043. Worms and Laughter: Cathy Nesbitt’s Unconventional Guide to Stress Relief

Stress is inevitable, but Cathy Nesbitt has found interesting and fun ways to de-fuse her stress! Cathy is a worm composting (Vermicomposting) aficionado, and a laughter yoga teacher.

I loved learning about Cathy's unconventional and interesting life, and her unique responses to stressors over the years.

Cathy shares how she approaches composting with worms indoors, and tells us how we can get real benefits from laughter yoga.

You can sign up for Cathy's weekly FREE laughter yoga practice at cathysclub.com, and learn more about worm composting and watch her TedTalk at cathyscomposters.com!

Connect with me:

You can find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireflybridgeorganizing
Here's my website: https://fireflybridge.com

Call or text me: 305-563-2292

Email me: zeenat@fireflybridge.com

Transcript

Hey, welcome to Organizing for Beautiful Living, the podcast for working moms and entrepreneur moms that provides sustainable organizing tips for your home, work, and life.

I'm Zee Siman, professional organizer and productivity consultant, and I'm here to share

simple ideas that don't take a lot of time so you can love your home, excel at work,

and have the time to enjoy both without stress or overwhelm.

Ready to get beautifully organized? Let's make it happen.

Are you feeling like 2024 was just a really stressful year? I definitely felt that and the stress isn't gone.

So I was happy to meet Cathy Nesbitt a few weeks ago and just her optimistic vibe was

so contagious.

I really wanted you all to meet her and hear her story and maybe find some unconventional

ways to bring down our stress levels a bit.

So meet Cathy Nesbitt.

Well, every year the American Psychological Association conducts a poll that it calls

stress in America in which adults are asked about sources of their stress as well as the

severity of that stress.

The latest poll in 2024 was conducted in late summer just before the U.S. presidential

election.

Unsurprisingly, the top stressors that were reported were the future of our nation, the

economy, and then also health care, violence and crime, the environment, global conflict

and gun laws and regulations.

I mean, there are a lot of societal worries out there and that doesn't even take into

account our personal stressors, our own finances, maybe family and relationship strains, our health and so on.

Stress is an inevitability, right?

Well, my guest today is Cathy Nesbitt who faced her own major stressor some years ago

when a friend asked her to take care of her worm composting bin while she was away.

Then came another stressor in Toronto that led her to entering an industry that initially

made her queasy.

Well, in the face of these stressors and her current ones, Cathy slowly adopted an

unconventional method of stress relief, which she now teaches to others.

Cathy, welcome.

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. Oh, so much.

So many stressors. How are we walking around?

Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's the question. But so tell me those years ago, your friend asked you to take care of my worm composting bin. Had you taken care of worms before? What does that mean?

I had not. No, that was my first, my first introduction to Verme composting. I was an avid gardener and composter. I knew the value of the black gold that the worms produce, the worm poop.

Yes.

But I didn't want worms in my house. Now I come from a place where I think that we should try things for ourselves rather than letting someone tell you, oh, you won't like that.

You know, like try it yourself. You don't, you might like it. And I didn't like it. It was awful.

And the reason because I didn't manage it. So I had a house full of fruit flies because the fruit flies, you know, you need to manage your worm bin. If you have a compost pile outside and you have fruit flies, that's great because they're decomposers, but you don't want him in your house inside your house. That's it.

Okay. So you had fruit flies in your house. You had worms in your house. What did you do? How did you get rid of fruit flies?

Well, that summer I lived with the fruit flies because, you know, just for people listening,

fruit flies don't cause any trouble for humans or pets. They don't carry any disease. They just bug us.

Yeah.

So management is required, but I would just open up the lid. It's in a box.

They're not free range worms. Open up the lid, throw the food in, the food scraps, and I would close the lid. And that was the problem. You need to bury the scraps. You know, maybe some of the peels you don't wash like bananas. The fruit flies are on the outside.

So you need to maybe rinse the scraps or something. So I did end up keeping the worms alive for my friend and I wanted the black gold. So I put on big gloves.

It took me, oh gosh, hours to separate the worms from the compost because every time I

see a worm I'd be like, oh, right. 

Okay. So in order to remember, you're talking to a beginner, never made compost in my life.

So I have the basic idea in my mind. Okay. But very, very clearly you have a composting bin in your house and you need the compost and you have to physically take the worms out in order to harvest the compost?

Yes. Although, I mean, there are systems that's for the doing that, right?

If it's just in a tote or something, but there are systems that take away the need to harvest to harvest.

Okay. So you did that and you got your compost that year. What did you do with it?

I put it in my garden and that, you know, it's natural fertilizer. It's taking our food scraps on our paper that usually we call garbage. You manage it in, well, in your kitchen or basement wherever you have your worm bin and the worms eat everything. They're quiet. They're great pets and right, they turn it in their poop. So they eat everything. They eat the paper, they eat the carbon and nitrogen and then their poop is the fertilizer. It's the way nature intended.

What happened after that? That got you into this industry.

Yeah. So that, you know, I think the universe is a fascinating place and we get signs along

the way. We're not always paying attention. So I was like, okay, yeah, try to, nope, not for me.

Seven years later, I was getting my psych degree at night. I got a job at a group home working with challenged adults. They had 10 homes and a farm and they didn't compost.

So when I approached management about composting because they had a greenhouse, they had, you know, all these, all the components to have a successful composting operation. When I spoke to management about composting, why do they not compost their scraps? They said we don't need the fertilizer because we have cows.

So they had manure that they could use as fertilizer. And I was, wow, it was the first time I realized people don't connect what they're doing.

Here they're creating all of this food waste. You know, I don't know how many, how many residents, maybe a hundred residents, 180 staff, 24 seven facility, like lots of food scraps.

So when I asked them about composting, they said they didn't need the cows.

I was like, well, that's great. But you could always just, the worm compost doesn't have any chemicals. It's all, it's really natural. And you could sell it if you don't need it. You like have a little business. How wonderful. And they, but they, well, with the worms.

Okay. So that was just composting. The greenhouse manager said, Hey, why don't we vermicompost? Like what about worms?

And then I was like, Oh gosh, Zee, have you ever done something and you were all excited

about it? And then it didn't work out like you thought it was going to.

So you're like, yeah, I'm okay. I tried them. I'm not going to do that. That's what happened to me.

And then later on, someone says, Hey, Zee, why don't we, whatever it was? And you're, you're like, so that feeling in my stomach like, Oh, no, not the worms again. But then I came home from work that day and I realized it's an institution. They're not getting worms anytime soon. They need to have meetings, decide if it's a good idea, I use their money on and on, all the things.

So I started to do research. And I was like, because I'd had that initial interaction with the worms, it wasn't my first exposure. So I was more open.

So I started to research and discovered that the composting worms eat half their weight

per day. They turned garbage into black gold and that the average family produces a ton of organic waste in the year. So and a pound of worms in their descendants could transform a ton of waste in the year. And I was like, Oh, I kind of had this light ball moment like, wow, everybody needs a pound of worms. Yeah, everyone needs us.

And I kind of my, my ew, my fear of the worms turned into tremendous respect and all for

the work that the worms have, the challenge that they have. And then people are afraid of them. So there's, they've got this kind of dual complex thing going on. They're needed, but they're not wanted. 

And speaking for myself, sure, I love, I would love worm compost to put in a garden in my

imaginary garden, which I haven't started yet. However, to deal with worms and to deal with worm composting, that seems a real stretch for me. And just so you know, like our, our focus here is simplicity. We want our lives to be simple, but we want our lives to be beautiful. So yes, composting is in our camp, you know, using less, wasting less.

And so this all makes sense theoretically. But how did you bring that into people's homes and make it simple for them?

So it was already on my mind not to have a business because I, I, I come from an employee

background. No entrepreneurs in my family.

I'm an accidental entrepreneur.

Accidental, love it.

So I came home from work and there was an ad in the paper when we had local papers.

The paper said, are you a woman? Do you have a business idea?

It was a six month course to write a business plan. I turned to my husband. I said, I'm quitting my job. I'm taking this course. I'm starting a worm business.

That's how it went. And he said, yes, dear, and his wife.

He has a last word and the last words are yes, dear. Got it.

No point in going against the force. I get an idea and I want to go with it.

So I took that course. That was 2001. So I started my worm business 2002. So it's the 23rd anniversary of Kathy's Carly composters.

Wow.

And 2002 was a big year.

It's 2002, the landfill for the greater Toronto area closed,

largest city in Canada closed.

It filled up, but government doesn't have.

They don't think seven generations ahead and seven generations back.

They're thinking about three or four years.

How can I make my mark so that I can remember, be remembered in history?

And so I say that governments, they don't have wear with all.

So when they when there was place in the in the landfill for the truck,

the one day, it's like, OK, we're good for today.

And then it filled up and they're, whoa, what do we do now?

So the landfill filled, they couldn't find a place to site a new landfill.

So we started to export our garbage to Michigan, almost a thousand trucks a week.

And again, it's just I shake my head like who's thought this was a great idea,

like it costs a fortune to truck our waste.

I really want to stay on the positive side.

I want people to know the background so they can go, why do I need this?

And why am I so passionate about it?

Because it's so important.

I think it's something for as far as having a simple life and decluttering,

we got to do something with our food waste anyway.

We're putting it here in the garbage or in a green, like an organic collection

program where we're composting it.

It needs to go somewhere.

So why not put it to work for us?

We paid for it.

We paid for it.

It's ours.

Yes.

We paid for our waste, our food waste. We have. Yeah.

Right.

Why not turn it into something usable and talk about a simple life when we're

composting our scraps.

If we have worms, it's a great project for the for the kids.

First of all, it gets them connected.

You can't be on your cell phone when you're in the worm bin.

And it's so fascinating.

It really is a magic process.

It's nature's magic show composting itself, you know, where it's turning your

banana peels and coffee grounds and paper into into fertilizer.

And just to be clear, to make compost, we don't need worms.

It's depending on our condition, our environmental conditions.

Worms aren't 100% necessary.

Correct.

But you chose, you started down this path because you wanted to bring composting

into urban metropolitan areas where people didn't have outdoor space, outdoor

gardens.

And so how did that happen?

And what did you come up with?

What system did you come up with?

Yeah.

So Toronto has six million people, half living in condos, townhouses, without

space for outdoor composting.

So I was like, Oh my gosh, I have a solution.

I have a solution.

This is indoor composting with worms because I had that experience from my

teacher friend.

I knew that it was possible.

And you're correct.

If you're composting outside, you definitely don't need to add worms.

They will naturally come there.

They'll be they'll be attracted there.

Conditions are right.

In Canada, we have a thing called winter and it's sometimes very cold.

The worms are temperature sensitive, these composting worms.

They're surface dwellers.

OK.

So this allows people to do composting year round.

And this is a whole industry.

Yes.

Right.

So you have to get worms from some place.

There are companies who are growing worms.

Yes.

And selling worms.

Yes.

Interesting.

Right.

It's fascinating.

It is fascinating.

It's it's kind of this hidden secret.

We don't want to know about garbage.

Right.

We put our garbage out at the curb.

The magic truck comes along and it's gone.

It's it's it's not our problem right out of sight out of mind.

But the environment is all one place.

There's no separate like place.

That's the environment.

The environment is here where we are the environment.

So by shipping our garbage to somewhere else, if we're talking about e-waste or compost or even just garbage, we we we send it elsewhere like to third world countries and to other places.

And it's not our problem anymore, but it is because we have one little planet.

That's it.

We have this beautiful planet that we're throwing our garbage everywhere.

Tell me a little bit about the system.

What does it look like?

So for the do it yourself, there's a rubber made container or any toad, a old recycle bin.

Anything will work.

Even a box, but the worms would eventually eat the box.

Eat through the box.

So probably not a box.

But but a wooden container would be fine as well.

And then it's really creating the correct environment.

So the worms require a carbon nitrogen mix.

The carbon would be your brown material, shredded paper, brown leaves, brown grass, straw, drink trays.

Egg cartons, that kind of material.

And the nitrogen is your food scraps, coffee grounds, potato peels, banana peels, all your peels.

Yeah.

And you need both.

You need a little bit of water.

The worms are about 90% moisture.

So it needs to be fairly moist, but no pools of water.

They're not fish.

And you need holes in your bin.

So people are like, Oh, good.

I'll just have a solid lid.

No, your worms will be dead.

Right.

It's a aerobic process, meaning with oxygen.

And you know, some of the objections are, will it smell?

Right.

I'm putting rotting food.

Is it going to smell?

No, it's aerobic meaning with oxygen.

So the worms breathe oxygen like we do, but they breathe through their skin.

It's like a built-in mechanism.

If you're been ever smells bad, it's either too bad, too much food.

And that oxygen, if we smell it, it's now converted to gas.

It's now methane.

Right.

So if we smell something bad, action is required.

And that action might mean I need more.

More bedding.

Yeah, more paper.

That's right.

You need to kind of gently mix it so that you get some oxygen in there.

It's maybe to wet, remove some of the food scraps and, you know, just some action.

OK, got it.

And so how, so let's say you sell worms by the pound that you mentioned, right?

So, OK, how are you shipping me these worms?

And then how am I putting them into my bin along with the bedding and the food scraps?

How am I receiving them?

Their packaged in either peat moss or coconut coir, but peat moss is not renewable

like at the rate we're using it.

I mean, it's renewable, right?

In the thousand years or whatever.

In the UK, they banned the use of peat moss.

I wasn't aware of that.

OK, so coconut coir is a better option that I'm material.

I've seen people start seedlings in coconut coir.

The same type of material.

OK, assuming that I live in a condo, I live in an apartment, I can use that in my, you

know, container gardening and in large pots on a balcony and that kind of thing.

I can add the compost to that.

Absolutely.

You can any plant will prosper with worm compost.

You know, you wouldn't grow just, you wouldn't start your seeds just in worm compost because then you'd get lazy plants. You'd get the plant would grow, you would grow very fast and then it wouldn't be able to hold up its head because if you don't stress the seeds a little bit, then they're kind of lazy.

They're like couch potato seeds and their roots are shallow because the food's right there.

They don't have to work.

Right, right, right, right.

Right.

So you want the roots to have to do a little bit of digging.

So how do I keep my worms from multiplying so much that they just overrun everything?

Ah, the worms have a built-in mechanism.

It's so beautiful.

The worms breed more than rabbits.

So they do have a phenomenal reproduction rate.

And I don't want anyone freaking out going, ah, I'm never getting worms.

They have a built-in mechanism that they will reproduce based on available space and available food.

You would never be overrun.

So at a certain point you might open your bin and you're like, wow, I have so many worms.

You can leave them alone and just keep adding your food or you could take out some worms, start another bin and expand your system.

So eventually you may be managing all of your scraps.

Like you might start with a pound of worms.

So you're managing three or four pounds of food waste per week.

And then you're like, well, I'm vegetarian or vegan.

We create way more scraps than that.

Great.

That's good.

So then you can expand your system and eventually be able to manage all of your food.

I've seen a lot of products come out recently that are countertop machines you plug in.

You just put in your scraps, no worms whatsoever.

Is that compost?

They call it soil amendment.

It will create some kind of soil amendment.

Is that compost?

No.

Can I just use that in my soil?

You can use it in your soil.

It's not compost, it's dehydrated food scraps.

And what does that do for my soil then?

It's not a fertilizer.

Well, it still will add nutrients in there.

It's just that when it goes through the composting process,

it's kind of processed in a different way.

And there's more nutrients, more microorganisms.

It's living soil.

When it's dehydrated, there's no life.

It's another way.

It's a way, but we're using electricity because you've got to plug it in.

They're expensive.

Those systems are expensive.

They're expensive.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, people are looking for systems.

They're looking for ease.

That's right.

You got it right there.

And those things are compelling and attractive to us because they promise simplicity.

No smell, it's a closed system.

You plug it in and a few days later, you open it up and magically you've got something

that you can just add to your soil.

Right.

A very different thing than what we're talking about worms.

We're talking about taking care of something living.

And then we're a little worried, like you said, about this smell.

Am I going to get fruit flies?

I think it is a little bit of a different mindset we have to be in to have a live

vermicomposting system in our houses.

But the benefits, tell me about the benefits of doing this for you.

What did you feel when you started creating compost using worms?

I actually would like to go back to what you said about taking care.

That's what the worm, that's what having a worm bin in your house will do.

It helps you care more because you're taking care of these critters.

We're so fast now, fast food, fast, we're fast, fast, we're go, go, go.

And like, if we're not busy, we're like, oh, I'm worthless.

I'm not busy enough.

Yeah.

We need to slow down and this, that's what it does.

Right.

And so I think that, I often say, how do we make people care?

How can we help people to care?

Having a worm bin offers that.

Like people might be afraid like, oh, because if they were traumatized as a child, like after

a rainy day or fishing the green goo that comes out of a worm, right?

Where they're like, oh, or they just are putting it on the hook.

But then they feel for the worm, like, oh, no, I can't do this.

They're not looking to that as an adult for a solution.

So there really is a few layers here that we need to overcome.

How did I feel?

As an avid gardener, I really saw the benefit of adding the worm compost to my garden,

my garden prospered.

And if I'm just starting out compost, what else would you recommend that I do myself?

Anything else?

Yeah.

Mulching.

If you say you've got a patch of grass and you're like, and it's in full sun, like that's a great spot instead of mowing it, if you've got grass rather than digging it up because it's all thatched and it's been there for a long time.

We have the privilege of winter.

So in fall, any place that you've got kind of the seasons, you can put mulch,

really heavy mulch on the winter and put a tarp over it.

So you're suffocating everything under there by feeding at the same time.

And then in the spring, you pull off the tarp and the grass is all dead.

And you've got your little patch of garden.

So just always adding the mulch, there's companion planning.

I mean, there's lots of websites that will help people step by step, Gardening 101.

And there's master gardeners in many cities.

The master gardeners are there to help you.

And especially if you're just starting out, you want to be successful.

So I would say start with something easy.

Your greens are so easy, they grow super fast.

And the herbs and so start with something so you can see results pretty fast and go and snip it out.

And if you fail, there's no fail, right?

If it doesn't grow or it grows and then dies, somebody eats it, you're just adding more to the soil.

You need to build the soil.

Once we add layers and layers, it's much easier to manage the pests.

Following all of these stressors that you had in your life, the first of worms, and of course there are other stressors. I'm just naming the ones that you've talked about here.

So you add some worms in your house, you learn to do it, they were kind of growth,

but you went through that.

And then you learned about garbage being shipped out of the country

from one metropolitan city, 10 trucks a day.

10 trucks a day moving out of the city.

Throughout all of that, you're a positive person.

How are you staying positive?

How are you managing those stressors?

You know, when you're on purpose, it just helps getting up every day.

My work is like play.

23 years I'm in it.

My favorite thing is still going into schools and educating the kids about worms

and then setting up a worm bin right in the classroom.

Yeah, back in 2002, my very first event that I was exhibiting at, I met, there was a gentleman selling the sprout cower.

Okay.

And I didn't know about sprouts or sprouting, but that thing was flying off the shelf, it's like a little spaceship.

And when there's a break in the audience, I said, what is that thing?

He was 72, professional ballroom dancer.

So he had his crisp white shirt on in his black vest, he was a gentleman.

And I came from employee background, I didn't know anybody that worked at 72.

So I was amazed by this man.

Wow.

And if anyone's ever done exhibiting that's listening, it's not easy.

It's not easy as your business.

If it's your hobby, it's kind of different because it's something you love.

And so you're just educating people about whatever your crafts or whatever you're doing.

When it's your business, it's really hard because that's how you make your money.

And people are like, oh, can I get it?

Oh, I saw it cheaper at Walmart or I can get it on Amazon.

It's like you could or you could support a local business.

Right.

And the family and the community, we're buying stuff on Amazon.

I don't know, Jeff Bezos maybe is benefiting.

It's making.

Right.

And then all those people running around delivering all this stuff for him.

Anyway, that's kind of a whole other topic.

So I didn't know about sprouts.

And I was like, wow, look at him.

He's super healthy.

And I want to be like him.

So he said, if you're going to do this, start your day with two tablespoons of spread at one

beans because I was like, OK, I'm in because there's up to 100 times more digestive enzymes in those beans.

And here are some beautiful things about sprouts.

And I'm going to sound so smart because I am.

They're hydrating, alkalizing, regenerative, biogenic, and then the 100 times more digestive

enzymes.

So those are a lot of things.

They're super foods that we can grow for pennies a day starting with a seed.

We grow it in a jar or in a sprout grower, like whatever we've got, eating sprouts

is going to benefit your health.

So I'm high energy because I've been eating live food for 23 years.

I don't go a day without sprouts.

OK, inspiring.

But you're doing something else now.

Laughter yoga.

What is that?

Right.

How does that all fit together?

Yeah.

2012, 10 years into my worm mission, one more person said, oh, worms in the house.

And I'd heard it hundreds of times in the previous 10 years.

But I wasn't paying attention.

And if you've ever taken a business course or you're running a business, they say, listen to your clients.

What do they want?

They didn't want what I had.

And people don't buy what they need.

They buy what they want.

What they want.

And they didn't want what I had, even though they needed it.

So, yeah, 2012, oh my gosh, I can't even remember where I was.

I just remember it was 2012.

It hit me.

I heard it.

I felt it.

And I questioned everything.

I was like, OK, this is really hard.

I don't know what to do.

Maybe I'll just get a job.

Oh, no, this has to work.

Yes.

Don't tell me what to do.

I didn't like it before.

I would like it even less now.

And the very next day, I was introduced to laughter yoga at the very place I wrote my business plan, which was a women's center.

And so they would have events, business meetings.

And the speaker was a laughter yoga teacher and she did a five minute demo.

And I was like, what?

Laughter yoga, what is that?

I don't even do yoga.

I know it's a fine thing.

I jumped right to the fun yoga, laughing as a cardiovascular exercise.

Oh, wait, what?

I know, right?

Yeah.

So, started in 1995 in India by a medical doctor, Dr. Medan Kateria, that same week at a networking event, hundreds of people, 2012.

The very first woman I met was a laughter yoga teacher.

You can't make anything else telling you.

Something's right.

Wow.

And so this was in Toronto and Toronto's a massive city.

She had a laughter club, five minute walk from my mother-in-law's place.

So we started, I was like, oh my gosh, I called up my mother-in-law and I was like, hey, Mary, you want to go to laughter yoga?

And she said, what's that?

And I said, I don't know, but I don't want to go alone.

So it became our, in 2012, this was kind of our date night.

It was a monthly club.

So we'd go for dinner and she'd say, we've got to not have garlic.

And I'm like, no, no, as long as we have it.

Laughter

We both have it.

We're okay.

And it was kind of a hobby.

Yeah, that's what I would say.

It was just, I didn't take laughter serious.

It was just something we did.

We enjoyed it.

It was fun.

But I didn't laugh intentionally every day.

And then I got, I loved being a laughter leader.

I got trained as a leader.

And then I loved that so much.

I got trained as a teacher.

So I teach leaders now.

And I was appointed laughter ambassador in 2017 by Dr. Kateria.

Because of the work that I was doing, you know, I was working in long-term care, with special needs at schools, bringing laughter wherever I could.

And then 2020.

Oh yeah.

Before 2020, I was doing maybe between 100 and 200 events a year.

I was like a hamster.

I was like, oh, where's that?

I got to be there.

I got to be there.

I was doing all the stuff.

Whew.

Thank goodness.

We were shut down.

Not, maybe not.

Thank goodness.

It did bring a lot of gifts.

It was really scary at the time.

And I know there's a lot of people that are still struggling from 2020, 2021, 22 being locked down.

You know, I recently heard that isolation is more harmful to our health than smoking, obesity, and alcohol combined.

I've heard that too.

Right.

So being locked in our homes was really damaging.

And I, you know, I have a psych degree.

I keep questioning who was damaged the most, which demographic.

There's no answer because it's so individual.

But you think of the people that were in long-term care.

They couldn't see their families.

It was it was really horrific time, really, really awful.

So then I started my laughter club online in June, 2020, because I needed it.

And you know, it was in, it's in Zoom and it's so good.

It's free.

I would really encourage everyone to come.

Everyone's welcome.

I get now.

How often do you do it?

It's weekly.

Every week.

On Zoom.

Yeah, 9.30 a.m. Eastern every Tuesday morning for 30 minutes.

And you'll give us the link.

I'll give you the link.

Oh yeah.

And everyone can come.

Yeah.

Do come and check it out.

It's laughter has changed my life.

Laughter has changed my life.

And I, you know, it saved my work in business, because I was about to doff my mission, that I was interested in.

Right.

So laughter started laughing.

It changes everything because it is the best medicine.

When we're stressed, what, like today we're living in this perpetual state of stress.

Stress was meant as a mechanism in the prehistoric days to keep us safe.

If we were in danger of, you know, something happening to us, we needed to know and our body would give us signals.

But now we're living in that state all the time.

And it's really bad for our health.

So what happens is our frontal lobe kind of disconnects.

Blood lymph oxygen leaves our brain so we can go into our muscles so we can escape,

even though we're not literally escaping.

So we can get out of the stress,but we don't.

We just stay in it.

We ruminate about it and we, you know, we stay in it.

What happens when we laugh?

It brings us to the present.

It's not jokes or comedy because jokes are cultural.

So when we're laughing,we're oxygenating our beautiful body.

Right?

You can't just ha ha.

We're exhaling.

You have to take a nice deep breath inso you can continue laughing.

So oxygen to our beautiful body.

Our brain requires 25% more oxygen than the rest of our body.

So when we're stressed, we're breathing shallow.

Like we're panting too.

Yeah.

Right?

We're stressed.

And we're still creating all those stress chemicals.

Cortisol, adrenaline, epinephrine.

And we're small, like we're just like, we're kind of get paralyzed by our fear, by our stress.

So when we're laughing, ha ha ha.

We're not even thinking.

It's not a great survive.

We can only laugh when we're in a safe environment, like laugh full on.

Yeah.

So we're secreting all the happy chemicals, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.

Now it's a practice, right?

You don't just, we know meditation is good for us.

Or jogging is good for us, but we don't meditate once and go, okay, check that off your list.

I'm good, done for life.

You might have one good sleep in our life.

No, right?

We need to sleep well every night and we need to breathe deep every day.

Same with laughter.

If we make it a practice.

So coming to a club, because it's challenging to laugh by yourself, even as a trained professional,

I can laugh, but it's, it doesn't have the same, like it's contagious, right?

If we're laughing right here, if we were doing it, like we'd be looking at each other, ha ha ha, you see me, you hear me laughing, I hear you, and there's a thing in our body in our brain and very few mammals have it.

Monkeys have it.

I think there's a few birds and humans.

I don't know what else, but they're called mirror neurons.

So if you've ever smiled at somebody on the street, they'll usually smile back.

Smile back.

Or if you see somebody sad, you might feel sad.

Those are the mirror neurons.

So laughing in a group is so powerful.

We can know, our bodies can only laugh in a safe environment.

So you're forcing your body to feel safe.

If you're, you're, your mind to feel safe.

So it's kind of a cycle.

You laugh to create that feeling of safety, and that feeling of safety allows you to be able to laugh.

So forcing that laughter, that's what laughter yoga is about.

You had mentioned to me at some point, you said the body doesn't know the difference

between real laughter and fake laughter.

Is that true?

That's true.

So that that's the body, the brain knows, right?

The ego knows, right?

The conscious mind knows.

And so do you find when people come in, it's an odd thing.

When you first did it, it was an odd thing.

You're sitting there and just laughing.

You're not responding to a joke.

You're just laughing.

Ha ha ha.

So it begins feeling a little uncomfortable, a little weird, a little odd, right?

Only when you're new to it.

Only when you're new to it.

I know exactly, exactly.

Absolutely.

Yes.

So, so in laughter yoga, there are little games to inspire the laughter.

And for those that are very cerebral in their head, there's clapping.

So you're clapping palm to palm.

So you're activating meridians.

And the rhythm is one, two, one, two, three.

And the words are ho ho ha ha ha.

So we'll often start with that.

And at the beginning of a laughter club, especially in person, on Zoom we do that less, because it's all different sounds, like you can really sing on Zoom.

But that brings you to the present.

That sends a note to your brain.

Hey, oh, I'm clapping, I'm smiling.

I must be happy.

So we can kind of trick our brain.

And we can't just laugh.

Like we can't just make the sounds, ho ho ho ha ha ha.

That is still secreting those happy chemicals versus the stress chemicals.

And it is a practice.

It does eventually turn into real laughter.

Again, because you're hearing people, you're seeing them, and we're all doing these silly moves.

It's that's the idea just to be childlike, to get into our beautiful body, to feel good, to connect, right, the social part, the isolation is real.

You know, in my laughter club, I get a lot of middle-aged women.

And because sometimes even when people are married, like they might not talk so much with their spouse.

So a lot of people are lonely even in their daily life, even though they're surrounded by the time.

Yes, yes, yes.

We see it all the time.

Yeah.

Okay, I love this idea.

And you call it Cathy's club?

Cathy's chuckle club.

Cathy's chuckle club.

I like your answer.

Go check this out.

Oh, no, it's fantastic.

So Cathy's Crawley composters.

Tell me the names.

Tell me the names.

Cathy's Crawley composters, Cathy's sprouters, not alliteration, and Cathy's chuckle club.

Sorry, Cathy's a triple entrepreneur.

And you're feeling good now.

You're happy the stresses are less for you.

You know, it's really funny.

I did a TEDx talk in 2013 about the worms.

And it was a great talk.

I mean, when I watched it the other day because I was doing a worm workshop

and it had been a little well.

So I was like, well, let me bring them some good knowledge.

And I looked and I was like a little bit pudgy out of pudgy face and like little pudgy body.

So the sprouts helped you to lose weight.

And I had been eating sprouts for whatever 13 years by then.

Even though I've been eating sprouts still, the laughter is an added piece because I have rock hard abs from laughing and I laugh intentionally every day now.

So even looking back there to today, I'm in better shape than I was.

Whatever that is 12 years ago.

Yeah. Fantastic.

So I signed up just so you know, I signed up last week.

I'll be attending on Tuesday.

I'll be there.

And yeah, I'm really looking forward to that.

And I want to thank you so much.

I mean, you're bringing happy, like happy vibes to everyone.

And I really appreciate that.

And so if there was one thing you would want to tell us to do today,

to simplify the way that we do things, the way that we think, the way that we feel, what would you tell someone?

I think that people stay stuck in jobs or situations because they don't see a way out.

I would say find a way out.

And make that your goal to get out of that job that you hate.

Because imagine you're going to your job, your stress, because you hate it.

So Sunday nights are always awful.

Friday, yeah, you can't wait till Friday, but then you're next to the weekend.

Come on.

Like there's seven days in the week.

What?

Love every day.

Because every day is a gift.

It really is.

And when you find your way, the magic happens.

That's when you get introduced to people.

Opportunities arrive.

Because you're looking for them.

You're looking for the opportunities.

Rather than looking down going, ah, I hate my life.

Oh, whatever it is.

This job and this thing.

I don't like that thing.

Now, I want to acknowledge that it's very difficult.

All of this is very difficult to live a daily life.

And we're focused on our kids.

We have to raise kids in a world that's increasingly, you know, throwing things at our kids at a younger and younger age.

And so they're, you know, they're stressing from the time they have access to YouTube.

Even if it's YouTube kids, they're watching all kinds of videos on there.

And so those stressing, the stresses are coming even earlier.

And so yeah, it's difficult.

I absolutely recognize that.

And I want to make sure everybody's clear that, you know, laughter is not a, as you said,

a one-time fix for everything.

But why not support our well-being by doing something that is so simple,

so simple to try this medicine for our bodies that is not a medication?

Well, Kathy, I just want to say thank you so much, so much for being here, for telling us about your life, for sharing a little bit of your of your days.

Thank you for the opportunity.

So Cathy's Chuckle Club takes place every Tuesday at 9.30 a.m. Eastern time.

Now you do need to sign up ahead of time though, and you can do that at Cathy'sclub.com.

And you can find out more about composting with worms and growing sprouts at home

at Cathy'scomposters.com.

You can also watch Kathy's TED Talk there.

I'll put those links in the show notes.

And enjoy your week, and I'll see you on the next episode.