emotion. So when we're clapping our hands and lifting our arms up and raising our heads. Your hands are in the celebratory state. We have your hands up and up high. You're celebrating when people are praising something. It triggers those memories.

Yes. So you're triggering your body into feeling like, oh, your cells are like, hey, there must be great things happening out there. So you're activating all those happy chemicals and the body feels really good. You feel really good. And you're just reaping the health benefits of laughter in the session. So one of the things that I love to do on my podcast is really help bring the understanding of things that what I would call are a little woo-woo. They look like on the fringe.

They look like they wouldn't mean anything. But when you actually unpack it through neuroscience, you realize, oh, my gosh, they mean a lot. And I recently brought Bruce Lipton on. and we talked about our subconscious programming. And one of the things that he said was that when we try to change our life from our, what you guys are calling the like the analytical mind, so he would call it the conscious mind, we get stuck because everything is blocked and controlled by our subconscious programming that was developed from the age of zero to seven.

And so again, as I'm listening to you guys talk, I'm thinking, and so one of my comments to him was do affirmations work? And he said, oh, yeah, they work because when you're saying the affirmation and you're doing it over and over again, you are changing that old programming. So I'm curious if what kind of like life changes you've seen in people, if they do this on a regular basis, I'm curious if you've been able to see people overcome addiction or to move out of limiting beliefs that hold them back from a great job or have you seen marriages get repaired because you're rewiring the brain with those affirmations.

And then I love how you've put in the touch and everything. My neuroscience brain is like, oh, I bet it's this part of the brain and this part of the brain. What are some of the craziest stories you've seen with laughter that's worked for people? We've witnessed even in our own personal lives, even people that think it's woo-hoo, but they might have been slightly depressed and just from hearing and be around us while we're doing our sessions. Peripherally, their moods have improved. Just from hearing us do what we do, very good, very good day and the laughing and stuff. Some people that never laugh, we'll get phone calls now and ha ha ha ha ha.

Are you guys laughing again? So it really, like, it enlightens people to hear you laugh because even if they think it's woo-woo, what's so interesting about that is that if we're walking around stressed and tense in our face, people don't think that's woo-woo. They think that's normal. But if you're laughing, that's woo-woo? Yeah.

Because we're laughing. Yeah. And it's like, it's so interesting to us because we are on a mission to normalize laughter, normalized feeling good. It shouldn't be strange to see us laughing or to see people laughing. If you hear people laughing, you know something good is happening. Yeah.

However, people are still taken back by it. They're like, what's going on? They're strange. Why are they laughing for no reason? Like, you know, so we want to normalize laughter because imagine a world without it. Imagine. Yeah. Or imagine a world with it all the time.

If everybody walked around, what if we turn on the news and all the newscasters were laughing? That what, and then they delivered the information to you. Like, I think it would be really interesting. And that was one of the things I learned from Bruce Lipton is when we talked about, affirmations. I said, what if you're saying something that you, that you're like, well, I'm saying it, but I don't believe it. And he's like, you just fake it till you make it because your brain doesn't know the difference like you guys are saying between what is reality and what is not. So the repetition of the affirmation with the laughter is incredible. Incredible.

Yes. It is amazing. You can convince yourself to be stressed out. While studying for our laughter, the information that they say an actor can be studying to play a stressful part in a movie, a role where they're supposed to be angry or stressed. And they'll physically take on the characteristics of someone who's stressed just from playing apart of someone stressed out. Your body can't differentiate between real emotion and fake emotion. Interesting. So when we're doing laughter, we're tricking the body into thick and it feels good.

Yeah. What does it do for the immune system? Is do we have any studies on, I saw somewhere on your website, the antibody production goes up. Do we have any research on the immunity? Yes. It boosts the production of killer T cells. Yes. Great.

So it boost your immune system. It definitely boost your immune system. And it does so much for your health, like physically, mentally, emotionally. It just does, it just covers all areas. And what's so interesting about that is that we, we, we, this and when we're taking our courses to become certified. However, through our life experiences, we actually saw this, these benefits. We get to read them and witness them. Sorry. Yeah. We actually experienced these benefits and we're like, wow, it really works. It's been

times where I had a headache and I'm like, oh, we have to do this session. I'm not sure how I'm going to get through this and I get through it and the headache is gone. Crazy. What about blood sugar? I'm like such a fan. So we do a lot of wearables and measurements. So like I've got a whoop on right now measures my sleep and my heart rate variability. We do a lot of putting continuous blood sugar monitors on people. Have we do, do you have any firsthand experience or have you have seen that 15 minutes of laughter will just bring the blood sugar down? Yes, we saw that improves. we research shows that it improves your breast sugar control. It decreases blood pressure. It improves your cardiovascular health overall. It does so much.

We can go on. Right. On there are so many benefit. And I'm wondering, like, wouldn't it be really cool? Because I'm kind of like a research brain. I'm like, what if you had like a group of people and you like tested their blood sugar? You had them laugh for 15 minutes and then you tested their blood. sugar again, then wouldn't that be neat? I mean, we'll do it in my group. We'll have to find a way to

do this because it would be really interesting to see. And blood sugar, you know, I don't know what you know about immune compromise people, but they're saying right now that here in America, we have about 12% of Americans that are metabolically fit, which means they're managing their blood sugar okay, only 12%. So I've been on a mission to get people to manage. manage blood sugar better. And when we think about blood sugar, we always go at food or we go at fasting. But I've gone and gotten a massage before and done like my blood sugar reading, then got the massage, and then did a blood sugar reading afterwards. And my blood sugar dropped dramatically. So with no change to my food intake. So I'm curious if laughing would do the

same thing. Scientific studies. I was a lot of state of study. I've participated in that. Yeah, with scientific studies, do show that it improved blood sugar control. And, yeah, we would love to put that to a test. Yeah, let's figure out a way to do that because that would be really fun. We could get a couple hundred people together and do like a group class and have everybody measure preimposed. It could be really interesting.

Is there a time of day that laughter is best? And I'm curious if like if you want to control stress, I would think, you know, definitely before you go to bed. because if you go to sleep in a stress date. But do we have any research on the time of day of laughter and what it would do for your overall health if you varied the time? So any time of the day is good to laugh. You can start your day.

It's good to start your day because you can prime you. And you start on an elevated move. Right. Now midday, after you've been impacted by the day, it's good to release, to release whatever you've encountered throughout the day and before bed because then you go to bed with a more relaxed but energized state. And also during the day, during your day when you're experiencing that stressful moment,

what's so interesting about laughter is that like I can be experiencing a stressful moment right now and if I can choose to laugh because it is a choice. Even if it's fake, I can fake laugh right now in the stressful moment. or I cannot laugh at all and experience this stressful moment fully and then go to sleep, wake up the next day. And even though I'm no longer in that stressful moment, my body remembers that stressful moment. Now I'm driving and I experience traffic. I'm stressed again.

Then another stressor happens. Another stressor. And this piles up. This piles up. And then over time, this creates disease in our body. Because you're in the constant state of distress. Yes. So anytime pretty much is a.

good time because you're encouraged stress all throughout your day. Yes. So it's important to remember you can just give yourself a laugh or break. I mean, it's going to take practice and we're happy to help with the practice, but it takes practice to remember that you can always just choose to laugh. And once you do it, we've received so many feedback that, you know, so much feedback that people feel so empowered by that choice of just laughing. And they're like, thanking us like, thank you. It's like, thank you. you for making me laugh. We're like, we didn't make you. You chose to laugh. Because we're not telling any jokes. We're not entertaining you. You chose to laugh and you remember to do it. And you laughed without waiting on that condition. And it's such a powerful choice because you're

empowering yourself to be in the present moment to feel good, no matter what's going on outside. And even though that challenge or that stress may not disappear, at least you're easing yourself into the next moment where your body isn't taking that hit of that stressful moment or that challenge. I, again, my neuroscience brain is like, this is brilliant. This is brilliant. It's like fasting. You know, I love fasting because it's free and it's powerful. And it taps into an old ancient energy system that we don't get when we're eating all day.

And I love when I'm listening to you guys, I'm like, this is genius. We have really given over the health to very complicated, making it very, very, complicated and sophisticated, but we're very primal humans. And we need very specific primal needs. And we just don't give it enough credit because we haven't had some big scientists show up with a white lab coat to tell us, you can do this now. So I'm curious, maybe we get Fauci to get up there and say something like, hey, everybody needs to start laughing now. That would be, that would then you'd just see a whole wave of difference in the world. That would be pretty awesome. That would be a dream.

That would be good. What if I only have like a minute or two to laugh? So like what if I'm like, okay, I'm listening to this podcast. I'm like, I'm stressed. I need to laugh. I'm in my car. I've got five minutes. Is that if I can't go 15, will five work?

Any laughter is good laughter. We definitely recommend laughing as much as possible throughout your day. We encourage daily laughter. Don't wait for the moment. to choose you. Choose the moment to laugh, we always say. And we encourage it as much as you can during the day. But we do strongly recommend that if you want to reap the health benefits of it.

To reap the full benefits, you have to laugh for that to sustain 15 minutes. And you can probably only get that in the lack of. Well, you can only get that in the lack of your session because how are you going to laugh? And it's going to feel awkward. So we're happy to like help people. to get more familiar with how to do this and how to laugh for that sustained period of time.

But yeah, if you got a minute to laugh, you'd say take as many laughter breaks as you can. If it's for one minute, if it's for a few seconds, just laugh as much as possible. You can laugh during your daily routine while you're getting ready in the morning, while you're showering, while you're on the way to work. You can incorporate laughter into all these times

in your day when you're not doing something, but you're doing something, but you can still laugh. Tell her about your favorite, about the daily chores, about the washing dishes. Oh, yeah. Like, I hate doing dishes. And I can laugh. I can be upset because I'm doing the dishes. Or I can choose to laugh and do the dishes.

They're going to get done regardless. Yeah. I'm not doing regardless. So why not do something and feel good while you're doing? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I have five questions for you guys.

And you can answer it. You can both answer or you can answer. answer single you know one at a time uh is there a book like when you first discovered laughter were there any books that you read about it or anybody that inspired you to learn from other than your own selves um yeah there's this book by uh the founder dr madon kataria called laughter yoga oh okay um and it is it's all about laughter yoga and the benefits and and just great information about it. Okay.

And, yeah. People can find that on, on Amazon? Yeah. Okay. We're, we're, we're, we're, okay, we'll put the link in there. We're big book readers in this group. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Have you ever laughed so hard that you peed your pants? And what were you laughing at? Not yet. Not yet. King and queen. Make sure that we, we definitely empty our bladder before a session. I would think so for women, like Kegels would be really, you know, when you're laughing,

you're doing Kiyos. So you could actually stack your hacks. But we've had some people actually do it. Yeah. Not us, but we've had people participate. Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love it.

Okay. Have you ever had a time where you're like, I don't feel like laughing? So you turn to a comedian or you turn to something to like help you get the impulse to laugh? Well, actually, there's been many times where we felt like, well, especially me, where I felt like I didn't want to laugh. But instead of turning to comedy, because we're always practicing being present in the moment, and instead of just like, oh, what should we watch really quick, it only takes one of us. So I usually turn to our- laughter support. Yeah, and we give each other laughter support.

And again, it can start out as faith. So the fake part, after a while it becomes contagious. And I might laugh at myself how ridiculous I feel or she may look at me and be upset. Yeah. It looks like, you look stressed. He's like, come on, come on. Ha, ha, ha. And after a while, I'm like, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Like, I don't feel like doing this. But I do it. And then eventually it becomes real laughter. Or even if it doesn't, I definitely feel a difference. I feel like the tension in my body is down. It cools down your stress response. Yeah. And I'm able to like just communicate what was happening.

Like I'm like, you know, it improved our communication and our relationship as well. Because once that happens, it's like, okay, so what was that face about? And I'm like, well, I was so overwhelmed. And, you know, and it also helps us to create other new laughter exercises in those moments where we're experiencing life, Real life experiences created overwhelmed laughter. Overwhelmed. For me, having a week of feeling overwhelmed, like, every day. I was like, I'm just so overwhelmed.

And, you know, we created that exercise. So we find, like, laughter exercises in our real life experiences that we share with others. So life inspires the exercises and the exercises can help you inspire your life. Yes. I love it. We call that living it to lead it. I love the people that I bring on to this podcast. I just, it's so important that they're like living what their message is.

We have too many examples of people delivering a message and then they're not doing it themselves. You know, a great example of this is many, not all, but many medical doctors will turn around and tell their patients lose weight while they stay overweight. You know, it's like we need more congruent leaders. And this is incredible. So I love it. So, okay, last question.

If you had one message for the world that you could just get into everybody's brain, like in one second, what would that message be? One of our favorite sayings, we're not happy because we laugh. We laugh because we're not laughing because we're happy. We're happy because we laugh. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So people always think we're so happy.

They're like, oh, you two are. are a happy couple. And although we really are a happy couple, this is my best friend. And, you know, we share so much together. We experience so much together. And we've been through so much together. However, we still experience challenges. We still experience tension. We still experience stress. And we appear very happy because we laugh. We choose to laugh, even when we're experiencing a challenging moment, whether it's individually or together. we laugh. And even if it's fake, we laugh.

And it helps, it helps a lot. It's helped us through personal losses. Yeah. I bet. I was thinking, I wonder if you can use it as a tool in like a fight, you know, with your spouse. Like if you can be like, okay, time out. Let's take a laughter break and then let's come back to this discussion.

Have you ever tried it like that? Yeah. We actually have a couple's laughter. You know, the sessions where we facilitate laughter. You'll go with couples. and there's one of our favorites is argument laughter, similar to conflict laughter. We're not saying any negative words to each other. We're just having argument laughter.

So you do all the motions of arguing, like, all the motions. And you can even look angry while you're doing it, but you're saying everything with a ha ha ha ha ha ha. And it's... Everything you have to say is still a sound. Right. But if you were playing those sounds with laugh, you do no damage, but you still have to say what you have to say. Yeah. So brilliant. I love that.

And I, and there's no need to walk it back because you didn't say anything. Right. Yeah. And I would think that it satisfies that part of your brain that wants to like point the finger or look mad. But the word. Yeah. Like I'm thinking about that and thinking so you're not just suppressing that. You're like, but you're laughing. So your face could look mad. Your fingers could be pointing, but laughter's coming out of your mouth. I'm going to try it with my teenagers. I'll let you know how it works. Yeah, let us know.

And no argument is complete without forgiveness. Yeah, so after that, we practice forgiveness laughter, which we place our hands on our heart and we pour out forgiveness with laughter. After that. So it's not like we just do that argument and we get over it. Usually forgiveness, laughter happens after we actually talk about. what happened. So what we always, what should I say? What we always highlight is that many people are like, oh, so you guys are just like laughing and you're not dealing with, no, we actually,

this helps us to communicate better because once we are laughing the argument laughter exercise, we're actually destressing our bodies and actually owning our emotions in that argument laughter. Even though the sounds that are coming out is laughter. We're still owning. We're not letting those emotions or those negative emotions to own us, but we're being present, that we're laughing, and then afterwards, we're able to talk. Yeah. Because now the tension is not there. The anger is released.

And it's not as raw. Yeah. Yeah. There's some time between the incident and the time that you come with the resolution. It's like, reset. Yeah. I love it. I love it.

You're able to like, okay, well, that really bothered me when you, and then after that, we we talk about it. So it's the way to increase your communication skills as well. And your emotional intelligence. Yeah. And emotional resilience too. Yeah. Well, how do people find you? If they, if, if I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of resetters reaching out to you looking for this. And I want to try to stack it with fasting and see what we can do and see if that helps people through fast. So how do people find you? On www.wapinglovebugs.com on our website. site and we're on all social media platforms at Laughing Lovebugs. Awesome.

And the name is so amazing. You know, when I asked my husband, what he was doing? He's like, I'm listening to the Laughing Love Bugs. I'm like, what's that? So you guys are awesome. So Lauren and Alec, just thank you guys so much for sharing your joy. Hey, Resetters, I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews. and those of you that have left me comments on iTunes,

I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you're enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I've learned in just interacting with so many people is that we've really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the Resetter podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life, about mindset in a way that we may not be getting on social media or in mainstream media.

And so I just want to say, give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it's impacting your life. So please let us know if there's anything we can do to make. this podcast more customized to you to make it better. We are now officially in season two, and we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have, that mindset changers can give, and to really deliver you something that you're not able to get

anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you, and let's get healthy together.