Dr. Madan Kataria is the founder and originator of the Laughter Yoga movement worldwide. A medical doctor from Mumbai, India, he is popularly known as the ‘Guru of Giggling’ (London Times). Dr. Kataria says that Laughter yoga is the ultimate protection plan against the corona virus, afterall, laughter is known to strengthen the immune system. Dr. Kataria started the first laughter club back in 1995 with just 5 people and now it has grown into a worldwide movement of more than 16,000 Laughter Yoga clubs in over 100 countries
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Contact Info
- Website: www.laughteryoga.org
Most Influential Person
- My mother – She never went to school and was the mother of 14 children. She was a classical example of mindfulness because she was totally involved in the family. She inspired me to become a doctor.
Effect on Emotions
- Laughter yoga has helped me to balance my emotions. First, it works like a catharsis. All the negative experiences and emotions from the past that are not in my control, they are all sitting in my subconscious mind. How can I release those? Laughter works like a catharsis, it's a release mechanism.
Thoughts on Breathing
- Your thoughts are connect to your breathing. With stress, your breathing gets faster. I cannot control my thoughts, but I can control my breathing.
- The way you can change your thoughts is by changing the way you breathe. So laughter yoga and breathing exercises help you to bring down the number of thoughts and relearn how to breathe from the belly and from the diaphragm.
- That brings more parasympathetic balance and you become more relaxed.
Suggested Resources
- Book: Laughter Yoga: Daily Practices For Health and Happiness by Dr. Madan Kateria
- Book: Emotion and Health: An Overview
- Book: Emotional Intelligence: Daniel Goleman
- Book: The Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
- App: Laughter Guru (to be launched this month at www.LaughterYoga.org)
Bullying Story
- We introduced laughter yoga in 2010 in different schools and we were just doing 5 to 10 minutes of laughter exercises with school children.
- And our focus was not bullying, but the focus was helping children to reduce stress, improve their oxygenation, academic performance.
- But surprisingly many teachers in Bangalore's schools, they reported that laughter yoga has helped in their school to stop bullying. When children start laughing, the bullying takes a back seat, so this was a surprise element for us.
Free Gift
Do you want to become more calm, relaxed, peaceful, and content? If so, you can learn how by downloading this free ‘Waves of Content' Meditation by Bruce Langford. Unlock the secrets of calm by downloading the meditation here at MindfulnessMode.com/wavesofcontent
Episode Transcript
Note: The following transcript is a draft transcript, and as such, may contain computer-generated mistranslations.
Dr. Kataria (00:00):
I'm ready to make everybody laugh. So hello to all the listeners and let's get started.
Bruce (00:06):
Yeah, for sure. Well, I just want to share a little bit about you. You're the founder and originator of the laughter yoga movement worldwide and you're a medical doctor from Mumbai, India, and you're popularly known as the guru of giggling. And you say that laughter yoga is the ultimate protection plan against the Corona virus. And this is something that is causing some of us to have some anxiety and some stress. So getting together and talking about laughter is absolutely fantastic. Uh, there are now 16,000 laughter yoga clubs in over 100 countries and it's because of you, dr Qatari. Ah, wow. Well let's laugh together, huh?
Dr. Kataria (00:58):
I feel I feel humble and this is something, my humble contribution to the world to make the whole world laugh, especially in the times when we are going through hard times.
Bruce (01:09):
Yeah. Especially, well, what does mindfulness mean to you? I know that you're all about laughter, but laughter and mindfulness have a connection. What is your take on mindfulness?
Dr. Kataria (01:22):
Yeah. Mindful illness can be defined as art of being 100% with what you are doing is mindfulness. Um, any, uh, effortless flow of awareness towards the work or object where you are focusing on meditating is called mindfulness. So for example, when children are playing now they are totally into the play. They forget the whole world. So that's mindfulness. Second example of mindfulness is when you're talking to a girlfriend, when you're in love in the beginning you don't know how much you're talking and what you're talking. You go on and on and on. You become timeless. So this means anything that engages you completely is called mindfulness.
Bruce (02:14):
Mm. Well, I, uh, I want to know how to laugh more if we feel like we don't have anything to laugh about. How do we laugh more?
Dr. Kataria (02:25):
Okay, let me tell you the background, how I discovered laughter yoga and how laughter yoga help you to laugh more in your life. For centuries people knew that laughter is the best medicine. Even science has proven it now. But the question was that we are not laughing enough. Our laughter is become conditional. We are, our laughter is only connected with some reasons, conditions of life. And sadly we don't have many reasons that makes us laugh. So in that, I was writing an article for the health magazine, my doctor in 1995. So I thought, let me write about, uh, what are the benefits of laughter. And suddenly I said, no, no, I'm not going to publish this article. I'm going to start a little laughter club because nobody's laughing. There's no point in writing. I lose something in action. I started the first Lauder club by telling jokes in the beginning it went very well. And 10 days we were 55 people, but we ran out of good jobs.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Oh, you ran out of jokes and were you the, were you like a standup comic then? No, no, no.
Dr. Kataria (03:35):
I'm not really good at telling Joe. But we invited everyone to come up with some funny jokes and, and ignored. So after 10 days, the jokes became negative, hurting, Bollgard sexy. And that was nothing, not very funny. And people asked me to stop. I said, please don't want to stop this laughter club. Give me one day I'll find some breakthrough technology, how to laugh without jobs. I didn't, I didn't have even trained this idea of what this medical to backlog. I believe that something will come out. So I was going to the boops, flipping through the pages of finding how to, how can we love without jokes. Then I laid my hands on a book called emotions and health, which said that even if you laugh for the sake of laughing, even if you act like a happy person, your body doesn't know the difference. Whether you are really happy or you're acting, you will get the same physiological and biochemical changes even if you are acting out emotions. I said, look, you can make laughter as an exercise. So if my body, if my body doesn't know, my mind knows this, but my body cannot differentiate. So I created the first laughter club introducing laughed and exercises. Since we are a very large group and I get it people then you love, please look into the eyes of other people and look at each other and start laughing. First laugh. Rex says we created was [inaudible] still after we greet in India and the laughter. So join your hand groups with me. You want it to laugh with me, right?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Absolutely. I definitely want to laugh with you.
Dr. Kataria (05:21):
Here we go. Okay, go ahead and hand and just love for him. You know him.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah. It's easier to laugh what I'm looking at you because you're laughing and
Dr. Kataria (05:38):
yeah, this is the whole concept. If you're laughing with the people, you don't need anything. Right. It's contagious. Then second laughter exercise we did was milkshake laughter because India people drink a lot of dairy. So hold two glasses of milk and it flowed into each other. It eh, eh, good favorite. It's called credit card bill. Laughter. That's it. Put your hand like this. [inaudible] look at your Palm and imagine this is your visa card or MasterCard or American express bill for your visa credit card. Okay, so look at it. Allow for you.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's not funny.
Dr. Kataria (06:47):
Well it can be. So this is how we created one after the other. Beautiful laughter exercises. Basically it was social interaction with the people looking into the eyes and laughing with the people, not add something, right. This was a breakthrough, not how did you come into this picture? The yoga part of Laffer is combining laughter exercises with deep breathing techniques from yoga where we debrief from the belly and we breathe from, we laugh from the belly laughing and greeting from the diaphragm, which stimulates your parasympathetic system, which is opposite of sympathetic system. And then I realized that in yoga people tell you to exhale twice the amount of air you inhale. I said, how can I expelled twice the amount? So then I found from the physiology of breathing that our lungs have lot of residual air, almost like three liters of air in both the lungs and we can at least expel half of it.
Dr. Kataria (07:54):
So two laughing is kind of a breathing exercises which helps you to exhale a lot of carbon dioxide out of your lungs. And then when you take the next breath in, you'll have more oxygen [inaudible] UBIC base of laughter. Yoga is when you laugh and breathe, it brings more oxygen to the body. And brain. That's the healing factor. This is where health, wealth metrics will come when you have more oxygen. And then we started to create laughter reading and then curly aspect of love to your worries. Childlike playfulness. Now it's very difficult to laugh for no reason, but when we get together and start behaving like kids playing like kids, the laughter comes out very naturally. I look at children, children don't need jokes to laugh, they just play love. And this is simple idea of love. Yoga is just be like a child and laughter will come out very naturally and that's why we call laughter clubs is the kindergarten of grownups. So this is laughing, breathing, be like a child and we role play and interact with each other. Eye contact. So this is whole Tod of laughter yoga.
Bruce (09:14):
Well tell me more about the laughter clubs. The laughter clubs. There are 16,000 around the world. Are they all connected to yoga?
Dr. Kataria (09:25):
Laughter clubs are connected to laughter, yoga, laughter, clubs, clubs, laughter clubs are the social entities. Because when we started laughter yoga club, we started in the public park where people go for a morning walk and at the source for, these are the social clubs where people will get together informally and laugh. And I will train somebody who will train other people, train the trainer. And this is how the movement of social laughter clubs was built up and it's free. Of course, nobody has to pay anything or laughter clubs. And this is the mission of for laughter yoga is that we set up millions of free social laughter clubs or health or happiness and for the peace in this world.
Bruce (10:11):
And how many trainers do you have around the world?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Oh,
Dr. Kataria (10:16):
I need to count. Okay. Perhaps more than 25,000 trainers. Okay.
Bruce (10:21):
Wow. That's a huge network of trainers. So you must have a team of people that, that can handle all this. Do you? Yeah.
Dr. Kataria (10:30):
Yeah. We, I have created a professional laughter yoga training programs where we train the leaders, train the teachers, train the trainers. And this is how the chain of uh, because laughter was a system. People need to understand laughter. Yoga is an exercise program. People need to follow those exercises. So that's why we need little bit of training.
Bruce (10:53):
Right. That makes sense. Yeah. So what does a person do if they want to start a laughter club? Do they have to already have a yoga club in place?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
No.
Dr. Kataria (11:04):
First to start a laughter club you need to be trained as a facilitator. So either you attend any laughter club constantly. If there is an existing club you can go to our website and see if there is a club nearby or there's a possibility that we have in network of trainers around the world. The list can be found on our website, laughter, yoga.org and you can get in touch with them and set up the training program. And then you can start the social laughter club. And also apart from social Arctic club, there is a professional part of this also. So we have kept free social article out to clubs and free. But anything outside the social laughter club, like schools, colleges, universities, we laughter yoga in yoga studios or in senior centers, in companies, corporations physically, mentally challenged people. So all other things is chargeable. But laughter clubs are free.
Bruce (12:07):
I see, I see. So, um, you know, in light of the fact that we're going through this pandemic right now, is there science that says that laughter builds our immune system and helps us to get through tough times?
Dr. Kataria (12:23):
Definitely. Definitely. There's a science behind it. And uh, first Bruce stress and immune system has inverse relationship. If stresses up your immune system is down. So we have enough evidence that laughter yoga reduces medicine-based stress. Like anything within minutes. And once your stress levels are down, your immune system works up. Now we are running this laughter clubs for the last 25 years and I'm in touch with many, many leaders, teachers who run do laughter yoga regularly who laugh everyday. Almost my own story in the last 25 years, I did not get called even once. So this shows that and we have many scientific studies also saying that by laughing you are increasing the amount of immunoglobulin a, which is the protective immunoglobulin globulin for the respiratory mucosa, upper respiratory system. And also we have natural killer cells, kind of white blood cells which attacked the widest bacteria, even cancer cells.
Dr. Kataria (13:46):
So we have enough studies to prove that a laughter yoga has strengthens your immune system. And this is where laughter yoga is very relevant in today's circumstances. So you to protect yourself from wireless Corona wireless coronavirus doesn't kill everybody. Only people who get killed with coronavirus are the one who have weak immune system. Like for example elderly people. As the age grows, the immune system is compromised. People live with chronic chronic health conditions, diabetes, hypertension, autoimmune diseases. They are also immune compromised like cancer patients. We are more prone to attack of coral Novartis. But I feel that if you are laughing every day and doing this breathing exercise that you keep your lungs fully oxygenated, nothing will happen.
Bruce (14:40):
Okay. So, going back to what you already said, you said that over 25 years you have never had a cold, and you, you fly all over the world on planes, which is a place where people get a lot of colds and viruses and things. Really, you've never had a cold over 25 years.
Dr. Kataria (15:00):
Not at all. Even not on, not only me, in India, people RAF on very regular basis. And many people say that they used to catch cold four or five times a year now. No, no. So this is, this is something which is, which really surprised me as a medical doctor. I send sense when I was in practice, I was a family physician in Mumbai, and I used to get five, six times in a year getting, getting cold from my patient, from the hospital. So now no more. I don't get it.
Bruce (15:32):
So I want to know this. Are there some virtual places where you can go to laugh? I mean, these days probably all the yoga studios across the world are closed, right? So can we go online and laugh with each other?
Dr. Kataria (15:46):
Yes. Bruce, we all love to yogis are gone online and there are laughter clubs on zoom. There are laughter clubs on Skype. So actually, uh, if you go to my website on the homepage, there is a button called laughter laugh online on zoom and Skype. So you can find almost every 15, 20 minutes, some laughter club is going around the world so you can jump in and laugh with and maybe I'll invite you to join, laugh with me on the zoom.
Bruce (16:21):
I would love to. So just go to laughter yoga.org and click on that link and you can find, find somebody laughing almost anytime.
Dr. Kataria (16:32):
Yeah, there is a button called, uh, there's a clickable place called laughter on zoom. Laughter on Skype. On the home page itself. Yeah. So you can laugh and maybe actually it's two hours before I had almost like a hundred people laughing with me.
Bruce (16:50):
Wow. And so you laugh every single day. Wow. That is so awesome.
Dr. Kataria (16:55):
Single day. Many, many times in a day. Almost like seven, eight, 10, 10 times now because of the covert 19, not the mindful laughter yoga has gone exponential. Everybody's asking how to laugh. We to laugh.
Bruce (17:09):
Well, I can believe it and I'm so glad to share this with you. Mindful tribe with our listeners because we're all looking for ways to become more relaxed and let go of anxiety and stress. I think it's so fantastic that you're doing this. This is just great. Yeah.
Dr. Kataria (17:26):
I want to share with you what are the tangible benefits people can get from laughter yoga. Please do. And also maybe this is the mindful tribe you have. I want to touch the spiritual aspect of love for yoga, which is very strong. So let me talk about benefits first. Sure. First, when you love it secretes endorphins, seratonin, dopamine, all happy chemicals from your brain cells and your mood is good. Everything else. So once you laugh, you feel good and it carries throughout the day and, and you're at your best when you are in a good mood. Second, uh, there are three kinds of stress we have in our life, physical stress, mental stress, and emotional stress. So laughter yoga is one single exercise that can handle all the Couric kinds of stress.
Dr. Kataria (18:22):
Then as I said that it strengthens your immune system. If you laugh regularly, you're not going to fall sick easily. But if you have some chronic health conditions, you will heal much faster. It improves the oxygenation. It is like a cardiovascular exercise. When you're laughing continuously, 10, 15 minutes, the heart is pumping more blood, your blood vessels will dilate and it help you to, uh, benefit from all diseases like hypertension, heart disease, all chronic arthritis is a good pain killer goals. So these are some of the benefits. One of the best benefit of laughter yoga, which I find very relevant in today's circumstances. Everybody can laugh when times are good. How do you laugh when you go through challenging time, difficult time, like the one we have right now. So this is where, when you laugh, it gives you a positive mental attitude so that you can deal with it. You can cope up with all the challenges in your life in a much better. And now I want to share with you what is the connection of laughter, yoga and spirituality.
Bruce (19:33):
Yeah, please do the laugh, the connection of laughter and spirituality. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about that.
Dr. Kataria (19:40):
So my definition of spirituality is if you can raise your spirits by yourself and if you can raise someone else's spirits, you're spiritual. You don't have to go to temple and meditate for nine years. Okay? So by any means and method, if you can raise your spirits by laughing, singing, dancing, playing. So these are all elements of joy. If you build all this joy, is it an act of spirituality? Because when you feel good, you do good, your attitude changes. And this is what exactly spirituality is all about. Spirituality is going inside, so it's very important. Now these days in covered, you cannot go out, but this is the perfect time to go inside. You can, you can meditate, you can be in silence and best is to laugh. No. Laughter itself is a meditation. How people must understand that there are two types of meditation.
Dr. Kataria (20:48):
One is still meditation where you are being quiet and just watching your thoughts. But second type of meditation is dynamic meditation, which you really easy. Actually, people should not jump on skill meditation because that's very difficult, ultimate meditation. But what I suggest that people should start with dynamic meditation for us. So what is dynamic meditation? Any activity that you focus on, hundred percent that becomes a meditation, like laughing. If you're just laughing, it's a physical act, then it becomes a meditation. Okay? If you are playing, if you are 100% into the play, you are in the middle is the dynamic penetration. Now if you're dancing and don't worry about the steps you does, the way you want to, you flow that dancing can become a meditation. If you're singing, you sing and get lost in your singing is a dynamic meditation. So there are hundreds of dynamic activities that you're eating. Food can become a meditation. So that's it. If you close your eyes and put your food in the mouth and don't open eyes until it goes down, it becomes an eating meditation. So I suggest for all meditative people, not jump onto the sills still. Meditation is very difficult to give up. It's difficult. Your carts are going crazy. So I suggest that easiest meditation is eating meditation. Just we eat food everyday. Just be quiet and close your eyes. And eat food or maybe start singing, start dancing, and most important start laughing.
Bruce (22:40):
It really does feel good. It really feels amazing.
Dr. Kataria (22:47):
What happens is when you start laughing on regular basis, it produces some everlasting changes in you. You become more generous, you become more giving happy. People are always giving people, helping people, isn't it? A spirituality, simple act of laughing can lead to attitude change. Uh, after laughing, I don't get irritated at small, small things. People can't. My resilience is going through the roof. I don't react. I don't get angry easily. So that's, that's what spirituality is all about, right?
Bruce (23:23):
Building your resilience and avoiding anger and, and you just, you just feel better a lot of the time. Now I want to ask you this. Do sometimes people record laughing and listen to a track, listen to an audio of laughing? Can that be something that you can do?
Dr. Kataria (23:41):
Yes, you can. I would say that people have been it for years, like watching recorded videos or candid cameras. That's a good, but there is no guarantee how much you will love watching all the recordings because after a while your brain becomes immune to it. I still feel the best way to laugh is learn to love all by yourself. This is what laughter you guys, that in the beginning you may feel a bit awkward, but once you learn it, it's like learning to ride a bicycle. You will never forget it. So I teach one exercise to your listeners, please do. This is called, this is called one minute laughter challenge. Okay? So we have to laugh for it for the entire one minute, 60 seconds nonstop. Even if it is fake, doesn't matter. Okay. Bruce Lee together. Come on.
Bruce (24:35):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Wow.
Dr. Kataria (25:36):
Loud. Very loud. It will be very gentle. Yes, yes. This is like developing your laugh muscles. Yes it is. Yeah. And that thing for your listeners is that I want to give some same exercise. It's called dining table exercise. Okay? So when you sit for learn to be normal breakfast with your family, now it's called weight and you're not supposed to be going out. So please ask all your fellow family members who love for one minute for the peace in this world and you will see that, uh, your family member will allow it and, and you can repeat as often as you want. And then laughter club is in your house.
Bruce (26:19):
Yes. You have your own laughter club. That's great. I noticed, I noticed two things while I was laughing for that minute and one was I really noticed what you said about the deep breathing. You ha if you're really truly laughing, you have to be deep breathing. It just goes together. So I noticed that and I noticed the other thing was that my mind would all of a sudden say, what are you laughing at? You know, there's nothing really funny. And that's part of the training, isn't it? The training part where you learn to laugh without a specific reason.
Dr. Kataria (26:55):
Yes. So it's all easy. I mean honestly as a medical doctor, whoever's not so funny. So this is all like learn to laugh. So I want to tell people that there's nothing difficult. You all. Even if you are a serious person, even if you are an intro word, if you have never laughed so much, you can bring yourself laugh just by repetition. Just by doing it, just by deciding to do it and doing it right. Yeah. Only one thing. Keep in mind that laughter yoga, tell yourself it's not about real or fake laughter. This is laughter as a form of exercise, right? Which gives you the real benefits. See, as a medical doctor, I tell you that the cardio was clothed and Marie demands are same. All the same set of muscles are used. Whether laughter is real, you're doing on purpose.
Speaker 5 (27:51):
Hmm.
Bruce (27:52):
So do you ever get negative feedback? Are there countries where they think this is not something they want to have in their country or do you ever have anything like that coming back to you?
Dr. Kataria (28:04):
Yup. Skeptic Scouts, skeptics are everywhere in this world, right? When they started in India, many people who are really laughing at me, they say, this guy, this guy is going crazy. Okay. But people were talking and negative about. They were looking at it from the outside and whoever came inside, they never went down, so I tell people all skeptics that please come once and experience it. Then you decide what you want to do with it.
Bruce (28:35):
I really think it is connected to mindfulness very closely connected to mindfulness because when you're laughing, there's an element of mindfulness to it, isn't there?
Dr. Kataria (28:46):
Yeah. Your thought process seizes you can't think and love at the same time. Yeah. I also want to talk about, I recently leased the book called laughter yoga, the daily practices for health and happiness. This is a published by penguin random house and you've written this book yourself. Yes. It's every, each and every word is my 25 years of laughter year journey. Would you repeat the name of that book for me please? Dr [inaudible]? Yeah. The name of my book is laughter, yoga, daily practices for health and happiness. And this book will give you everything in detail about the concept philosophy, science behind it, and how to do laughter, yoga exercises, how you can love alone, how can you laugh with your family, how can you build four elements of joy, how to take laughter into your real life and how to apply laughter, yoga in schools, colleges, universities, physically, mentally challenged. So there are a lot of applications.
Bruce (29:57):
Oh, that's cool. Well, uh, yeah, mindful tribe. You might want to order that book. As a matter of fact, I would highly recommend it. It's called laughter yoga daily practices for health and happiness by dr [inaudible]. Dr Qatari. As we move forward in the interview, I want to ask you five quick answer questions. And the first one is this, who is one person who has influenced mindfulness in your life?
Dr. Kataria (30:23):
My mother, when my mother was totally, uh, she never went to school. [inaudible] she was the mother of 14 children. And the food 14 issue was we used to live in a village from a farming background. Yes. And my mother was a classical example of mindfulness because she was totally involved in the family. We have 10 calls and we have so many gourds. So she's busy doing all with the flow. She was, seems like, I was wondering how, how much a lady who has so many children and so many animals in the compound, how can she be so cool? Yeah, so this is what my, my first teacher of mindfulness was my mother. She inspired me to become a doctor also because there was no medical doctor in the village. So she said, okay, you become a doc.
Bruce (31:17):
And did your mother laugh a lot as well?
Dr. Kataria (31:20):
Yes. Yes she was. She was. She was a loving, very much and she inspired me
Bruce (31:25):
a very happy person. Then second question, how has mindfulness affected your emotions?
Dr. Kataria (31:33):
Yeah, laughter yoga has helped me to balance my emotions first. Uh, it works like a catharsis because whatever we have recorded all the negative experiences, emotions in the past, which is, which was not in Mike and Paul. So they're all sitting in my subconscious mind. How do I release those? So laughter works like a catharsis is a release mechanism. Laughing itself is a very good activity that takes care of your past memories. Second is that laughing also makes you more creative so that you, you don't collect all this rubbish in the future.
Bruce (32:19):
Oh I did not know it made you more creative. That's cool. Let's laugh about that.
Dr. Kataria (32:27):
Laughing. You are actually making laughter is like a play. Playfulness is the element of laughter which makes your right brain activity. You find ways to how can do the same thing differently. So I followed a lot of the way I created laughter. Yoga movement without much business experience is a classical example of creative.
Bruce (32:51):
Fantastic. Well we already talked about breathing. You talked about how laughter brings on deep breathing. Do you have any other comments about breathing in your life?
Dr. Kataria (33:03):
Yeah, see your thoughts are connected to your breathing. If you are under stress, your breathing gets faster. I cannot control my thoughts but I can control my breathing. So the way you can change your thoughts is by changing the way you breathe. So laughter, yoga and breathing exercises help you to bring down the number of thoughts and we learn how to deep breathe from the belly, from the dire, from, and that brings more sympathetic parasympathetic balance or you become more relaxed. And this is how laughter helps you to balance your emotions. Laughter helps you to set your breathing right so that it takes care of your mind.
Bruce (33:58):
My next question, dr Qatari is about a book, and you've already talked about your book called laughter yoga daily practices for health and happiness. You also mentioned another book earlier in the interview called emotions and health. Do you know who the author of that book is?
Dr. Kataria (34:17):
Oh, actually this is from, uh, it's a healthcare series from America. It's not one author. Okay. So the second violation of, uh, so many authors and uh, there's a series of books, I don't know who is the publisher there, but I bought it in India. And it's a, it's a combination of different researchers and authors and it's a beautiful, it's all about emotions.
Bruce (34:45):
Well, we'll put those two books in our show notes@mindfulnessmode.com. Are there any other books you would recommend dr [inaudible]?
Speaker 5 (34:55):
Uh,
Dr. Kataria (34:56):
I would say that, uh,
Speaker 5 (34:59):
uh,
Dr. Kataria (35:02):
if you can get all over any basics of book on yoga, not yoga after laughter yoga, I will recommend that anybody who wants to really bring a balance in their life, they must practice yoga and learn about yoga. Right. And there are hundreds of books on yoga. Yeah, they're really one book which really benefited me was Daniel Goleman's book, emotional intelligence, which I read page to page and it's very, I strongly recommend that.
Bruce (35:37):
Yeah. And I've got that book right here. Yeah, I love that book.
Dr. Kataria (35:41):
Send it. Another book which I strongly recommend is
Speaker 5 (35:46):
uh,
Dr. Kataria (35:48):
uh, by Daniel pink. He's a New York times bestseller and the name of the book is called the whole new mind. And this book says that the future belongs to right brainers nor the left brainers. And there is, guess what? There's one full chapter in that book on laughter yoga. Oh, is there?
Bruce (36:12):
Okay. Daniel Pink's book though, the whole new mind. Yeah. Yup. Awesome. Okay. My next question is, are there any apps which can help? Are there any laughter yoga apps?
Dr. Kataria (36:28):
Yes. As I'm about to launch in about 10 days time it's called laughter guru. That will be my app. And they're actually love guru app. You can love every hour. Like they will be a laughter session online, the app plus a lot of information courses on the app where you can learn about laughter yoga online. Very cool.
Bruce (36:52):
Very cool. Well thanks for answering those questions and I do have one other question I want to ask you. And I always ask a question about this on my show because I used to work in bullying prevention for a long time and so I always ask a question about bullying. Uh, is there, Oh, do you have a story, first of all about bullying where maybe yoga, laughter, yoga helped or maybe mindfulness help? Do you have a story that you can share with us?
Dr. Kataria (37:21):
Yes. Not one, many, many stories. Uh, reintroduced. Laughter yoga in 2010 in different schools and we were just doing five to 10 minutes of laughter exercises with school children. And our focus was not bullying, but focus was helping children to reduce stress, improve their oxygenation, academic performance. But surprisingly many teachers in Bangalore's schools, they reported that laughter yoga has helped in their school to stop bullying. When children start laughing, the bullying takes a back seat, so this is a, this was a surprise element for us. It helped many children too, and then same stories we heard from many other schools that are almost like a hundred schools in India. They practice laughter yoga.
Bruce (38:20):
Right? Yeah. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah, I can imagine. It only makes sense because people feel better, they feel happier, they feel less stressed, they feel less anxiety, and therefore there would be less bullying. That certainly makes complete sense. Yeah, so your website is laughter yoga.org and we've talked about your book, laughter, yoga. I think it's just an awesome movement and to imagine 16,000 laughter yoga clubs in over a hundred countries, it's just amazing. You have just made such a huge impact on the planet, dr Katara, how does that feel?
Dr. Kataria (39:06):
I feel very humble because I feel that I'm just an instrument. The universe is guiding me, and I'm not taking this as a business. I'm not talking money with laughter, yoga, so whatever. I feel that before I leave this planet physically, I'm, I'm not, I'm never going to die. I'm going to live forever. But if I physically leave this planet, I want to do as much good work to the people because look at this code, how much it was stressed out and see like hundreds of laughter clubs on zoom every day. People are laughing so much. So please IP. This is like a blessing. I feel blessed. I feel humble.
Bruce (39:48):
Well, I feel blessed to have had a chance to talk to you today, all the way from India, me in London, Ontario, Canada. This is just so fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the show, dr Katara.
Dr. Kataria (40:02):
Thank you, Bruce. It's a pleasure from,
Bruce (40:04):
Oh, okay. Let's laugh as we say goodbye. Okay, please.
Dr. Kataria (40:11):
The last message is life is serious. Death is serious. There's a lot of seriousness now in this world. We should take laughter seriously now.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yes. Let me share it.
Bruce (40:37):
Oh, that's great. Bye now.
Dr. Kataria (40:40):
Thank you so much.