Tell me about your vision.
So currently, so my working title is Kathy Crawley
Laughing Bean Queen.
I offer simple solutions for today's challenges,
worms for amending the soil, sprouts for eating,
and laughter for overall health and wellness.
And it's the 22nd anniversary of my worm business, Harry.
22 years selling worms by the pound for indoor composting.
And in 2012, one more person said,
ew, worms in the house, and I questioned everything.
I have tons of energy and I knew that people needed
what I had, but they didn't want what I had.
And people don't buy what they need,
they buy what they want, if that makes sense.
And I wasn't listening.
They say in business to pay attention
to what the clients wanted, I wasn't.
I was like, no, no, no, this is important, you need it.
And so 2012, and I questioned everything.
And I really was about to doff my important worm mission.
And I was introduced to laughter yoga.
And it changed my life, laughter changes everything.
Laughter yoga is not about fancy pants or poses,
it's laughter as an exercise,
laughing as an intentional activity.
Ever heard laughter is the best medicine?
Right, everybody's heard that, it's a global expression
and laughter is the universal language.
Laughter is the best medicine.
So we need to take the medicine,
we need to have our daily dose, which is dopamine,
oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.
So I've been laughing since 2012
to answer the question in a short way, chatty Cathy.
And then, so I've been laughing since 2012,
really laughing since 2020, when we got locked down
and the world shut down.
So now we have this global mental health tsunami.
It was here before 2020, it's just bigger now.
And so I'm being called now to bring laughter.
I want people to care about the planet,
but we can't care about the planet or our neighbor
when we're in a mental crisis ourselves.
So my vision in short is to bring more joy to the world
because when we feel good, we do good.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I think you answered quite a bit of my questions
in that statement.
So how did you get started on this path?
I mean, there's two paths we can take.
We can talk about your business side of things,
and we can also talk about your laughing side of things,
which is your vision now.
That's my new business side.
It's really my new avenue.
It's really fascinating.
Life is a trip.
It is, yeah.
So how did you get started on that path?
So that was from the worm.
So yeah, so because, so 2020,
before 2020, I was doing about
between 100 and 200 events a year for my worm business.
And then we got shut down, I was locked in my house.
And that's when I started my laughter club.
And I realized I always have taken care of my health.
And I really, I don't understand hitting rock bottom
and then going up.
I'm like, why don't we go up from here?
It doesn't make sense to keep going down until you don't,
you have no choice, you have to go up.
All these expressions, I was like,
no, I just wanna stay healthy.
And I thought all along, I didn't have a story,
but that's the story, Harry, is that I take care of myself
and look at me, I'm 62, I'm high vibration.
Yeah, I'm high vibration.
I'm healthy, wealthy, I'm wise,
and I'm living a dream life
because I'm taking care of myself first.
That's what we don't do in our journey.
So how did I get started?
It was through my own, when someone said,
ew, worms in the house, I would take it personal.
Like, oh, Cathy, something about you.
I don't want what you have.
And they didn't want what I had, that's fine.
Laughter has given me strength to realize,
oh, that's not my stuff.
That's on them.
And so I'm strong, I'm more resilient.
I'm able to overcome challenges.
And I took a deep dive in 2020 into the expression,
laughter is the best medicine, what does it mean?
And I've attended all kinds of summits on health
and wellness and energy work.
And so now with my laughter practice,
I incorporate tapping, brain gym, chi-cong.
Laughter goes with everything, it's complimentary medicine.
And it changes everything, it's high vibration.
So when we're laughing, we're up here,
we're vibrating at a very high rate,
versus when we're stressed or feeling anxious or frustrated,
like during the cuckoo time when we were locked down, right?
It was very stressful, very fearful.
Laughter is the opposite of fear.
It's the opposite of stress.
We can't be laughing and afraid at the same moment.
So how, what all did laughter change for you?
It changed the chemistry in my body.
So it's chemistry, it's electric,
it's complete science for people that think it's frivolous.
So laughter was pushed out by the Greeks,
by the philosophers centuries ago,
because laughter was considered frivolous.
That if you were laughing, it was just ridiculous.
So the more education you had,
the less you laughed, because you weren't taken serious.
Like here, even the words like serious and stuff
and frivolous, like when we're laughing,
we open our creativity, our mind is expanded,
because we're vibrating up here.
So what has it changed for me?
I take life lighter now.
There's an expression in laughter yoga from Dr. Kuterian is,
when we laugh and we practice laughter,
we become it, we know it, and then we are it.
We just go around at that high vibrating level.
People say to me that I don't know at the grocery store
when I'm out and about and they say,
wow, you're happy today.
And it's that's my everyday because,
and it's not, you know, people are like,
oh, how can you be happy all the time?
It's a feeling, it's a vibration so we can change.
We can change our state in an instant.
It's not that I don't have the other feeling,
it's not that I don't have the other feels, I do.
Things happen.
I'm able to overcome stress way quicker than before.
Stress is just an electrical process too, chemical.
When we're stressed, we're secreting the adrenaline
and cortisol and we're not breathing.
When we're laughing, we're breathing fully,
oxygenating our beautiful vessel.
That's awesome.
I've never heard the science behind it before.
I knew there's something like that that works in laughing,
but let's talk about the other side of things.
I'm assuming the few days
that you started doing the laughing therapy for yourself,
it was probably hard, different, weird.
What was that journey like?
Oh, let me tell you the first time I went.
I went with my mother-in-law and it was walking,
the laughter club was walking distance
from my mother-in-law's place.
So I said to her, hey, you wanna go to laughter yoga?
She said, what's that?
And I said, I don't know, but I don't wanna go alone.
So we went, I love my mother-in-law.
So we went to laughter club.
It was so weird.
I mean, we were obedient.
We're sitting in a circle and you do these silly games.
It's not jokes or comedy, just laughing.
So the laughter leader leads the games
and there's little fun things.
And my mother-in-law, we were doing the side eye thing,
like, oh, this is strange, what's happening here?
But we were playing, so we were laughing, breathing,
doing the thing.
It was an hour session.
When we were done, we're walking back,
we're like, wow, that was really odd.
That what it was.
And I, wow, I feel great.
How do you feel?
Yeah, I feel great too.
And it became our monthly date night.
The club was only monthly.
So it was kind of like a fun hobby at that time, Harry.
Now, and then in 2020, I really decided to take it serious.
So that was just fun, 2012.
Oh, what a fun thing to do.
Monthly, and it was fun.
And then 2020, and I became a laughter fanatic.
I laugh every day.
I have a laughter buddy in the morning.
She calls me at 730 in the morning.
I don't answer hello.
We start laughing.
Two minutes, full on belly laughter.
One minute of deep diaphragmatic breathing
and two following minutes of belly laughter.
Five minute practice.
It changes everything.
Starts the day with a whew, right?
Secreting all the love drugs, fully oxygenated,
ready to take on the world.
Versus when people wake up in the morning,
sometimes the alarm goes off.
They start going through their to-do list
and they start getting stressed.
Ah, that meeting with the boss or this, that,
all the things, all the things I have to do.
All the stress sets in right at the beginning.
Then you stub your toe, right?
You start your day in a crappy way.
Versus oxygen, taking a moment.
The alarm goes off.
Take a moment.
Take a few deep breaths.
Be grateful for, just don't think about the to-do list.
There's time for that.
After your coffee and your breakfast, whatever.
Yes, so that's how I got started was at a club in 2012.
And what happened?
So it was at a very busy intersection in Toronto.
20,000 people live at that corner.
And after three or four months,
the woman had to close the club
because she was renting space
and the numbers were dwindling.
We started out, maybe there was eight people
and then it went, there were seven, six.
And so she said, I can't keep my club open.
I can't, you know, it's a business.
And I was sad.
I was like, these people don't know.
We only need six, you know, six, 10, 12 people.
They just don't know this super fun thing is here.
And so I got trained as a leader.
I love that so much.
I got trained as a teacher.
So now I teach leaders.
And I was appointed laughter ambassador
by Dr. Kateria in 2017.
And Harry, I wear that badge proudly because it's energy.
Imagine Dr. Kateria's goal is world peace.
If we just think about that for a moment, you know,
there's a lot going on in the world always.
And people think, oh, it's not possible.
It is possible.
And it starts with us.
If everybody's laughing.
You know, before 2020, I was doing laughter online on Skype.
And there was several countries that had Skype clubs.
It wasn't a video, just audio.
And I would laugh every day,
20 minutes just laughter professionals.
One day Dr. Kateria came on and he said,
we're starting Skype Pakistan tomorrow.
Can you come for the launch?
Like not just me, everybody that was on.
So we went and it's not talking, it's just laughing.
But in the chat box, somebody wrote,
wow, Dr. Kateria, your goal is world peace.
And look, you have India and Pakistan laughing together.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Right?
Wow.
That's amazing.
Wow.
That's a great, that's a little great,
that being small things that can actually change people's
life and all about that.
Right.
And it's in us.
That's the beautiful part.
This is free.
We can all laugh.
But here's the beautiful thing or the thing that we can
ponder is laughter is the best medicine.
We've all heard that.
There's about 50 years of research proving that laughter
is the best medicine.
That it's good for our health.
Various, you know, for people going for cancer,
through cancer, in corporations,
for long-term care, all areas of research.
So if that's true, 50 years of research, and it is true,
why is it so challenging for us to achieve abundant,
sustainable, reliable laughter?
It's our frontal lobe, like our critical mind.
As children, we can laugh, ha ha ha,
what are those kids doing?
Nothing, they're laughing.
As adults, we hear a joke, we hear something,
we need stimulus.
Laughing for no reason, I mean, there's health benefits,
but no, like no joke or no funny story, no input.
We're just laughing, oh, that's weird.
But a joke needs to go through all kinds of filters.
Is it funny?
Do I like this humor?
What are these people gonna think if I'm laughing?
Can I laugh with them?
Is it safe to laugh here?
All of these questions very quickly.
Rrrr.
When our mind decides that the joke is funny,
the joke is okay to laugh at, it's conditional.
So laughter yoga bypasses all of that,
and we just jump to the funny,
which supports our immune system,
connects us on a deeper level,
oxygenates our beautiful vessel.
Did you know that cancer can't even survive
in an oxygen-rich body?
Right, like all of these things, it seems frivolous.
It is not, it was squished out,
so now we need to reintroduce it.
And I believe that Dr. Kateria started laughter yoga in 1995
so that we could be ready for 2020.
That's amazing.
Big.
And there might be worse things coming than COVID,
we don't know.
Oh, there is, there totally is.
And we need to laugh,
that's why we need to come together and laugh
and not be afraid.
Because when we're afraid, we're shut down, we're closed,
we're not breathing,
we're secreting all the stress hormones,
we're not resting and digesting,
we're fighting and fighting and fleeing.
That's awesome.
Thank you for sharing all this today.
I have one more question for you.
I think this will be incomplete without you sharing.
How does someone get started on the laugh therapy?
What tips would you give those leaders?
Thank you.
They can do that.
They can start too.
Yes, well, for corporations listening, I'm for hire.
For anyone, this is open to everybody.
I have a free online laughter club every Tuesday,
9.30 a.m. Eastern.
It's 30 minutes of super fun self care on Zoom.
Come and check it out.
Plan to come twice,
because the first time will be weird, or could be.
You know, we're just in the Zoom room.
Just look for things to laugh at.
I'm not laughing at from a mean way.
I mean, from a joy-filled, intentional, healthy,
wonderful connecting way.
Just look for things that bring you joy
rather than bringing you down,
because we only have so much energy.
We might as well use that energy for good,
because it is contagious.
So we might as well be looking up,
because if we're not looking up, we're looking down,
and when we're looking down, we see all the junk.
Look up and see all the goodness,
all the things that are available to us,
because they're here.
And yeah, and I'm also,
if I can just plug my laughter training,
I do an online laughter training.
It's two days, and it's ongoing throughout the year.
The next one's in, well, I won't say dates,
because then this podcast will be dated,
but it's ongoing.
The information's on my website, kathysclub.com,
and it's two days, and it'll be the most fun workshop
you've ever taken.
It's interactive, and then you get a certificate
that you can go and lead laughter for pay,
or just learn it for yourself.
You don't have to want to lead laughter club.
You don't have to.
Even just coming to learn it for yourself,
because when you know it, you become it, then you are it.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun,
and we'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show,
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.