The Science of Laughter Yoga (with Cathy Nesbitt)

[Dana] (00:01)
Welcome friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home, it’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Cathy Nesbitt. Cathy is a health and wellness advocate. She is the founder of Cathy’s Crawly Composters, which she started in 2002, Cathy’s Sprouters, and Cathy’s Laughter Club. She is a multi award winning environmental innovator who uses workshops and inspirational speaking to motivate people to live a more sustainable life. Cathy, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Cathy] (00:42)
Dana, I’m excited to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

[Dana] (00:45)
This is fantastic. There’s so much I want to cover. And you’re also an avid cyclist and a gardener. You’ve been a TEDx speaker twice. You’ve got things that people really need to hear. So, where do you want to begin about your journey? And how did you get where you are right now?

[Cathy] (01:07)
Wow, that’s a good question. Let me look back.

[Dana] (01:12)
It’s a journey, isn’t it?

[Cathy] (01:15)
It is, and it’s so exciting. I find you can’t connect the dots going forward. There’s no dots. It’s only when you look back and you’re like, oh, that’s why I met that person and that’s why I went there, and all the things. So it’s the 23rd anniversary of Cathy’s Crawly Composter, selling worms by the pound for indoor composting.

[Dana] (01:36)
And that sounds amazing to me. That’s not something that, if you’re in a casual conversation with someone you just met, that’s not something they would say that they do. It’s a very interesting niche. And I’m really curious about why you developed such an interest in that area. Why that?

[Cathy] (01:55)
I’m located in Canada, just north of Toronto, and in 2002 our landfill closed. It filled up. And we started to export our garbage to the US, to Michigan. And I had a solution. Six million people live in the Greater Toronto Area, half live in condos, townhouses without space, places without space for outdoor composting. And I had a solution: indoor composting with worms. And I believe I’m divinely guided, like we all are, if we pay attention.

[Dana] (02:25)
I like that.

[Cathy] (02:25)
Right, that’s it. So this is composting in the house to manage at least our organic matter, our food scraps, our paper waste, and the worms eat all of it and they turn it into black gold, nutrient rich soil that we can grow more nutrient rich food with.

[Dana] (02:28)
Just being part of the solution. Wow. So I’m always interested in women entrepreneurs because it takes a lot. Like you said before, you can look back and you can see the different people that were brought into your life, the different trials you were allowed to go through, all the things. But when you’re moving forward, you don’t see it. It’s an unknown and inherently anxiety provoking, just the unknown itself. And so I’m very much drawn to other female entrepreneurs and what that journey was like. So when you were starting this out, you had this idea, but going from an idea to a successful business, and to being on a TEDx stage twice, that gives credibility, that people want to hear what you have to say. What were some of your obstacles along the way and how were you able to push through and create this wonderful business that you have?

[Cathy] (03:45)
Yeah, what a big challenge. The worms, the worms are the challenge, the obstacle of a worm business. In concept, it’s a great idea. And people will say, what a great idea. No, I’m not having worms in my house. Good for you. No way.

[Dana] (04:05)
It’s like, okay, that’s good for you.

[Cathy] (04:12)
Or my husband wouldn’t allow me to have worms in the house. There’s always some reason. And I have a psych degree, so I’m fascinated by people. And I think that people may have been traumatized as a child in the schoolyard or after a rainy day or a fishing incident, something with worms. And if you were traumatized as a child, you’re not looking to that as a solution as an adult.

[Dana] (04:36)
I’m listening to you describe this and I’m thinking it would be akin to someone saying, working with spiders. And there are advocates of spiders out there that say they’re wonderful, they serve these great purposes, and all this. But still, I think we would have such a hard time, because, like you’re saying, of the childhood experiences and trying to overcome that and trying to move forward in life. I think there’s a huge analogy there, just right on the periphery of trying to overcome childhood experiences and challenge the conclusions that we drew as kids so that we can move forward and do something healthy for ourselves.

[Cathy] (05:19)
Exactly, right? We were taught all this stuff and it becomes part of us. And then it becomes part of our belief program. And it is a belief or it’s fact, because they’re not the same.

[Dana] (05:24)
Yes. I love that. That’s 100%. And I love the way you say that we were taught all these things, because when we come out of the shoot, we don’t have these beliefs, and we’re toddlers walking around, we don’t have those concepts, we don’t have those conclusions drawn, those expectations. Other people teach us those things, whatever that may be, whether it’s our attitude towards worms, our attitude towards ourselves, our attitudes towards other people, being open, not being open, other people teach us that, and then we end up internalizing. So it didn’t start with us. So I like the way that you’re just kind of giving people an opportunity to push outside of what they were taught and challenge that a bit.

[Cathy] (06:19)
Absolutely. So I would have a table wherever I could to educate. This is so important. I don’t come from an entrepreneurial background. I was an employee. I was a secretary for 20 years, a great secretary, by the way.

[Dana] (06:34)
I’m sure you were, I can see it.

[Cathy] (06:38)
Because I’m the connector. What did someone say the other day? I’m title blind. I don’t see titles, I just see people. So the president, I could talk to the president or the janitor, it doesn’t matter, we’re all people. And I connected people. I connected the union at one particular job. I was the president’s secretary. So I was the gatekeeper. I ran the company.

[Dana] (06:46)
I love that. I love that so much. Yes.

[Cathy] (07:05)
Right? And I connected the union. It was a unionized shop, and the union, it was kind of us and them, the union, the plant workers versus the office workers. And I was like, no, we’re all one. We’re all here for the same purpose, which is to make a great company, a great product or service, and serve the people. And that’s kind of my gift, I think, is that I don’t see titles, I just see people. And I would change jobs, because I think I was an entrepreneur, I just didn’t know it.

[Cathy] (07:35)
I would change jobs every year and I would quit my job without having a job because I knew I was that good, that I would just get another job. But I got bored. Once I learned the product or service, each secretarial job is kind of the same: gatekeeping, customer service, marketing, those kind of things. And then I was getting my psych degree. It took me 15 years.

[Dana] (07:43)
Love it, love it, love it.

[Cathy] (08:04)
Stay in school. Time goes by. I only went at night. I didn’t care about the degree, I didn’t care about the paper, I just loved learning. And I loved going to university at night because you meet a different demographic of people. The people that want to be there, they’re paying to be there, not the ones whose parents are saying you got to go take this course.

[Dana] (08:05)
Ha. Yes.

[Cathy] (08:27)
So it was wonderful. And in 2000, I graduated, which makes me sound so young. And I got a job at a group home, working with challenged adults. And they had 10 homes and a farm and they didn’t compost. That’s kind of how my worm business came about, just another piece to it. When I spoke to the management about composting, the greenhouse manager said, why don’t we do worm composting? And I had an experience in ’93 when I bought my house. I moved out of Toronto into a small town, bought a house, couldn’t wait to start gardening and composting. And in the year I bought my house, a teacher friend asked me to look after her worm bin for the summer. I didn’t want worms in my house. Now that’s my business. And people will say, gross, or that’s not for you, you won’t like that.

[Dana] (09:15)
You’re like, you want me to do what?

[Cathy] (09:26)
And I’m here to say, don’t let people tell you what you’re going to like it or dislike. Try it for yourself. You don’t know. And I took on the challenge. I didn’t like it. It was awful because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t get the manual with it. And so I would open up the lid, throw the food, and close the lid. So I happened to be a fruit fly farmer. Don’t be a fruit fly farmer, if you’re going to do worm composting. There’s no market, nobody’s buying them and they die in a day or two. They’re hard to catch,

[Dana] (09:57)
Make sense. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Cathy] (10:25)
fruit flies, that is. So there is management required, which is: the fruit flies come from the fruit, and most people have had fruit flies in their house, so of course you don’t want to propagate them. But if, so when people say I don’t want to have fruit flies, it’s like, have you had fruit flies? Yes. Have you had a worm bin in your house? No. You know the fruit flies don’t come from the worm bin because you never had one, right? So management is required.

[Cathy] (10:25)
And I ended that summer like, okay, I’m never doing this again. And then fast forward to the group home, the greenhouse manager said, what about worm composting? I was like, oh no, not the worms again. I got that feeling in my belly. Have you ever done something like you’re so excited, yay, this is so great, and then it didn’t work out, so you’re like, okay, yeah, not doing that again, I tried it, no. So when the greenhouse manager mentioned vermicomposting, I was like… And then I came home from work and I was like, oh, wait a minute. It’s an institution, they’re not getting worms anytime soon, they have to have meetings, is this a good idea, do they have the money, all the things. So I came home and I started to research, because there was the first start back in ’93, my first introduction to worm composting: nope, not for me. Here’s my second introduction, seven years later, I’m researching and I heard

[Dana] (11:05)
Mm-hmm.

[Cathy] (11:21)
or learned the magic of these worms. They eat half their weight per day in food scraps. They turn garbage into black gold. They’re the original alchemists, they convert garbage into something usable. So I heard that a pound of worms and their descendants could transform a ton of organic waste in a year, and that the average family produces a ton of organic waste in a year. And I was like, every family needs a pound of worms. And I’m just the one to put a pound of worms in every house. All right, so that’s what’s going through my mind. Back to the group home, I get injured at work. I was a freelance behavior management specialist. Sounds so impressive, doesn’t it? It doesn’t fit on a business card. Freelance means no safety net. When I got injured at work, there was no plan, it was go to work or don’t get paid. And I was really stressed and…

[Dana] (11:55)
Okay. Hmm.

[Cathy] (12:19)
I came home from work and I opened up the little paper and it said, are you a woman? Yes. Do you have a business idea? I do. Check, check, check. It was a course to write a six month business plan. And so I turned to my husband, I said, I’m quitting my job, I’m taking this course, I’m going to start a business. Won’t that be fun?

[Dana] (12:40)
What was his response?

[Cathy] (12:42)
We’ve been together a long time, he knows I have these wacky ideas. And so he just really is very supportive and said, yes, kind of.

[Dana] (12:54)
I want to pause for just a moment and bring up several things. I want to start out by saying that it is really helpful, isn’t it, when you have someone who’s supportive, because entrepreneurs and starting businesses, like you said, there’s no safety net necessarily, there’s no assurance, there’s no insurance, there’s a bunch of unknown factors, and you have this fabulous idea, and so wonderful things could happen. But

[Cathy] (12:58)
Okay.

[Dana] (13:23)
it’s very, very helpful to have someone in your life who believes in you, who is like, you can do this, that stands in your corner, because sometimes we get eaten up with imposter syndrome or we start doubting ourselves all over the place. And it’s kind of like, it would be hard pressed, I think, for an entrepreneur to be able to keep moving forward, they do it,

[Cathy] (13:36)
Mmm.

[Dana] (13:50)
but it would be hard if they didn’t have at least one person who was like, I got your back, I believe in you, you can do this, it’ll be okay. And I feel like you saying that’s what your husband was doing for you.

[Cathy] (14:03)
Absolutely, yes. And I would like to say a piece. Because my partner was gainfully employed, I thought I could go and do this little business, this will be so much fun, won’t this be great? And the universe is really a fascinating jokester, really hilarious, so funny. Looking back, it’s so funny, but at the time, not so funny. So back to Toronto,

[Dana] (14:23)
You…

[Cathy] (14:30)
2002, our landfill closed, and we started to export our garbage. So that was so big, we needed to come up with a solution. In 2002, we had a garbage strike in the summer. Toronto is supposedly a world-class city, not if we have piles of stinking garbage around, right? Flies and rodents and who knows, just smell. Nobody’s coming. So I was like, oh gosh, okay, watching the news, people were lining up for hours to drop off their garbage. I was like, those people don’t compost, because composting takes the stink out of garbage, right? Your recyclables, your paper, your cans, they don’t smell. So I decided to take my worms on a road trip. And so a few things happened. I sent out press releases to the Toronto outlets saying I was coming to town with a solution. Five minutes after sending my press release, a reporter from the Toronto Star contacted me, largest paper in Canada, and said, thank you for your press release, I wrote an article last week about composting, but I forgot about the apartment dwellers, when you’re done at the transfer station, come down to the Star, I want to interview you. I was like, oh, how wonderful. I have a psych degree, so I’m curious. I could have went right to the Star, but I wanted to know why people weren’t composting.

[Dana] (15:45)
Yeah.

[Cathy] (15:53)
So I went to one of the transfer stations that had, it was probably the largest spot, maybe 80 to 100 picketers, I don’t even know where I got the courage, to be honest. I had my company shirt, “Worm Away Your Garbage,” on. And there was a private investigator videoing the event, and I spoke to him before, he said he was hired by the city in case there was any skirmishes.

[Dana] (16:06)
Hmm.

[Cathy] (16:21)
And it kind of gave me solace, like, okay, good, if something happens, at least it’ll be on record. I don’t know what good it does you if you’re dead, but…

[Dana] (16:27)
You have a witness! You’re so funny.

[Cathy] (16:40)
So I went forth again, I don’t know, the universe was pushing me. And I had a few questions for the people, and I think the people lining up, I was entertainment, they had hours to wait. So there’s this woman like, what is happening here? The union is shouting at me, things I can’t repeat here. And I stood my ground, I’m like, no, I can be here. They were telling me to go away, like this wasn’t my fight. And it was like, no, I’m here, you can’t make me, anyway.

[Cathy] (17:10)
They saw that I wasn’t going away and I wasn’t really paying attention, I was talking to the people in the cars, and I would ask them a few questions: do you compost, why not, would you if there was an incentive, and so forth. The union saw that I wasn’t going away and I was engaging the people, so then they turned to the people and said, if you talk to this woman or you take anything from this woman… like I’m such a big threat, “woman from another town threatens Toronto union.”

[Dana] (17:39)
See the headline now!

[Cathy] (17:40)
Watch out for your jobs, garbage collectors, there’s a composter in town. And somebody called, anyways, they said if you take anything from this woman or talk to this woman, we’re not going to allow you to drop off your garbage. Now I’m not fun anymore. Now they’re rolling up their windows because they had a mission, they were there to drop off their garbage. Then somebody called the police. The police came, and I’m not a muckraker, I didn’t want to cause trouble, I had a solution, that’s all.

[Dana] (18:12)
You have a solution. Yeah.

[Cathy] (18:14)
But I left. I didn’t even talk to the police. I was like, no, I mean, I would talk to the police today, I would get arrested, that would be fun, more media. Right at the time, I was so naive. Anyway, I went down to the Star, got my first article in the Toronto Star July 18th, 2002. I phoned up my husband, “yay, I got an article in the Star,” and he said, “I’m on my way home, I just got downsized.”

[Dana] (18:22)
Oh yeah, yeah.

[Cathy] (18:41)
“Couldn’t you have just got downsized tomorrow, so I could celebrate my article in the Star?” I’m laughing now, now I can look back and say, oh, what a nice chapter, that was kind of funny.

[Dana] (18:46)
Oh wow. That’s like the rug got jerked off from under you. Both of you.

[Cathy] (18:55)
Oh my gosh. Like in a worm business, you don’t have repeat customers, because the worms breed more than rabbits. So people were giving away their worms, those that were successful were giving away their worms to their neighbors, sending them to their kids’ school. I’m like, stop giving your worms away, it’s bad for my business. And the fear. So there was a lot of things. What were the barriers? So many. But I had a solution, and I knew it was something that people needed. Everybody needed what I had. But here’s the thing: people don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want. And they didn’t want what I was offering, and I was hearing so many times, “ew, worms in the house.” I wasn’t paying attention, I was like, no, no, you need this. And I was like, how am I going to do this? So I started to take on school workshops, and I would educate the children.

[Dana] (19:32)
Mm-hmm.

[Cathy] (19:50)
And I thought, okay, now I just need to wait 20 years for them to have buying power.

[Dana] (19:55)
I mean, Cathy, I’m sure you have patience, but that’s stretching it a bit.

[Cathy] (19:58)
I made it 23 years, I did it. And Dana, I’ve had the privilege of knowing over 100,000 students have seen my presentation. It’s such a beautiful little story. And I really want to encourage people, if you have an idea that could change the world or could change something, make life better for somebody, don’t hide it, don’t sit on it. Don’t be afraid, jump forward. I recently heard the expression

[Cathy] (20:33)
that failure is always going to feel better than regret. Right? If we can try something and then fail and then go, well, at least I tried. But if we never try it, then we go to our deathbed and we’re like, I don’t know what would have happened if I tried it, my life might’ve been different. Don’t have regrets.

[Dana] (20:53)
Yeah, I love that. Let me ask you this, because I can imagine that someone might be on a journey similar to what yours was, and when you say that your husband got downsized, he came home and said, “I’m on my way home, I got downsized.” There’s a lot of people I would imagine that at that moment, even if they had a fabulous idea, because at that point it was kind of still raw, it’s not a cooked up idea, it’s still raw.

[Cathy] (21:20)
Mmm.

[Dana] (21:23)
They don’t have the assurance, you didn’t have the assurance of knowing what was going to happen. And so if there’s someone that’s listening right now that happens to be in that scenario, I was wondering if you could share with them how you were able to not let go of your dream and to keep pushing forward. Because I imagine a lot of people would say, well, I guess I need to go look for another secretarial job, because I’ve done those, I’m very good at that, I can easily get hired as a secretary, I’ve got a great resume for that, I’ve worked for presidents and I could get good money, my husband’s been downsized, I guess I just have to put this entrepreneurial idea in the closet or in the drawer and go back to what I was doing before. And then the idea doesn’t go anywhere. That would be, I think, what a lot of people would do, and it would make sense why they would, there’s bills to pay, and there’s fear, there’s a lot of unknown. So what would you say to someone who possibly is listening right now and is in that scenario?

[Cathy] (22:28)
I would say if you have an idea and it fires you up, that’s your idea that you got to run with it. Because if we don’t, if we go against, we just get the job and okay, we can pay the bills. It’s not just about money. This is about our life, and I don’t want to talk about legacy, it’s just about living a life that is worth living, where we are satisfied every night we go to sleep and we’re like, oh, that was a good day. We might have worked really hard and made no money. I’ve got stories. One day I made so much money, I had all these customers, I want cash in my pocket, and then my car got freaking towed. I paid more to get my car back than I made that day. I was like, oh, in one hand, and now the government has it. Crap.

[Dana] (23:20)
Isn’t that the way, Cathy, isn’t that life right there in a nutshell. There’s always something happening.

[Cathy] (23:28)
I would say don’t be small. Step into what it is, your idea, write it down, write down what it’s going to do, how you’re going to do it, surround your people, find your people that are going to support you. Because right now, when I started my business 23 years ago, there wasn’t as much, at least in Canada, there’s so many small business enterprise centers that are government run. The government has consultants that you can go and have a free consultation with, they’ll set you up with maybe funding or grants or different partners that can collaborate with you. There’s so many ways. Get out networking, stick with your idea, because if you don’t, when I was a secretary, I was really good, I had digestive issues like you can’t believe, bloating and gas, and there’s my stomach, I’m in the meeting taking minutes, I know we don’t do that anymore, but with my shorthand and my stomach’s growling louder than the person speaking, because I was not where I was meant to be. If we don’t step forth and do what we’re meant to do, sickness comes, because we’re kind of going, it’s called cognitive dissonance, we’re doing something that is against what we believe in. And we can keep doing that because we’re good at that,

[Cathy] (24:52)
but it’s going to make you sick in the long run. And what kind of a crappy life is that, just paying your bills? That’s not why we’re here. I really believe that we’re meant to do bigger things, and it might not be a solution that’s going to change the world, it might just help your neighbor, and that’s why you’re here. Who knows?

[Dana] (25:10)
Yeah. Well, and really we can take the word “just” out of that. Just helping your neighbor, because I’m developing a keynote presentation and traveling around and delivering keynotes on boundaries and helping with burnout and that kind of thing. But it’s like, you could have a room full of 500 people, and if one person

[Cathy] (25:24)
Mmm.

[Dana] (25:37)
has a healthier, stronger, more resilient life, better relationships, better productivity at work, more peace, if one person has more of that because they heard me speak, then it’s worth it. One person, right? And I think we need to adjust our expectations. Now, let me ask you something too, because I know our time is drawing to a close, but you have something that’s interesting, you have a laughter club, you have laughter yoga, and I want you to talk about DOSE, D-O-S-E, which is interesting. And then, because I’m the queen of boundaries, and I like all of my guests at some point before the end of the podcast to chat just a minute about, along the way on your journey, how setting boundaries, practicing boundaries helped you. Or an instance where

[Cathy] (26:05)
You…

[Dana] (26:31)
looking back, you feel like you should have set a healthier boundary and you didn’t, and how that impacted you as well. Either way, it’s really helpful to see how boundaries impact us on our journey. So talk about any of that you want to. Let’s get into this. This is so interesting.

[Cathy] (26:47)
So, how the laughter came about: 2012, 10 years into my worm mission, one more person said, “ew, worms in the house.” I’d heard it hundreds of times. Really, I just wasn’t listening. That day in 2012, I heard it, I felt it. I questioned everything, and I was about to doff my important mission. And the very next day I was introduced to laughter yoga. The same place where I wrote my business plan. You can’t make this stuff up. You really can’t make it up.

[Dana] (27:15)
No.

[Cathy] (27:17)
The speaker just did a five minute introduction to laughter yoga, and I don’t do yoga. It’s not doing yoga and laughing, it’s laughing. And I was like, wow, that’s interesting. And that same week I was at a networking event, there were hundreds of people, and the very first woman I met was a laughter yoga teacher. And I said to her, oh, laughter yoga, it’s mainstream, like twice in a week, come on.

[Dana] (27:40)
Here’s your sign!

[Cathy] (27:46)
Like I’m the center of the universe, of course it is. And she said, no, it isn’t. That night, everyone we met, I asked, have you heard of laughter yoga? Have you? Nobody had. And I mean, there’s more to that: her club was five minutes in Toronto, five minutes’ walk from my mother-in-law’s condo. Come on. And I love my mother-in-law, so we would go, it became our date night. And so she ended up having to close her club, because there wasn’t enough interest, even though the club was

[Dana] (28:06)
Wow.

[Cathy] (28:19)
in a place in Toronto where there’s condos everywhere, like 20,000 people live at that corner. And I was like, oh my gosh, they just don’t know the super fun thing is right here. So I haven’t talked about it. Laughter yoga is laughing as a cardiovascular workout. Laughter is the best medicine. And I say, have you had your daily dose? Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, the love drugs, the happy chemicals. When we’re laughing,

[Dana] (28:25)
Okay.

[Cathy] (28:48)
we feel good because we’re secreting all those feel good hormones versus cortisol, adrenaline, epinephrine that we’re secreting when we’re stressed. We’re literally in charge of our own pharma. We get to decide happy, happy chemicals or stress hormones. And our body doesn’t secrete both at the same time.

[Dana] (29:09)
I love that because there’s a lot of research that indicates it’s virtually impossible to be anxious and laughing at the same time. I’m a psychotherapist, and some of the assignments that I give my patients, if they’re dealing with something like that, is to find something funny to watch on TV, a movie or something that just makes you belly laugh, gut laugh until you’re crying, because you cannot

[Cathy] (29:17)
Correct.

[Dana] (29:38)
laugh and also be anxious at the same time.

[Cathy] (29:43)
Not at the same moment. Absolutely, right. And here’s another piece about laughter or stress: I say that laughter is the opposite of stress, maybe not the opposite, but it’s so beneficial. When we’re stressed, blood, lymph, oxygen leaves our frontal lobe so we can escape from the situation, even if we’re not literally escaping. So we’re not breathing properly,

[Dana] (30:08)
Yes.

[Cathy] (30:10)
all the things, and our brain requires 25% more oxygen than the rest of our body as an operating principle, it’s a machine. So when we’re stressed, we’re not breathing properly, our body’s not getting what it needs for sure. Our brain isn’t, and anyone that’s lost their keys, phone, glasses, and they got to go, they know this because you’re flopping around, you’re like, where are my keys, okay.

[Dana] (30:35)
Yes.

[Cathy] (30:37)
When we’re laughing, we’re exhaling, ha ha ha ha ha, we have to take a deep breath so we can continue laughing. It’s that deep breathing without thinking, okay, I got to breathe into my belly and hold it and have the exhale longer, no, it’s automatic, it’s like a built-in mechanism in our body. Why do people laugh at inappropriate times, at the funeral or if somebody trips? Our body is really stressed, and then it goes, okay, you gotta laugh to release. It’s a chemical electrical response. When we’re laughing, we’re up here, we’re vibrating at a very high level when we’re laughing, frequency. When we’re depressed, when we’re sad, anxious, we’re shrinking our body, because we’re not taking up much space, we’re not breathing.

[Dana] (31:10)
I love this. Very high frequency.

[Cathy] (31:32)
We’re just small. So when we’re laughing, we’re big, we’re looking up. It just changes everything. And we can change our state in an instant by laughing, or by getting mad. And here’s an exercise for the people watching or listening. When I’m driving, when somebody cuts you off, it’s never personal, it’s not like, “there’s Cathy, let’s get her.”

[Dana] (31:43)
Mm-hmm.

[Cathy] (31:58)
Sometimes it’s like, “hey, I want to be that car length ahead.” You’ve run out of your lane or you were distracted, something happened, whatever, you cut somebody off, and you always know when you’ve cut somebody off, so you’re looking. When somebody cuts me off, it triggers me to do my laughter yoga. I’m like, oh, time for laughter yoga, I’m flailing my arm.

[Dana] (32:00)
It feels that way though! Yes.

[Cathy] (32:22)
It looks like I’m mad because I’m flailing my arm, but I’m doing my laughter yoga. So they’re looking, they’re like, oh my God, that chick’s cuckoo, and I get more space. Not that I’m wanting to cause them stress, that’s up to them how they react, but they give me more space thinking I’m nuts, road raging or whatever you call it. And I arrive at my destination all relaxed and fully oxygenated and all is well, because I just did my laughter yoga, right? It’s a perspective.

[Dana] (32:32)
Hmm.

[Cathy] (32:51)
We get to write, you know. And I wanted to say, I love the idea of boundaries. Not always, it wasn’t always my place. I used to think I had to be at every event, because people needed to know what I knew. And so I’d be everywhere and I had no boundaries. People would get in touch with me and say, oh, I’m doing this event that had nothing to do with environment, nothing to do with anything that had to do with me, but they wanted me there because I’m fun, I’m high energy, and I bring a lot to the table, even when I’m a vendor at an event. And so I would go to those events and get nothing, because it wasn’t the right place. I didn’t have boundaries around which type of events I would do until I did. Then I was like, okay, no more first year events. Go to the event, go attend, and see how they did. Did they promote it? Are there people there?

[Dana] (33:48)
Mm-hmm.

[Cathy] (33:51)
Is the media there? All of those kinds of questions that I didn’t ask in the beginning, I was just like, oh, I got to be there, there’s an event, I don’t want to miss it, there could be an opportunity. And yes, maybe there is, I would say that there’s never any mistakes, whenever I did those things, I often met somebody, like, okay, phew, at least a saving grace. I didn’t make any money, but at least I met that one person, had a nice conversation.

[Dana] (34:00)
It’s a great example. That’s fabulous. I hear that so much, because we all live lives surrounded with people, whether they’re friends, family, co-workers or whatever, that have expectations of us. And if we don’t set a healthy boundary, then we don’t create any space for our own determination of what we want, how we want to proceed in that relationship. It’s all about, we let other people define it. So that was a fabulous example of how you just set that. It’s like, no, I’m going to decide what is best for me right now at this stage of my journey. What do I need to do to further where I want to go? And I’m not going to let other people’s desires or expectations determine that. So, Cathy, I feel like we could talk easily 30 more minutes, but we’ve got to wrap this up. So I want to make sure that my listeners can get a hold of you, because they’re like, oh my gosh, I want to know so much more about what Cathy has to share.

[Cathy] (35:07)
You…

[Dana] (35:15)
What I have here is the website cathysclub.com. Is that correct? Fabulous. Okay, I’ll make sure that gets in the show notes. Cathy, I appreciate you, and listeners, you don’t know this, but this is the second time Cathy and I have been together, because the first time there were these crazy technical things that happened. And if you do podcasting for any length of time, you know that’s part of the drill. But it was crazy town so much that

[Cathy] (35:20)
It is, yes, that’s my laughter page.

[Dana] (35:43)
we had to schedule another day, and Cathy was so kind and patient and willing to reschedule. So number one, thank you for that. I appreciate that so much. And for your wisdom and your willingness to come on Phoenix and Flame and be transparent and share all of your experience with us. Thank you for coming.

[Cathy] (36:14)
Can I just invite your listeners to my free laughter club? I would love for people to come and try laughter yoga for yourself. I incorporate tapping, brain gym, qigong. It’s Tuesday mornings, 9:30 a.m. Eastern, 30 minutes of super fun self care. The information’s on my laughter page. Come and experience the magic of laughing for the health of it and see for yourself how wonderful this gift of laughter is. Thank you.

[Dana] (36:18)
Sure. Oh, that would be great. That’s awesome. Thank you for that. Listeners, I know you’ve heard so much today. You’re thinking, I have a friend, I have a coworker, text it to them, send it an email, put it on your favorite social media websites so that we can spread the word, Phoenix and Flame podcast, let people know you’re not alone. I hope you’ve had a great day, I hope the rest of your day is fantastic. I’m Dana on Phoenix and Flame.