ROUGH EDITED COPY

ICDD
Laughter Yoga
May 22, 2020

CART CAPTIONING* PROVIDED BY:
ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLC**
http://www.captionfamily.com/
* * * * *
This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings
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Friday, May 22, 2020.
Test test.

>> CART Captioner:  Hello.
You're welcome, you're welcome.
Me too.
Thank you.
>> SPEAKER:  I know Christine said she wanted feedback and want to be honest with her.
If you have feedback for me, I don't want you to be honest with me.
[Laughter] 
>> CART Captioner:  No problem.
>> There's two Kelly's.
>> I put her back in the waiting room.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  I might have accidentally clicked something.
I'm messing around with things now.
>> And we're due to start the whole explanation at 1:00?
Or what time?
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  We'll start at 1:00.
In a couple minutes.
I think this has been ‑‑ except for my whacky hair.
I want everyone to know it's curly.
It's curls.
It's not really messy.
I don't like seeing myself.
Aha, that's what I really look like.
>> It's awesome.
>> I love your hair.
The alternative is no hair.
So... 
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  Yeah, I need to be just fine.
And I am.
It's just some days it's bigger than others.
I'm going to move over to English only.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  Matt, did you see it at the bottom?
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  You?
You don't see the interpretation?
Click it and then click English.
And then you'll also click mute original audio.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Okay, got it.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  And then you still hear me, right?
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  You think so?
They are just the voices in your head.
But Sande and Miguel, you are in Spanish.
Now we can't hear them.
I can't hear you.
>> I heard Sande.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  You did hear Sande?
>> Now say something, Sande.
>> Hola.
>> Nope, I can't hear you.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  Sorry, we want to hear you.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  So we are both going in the Spanish channel.
[overlapping speakers] 
Miguel, are you still in the English?
[overlapping speakers]
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  I moved to the Spanish one?
Am I supposed to change to the English?
>> Whichever, I guess it don't matter.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  Unfortunately?
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  You can do that with your little dog because your dog is little.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Yep, very true.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  Wouldn't that be cute?
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  It would be something.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Whenever I'm with my little dogs I feel like the godfather.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  We have we have a miniature golden doodle and we go and walk it and Paul is like, this isn't a manly dog because she's tiny.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  I have a teacup.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  Here they come.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  I think we have a center, that's awesome.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  Take it away, Christine.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  Hello everybody, and welcome to laughter yoga with Matt Wappett today.
My name is Christine Pisani I'm the director of the ICDD OD and we're thrilled to the you with us this Friday, where right now it's not raining.
We are recording this webinar.
And the recording and any presentation materials will be up on our website.
And on a notification on our Facebook page.
I would like to let you know that closed captioning is available.
For this webinar.
And I would like to thank Kelly Crowley for captioning for us today.
I would also like to thank Miguel Juarez and Sande Katana for providing Spanish interpretation for us today.
Miguel and Sande, would you please say hello and introduce yourself?
>> Hello, my name is Miguel Juarez, I'm a Spanish interpreter [speaking Spanish] 
>> Name is Sande Katana, I'm the other Spanish interpreter.
[speaking Spanish] 
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  Thank you, both.
Sande will be interpreting first today in our webinar.
And after about 20 minutes, Miguel will take over.
So we would like to ask if you have questions, that you put those questions to the person that's not interpreting.
So if Sande's interpreting first for the webinar, please direct any of your questions in the chat box feature to Miguel.
And he will let us know any questions you might have.
And then when Miguel takes over interpreting, if you would direct your questions to Sande, thank you, that would be really helpful.
We would like to take a little bit of time because we know some people are having understanding how to get to the right language channel.
I ask Richelle Tierney helping you understand to get to the right language channel because you should only be hearing one language at this time.
And it's the language you prefer.
And Richelle will walk everyone threw.
And do a poll at the end and let us know where you are at with the language channel.
And being able to access that.
So thank you, Richelle.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  I'm going to quickly walk us through how to select your channel.
So let me get back here.
So if you are on a PC, on your computer, you need to go down to the bottom where you'll see the control panel.
And find the interpretation button.
And click on it.
You'll see English or Spanish.
So if you need English, please click on English.
And Spanish, you will click on Spanish.
After you click that, you also have to click mute original audio.
So down here, you can see that you're muted, your microphone is muted.
But then you have to click mute original audio.
If you are on a smartphone, it will look a little different.
The control panel is at the bottom of screen, there are three dots with more.
Tap tap on that.
You'll see language interpretation.
So you'll click there.
Or tap on that.
And you will also do the same thing, so you'll have original audio or English and Spanish.
And you'll choose the language that you want to hear.
So if you do continue to hear the interpretation or the original audio, if you could please contact us through the chat box.
And we can help troubleshoot that for you.
And if you do have any other questions.
So Christine.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  So I think Marieka here in our office was going to do office was going to do a quick poll to see if people could access the right language they want to be listening they could access the right language.
Are you only hearing the language you want to hear?
Please mark one.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  Christine, we just had a couple more join.
So I don't know if we want to just review the language selection.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  Sure.
That's fine with me.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  So I know a couple ‑‑ I just admitted a couple people in. we have having this webinar interpreted.
So you will need to select the language that you would like to hear.
So if you go to the bottom of your control panel, either on your smartphone or your PC.  Click on interpretation.
And I hope you are able to see that on your screen.
You would choose your language.
English.
Or Spanish.
And then below that, you will see this mute original audio.
You'll also click that.
And you should be able to just hear English or just hear Spanish.
All right, Christine.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  So Marieke, do you have the poll result from the poll.
>> I still left it open because not everyone has voted yet, we have 16/22 who answered.
Most people hear the language they want to hear.
There's two people who still hear both languages.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  For those two people still hearing two languages, could you please message in the chat box feature can Richelle or Marieke and they'll help you problem solve how to get to the right language channel.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  We got one that's working now.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  Awesome.
For the last person who is having trouble accessing the right channel.
If you want to ask your question in the chat box feature, Richelle and Marieke will help you get to the right language channel.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  I don't see anything so we're probably good.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  Okay, at this time, I would like to introduce Matt Wappett.
You may be familiar with Matt Wappett.
For a little over a decade, we had the good fortune of having Matt Wappett and his family here serving the disability community.
In the center of the community of disability development.
And he's now the Executive Director for the Utah State University Center for Persons with Disabilities.
His background is education and disability studies.
And most of his research is focused on indicating inclusive environments to support the needs of diverse populations.
He write answer the effects of laughter in the classroom.
And genuinely enjoys helping people learn to laugh.
He's been referred to many by the Laughter Doctor.
And here we have some fans of Dr. Wappett.
And the many things he's doing the improve the lives of childrens and adults are intellectual and developmental disabilities.
And we're really thankful we gave us time to do to do the laughter yoga webinar.
Thank you, Matt, we are really looking forward to laughter yoga today.
And thank you for coming to Idaho, even if it's remotely.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Thank you for that timed introduction.
I am excited to be back in Idaho, even though I only live about 30 miles to the border over the South.
I didn't want go that far.
It's always good to see old friends.
And get back to my roots.
I think of Idaho as home.
So let me share my screen here.
And we'll talk about can everyone see that?
You should see a screen that says why stress makes you a terrible person.
And why you should laugh about it.
So we'll talk.
And some of this some of you may have heard, but I'm going back to some of the science.
And some of the reasons why it's important to laugh.
So what we're going to do today is go through, again, some of the science of stress and what stress does to our bodies.
And then we'll talk some ways you can deal with stress.
And at the very end, we will laugh about it.
I will teach your laughter yoga.
In case you are wondering because I see some of you may be driving or you may be in other locations, laughter yoga does not entail needing to wear yoga pants and other various items.
Or spandex.
You can just sit at your desk and do it by yourself.
Which anyway, if it sounds weird.
It is weird.
And that's just something for you to look forward to.
Anyway, I was going to give you a quick introduction to reason this is important.
One of the biggest things we learned over the past 20 years here in the United States is that people in the Western developed world experience chronic, pervasive stress.
And a lot this stress is self‑induced.
But stress in our society has become a status symbol.
The most important people in the world are stressed out people.
Think about the movie that is you watch.
And the television shows that you pay attention to.
My favorite when I was back in graduate school was ER.  Remember, ER back with George Clooney.
And it was stressed out people dealing with emergencies all the time and then going home and making poor life choices.
That really hasn't gone away from our media.
You now have all the cop shows.
So my brain is not working.
You have what's it called?
Special Victims Unit.
I can't remember what they are called.
But you have Chicago PD.
And you have Grays Anatomy.
And you have emergency shows and crisis shows.
And even other crisis shows, 24, way back when.
You have people who are stressed out dealing with stressed out situations all the time.
And that's what we get fed in our popular culture.
And we feel in order to be a hero or feel important, we need to be stressed out.
Think of the people you work with or even your own family.
The people who are the busiest are the most stressed out.
They wonder around the office with a scowl on their face, busy.
And you don't want to bother them because you can tell they are really, really important and doing wonderful things for the world.
Yet, at the same time, they are slowly killing themselves.
To be completely honest, I think most of us are so stressed over being stressed out and we can't remember why we're stressed out and that's stressing us out.
We read about stress.
We talk about stress.
I have a news aggregator I read every morning.
And every morning ‑‑ well, it started before COVID.
But now that COVID is in place, there's thing about mental health or stress in my news every single day.
Because it is so prevalent.
And it is such a part of our culture.
So we talk about stress, we tell people that we're stressed.
And yet, we don't really do a good job of defining that stress.
And we also don't do a good job of understanding what that stress does to our bodies.
If you were in person, I would ask you to do an activity here.
But you're not.
So what is stress?
In my past work, I've taught about this for 10 years now, most people are very good at identifying the symptoms of stress.
Or the behaviors associated with stress.
But not as good about actually understanding what the stress response is.
So when we ask people, well, what is stress?
Well, stress is feeling pressure.
Or stress is when you have too much to do and you can want do it.
But there's a whole host of indicator that is people bring up.
But none of that is really stress.
When we go back to the roots in stress and when it was defined in human it was define by a biologist.
Hans Celea, before we did stress work in humans, he did it in animals.
In animals, he found the stress response was known he called it the fight or flight response.
And essentially the stress response is exactly what this baboon is feeling.
It's eating and minding its own business, all of a sudden this lion pops out of nowhere.
The baboon has to make choices quickly, either stand his ground and fight the lion off.
Or run away.
And again, that's where the fight or flight comes from.
In order to help the baboon make these choices, our body does several really important things.
Number one, whether you're going to fight or flight, you're going to need to extend a tremendous amount of energy.
Fighting or flighting requires a lot of blood and oxygen getting to your muscles so you can do what you need to do.
As a result, our heart starts beating more rapidly.
The pace of our breathing picks up.
And you feel and you feel this when you're stressed out.
You can feel your heartbeat your rapidly.
You can feel you're breathing more shallowly.
And that ensures the blood is getting to your big skeletal muscles out in your limbs or extremities so you can fight and or flight and have the energy you need.
The problem with this, unfortunately as humans, we can keep this turned on.
And so as a human, whether ‑‑ well, whether we're a human or a monkey, when this lion pops out and this baboon.
The baboon has to make serious life choices and run away or fight off the lion or die.
Essentially.
And the whole list of physiological things that happen within the monkey's body also happens within our bodies.
When we feel stress.
So we experience the exact same stress response as that baboon when we are simply late for work.
Or when we forget a deadline.
Or when we get a phone call from the school or from the coach or from the child care provider.
Or whether we have to make a stressful phone call.
We experience the exact same stress response that that baboon back in this slide is feeling.
Unfortunately, we don't usually expend a tremendous amount of energy when we feel that stress response.
We just sit there.
So if you're late for work, you can feel your heart start.
Or if you're late for an appointment or something important, you can feel your heart beating rapidly.
That feeling or anxiety that comes from that rapid heart rate.
You can feel your breathing get shallow.
And you have tension in your body because your body is preparing to do something.
Yet you are just driving trying not to get in an accident.
Same if you're at the office meeting a deadline, you can feel your heart beating and you can feel you are not breathing enough because your body is ready to do something big, yet we just sit here.
So to your body, a stressful work or learning environment is really no different than fighting off a lion or a tiger.
For 40 hours a week or more.
In the wild when an animal is faced with a fight or flight situation, that animal either gets away or dies.
And what we learned from the wild is fight or flight response is turned in in animals for not much longer than 10 minutes.
Within 10 minutes, that animal either survives or dies.
Unfortunately as humans, that is not the case for us.
We can keep that stress response turned on all the time.
As a result of that, it does some incredibly harmful things to our bodies.
And it requires a tremendous amount of energy.
So again, outside of your just your cardiovascular system working overtime, there are other changes in your body that are incredibly damaging.
So when your body looks at you in in a state of stress, and says, wow, this person's running from a lion for 40 hours a week.
Let's say you have a really, really stressful job.
And you just can't stand it.
But you keep going.
And your body is looking at that saying, wow, the body doesn't know it's a stressful job.
The body can't differentiate.
Whether it's a job or an actual danger, the body doesn't know.
The same thing happens within the body.  And the fact that you are in that stressed out response, your body says over time, this is taking a lot more energy than we're used to.
So we need to start shutting down some processes to ensure that this person has enough energy to fight or flight.
From the stressful situation they're in. So in addition to your heart beating more rapidly and your breathing being more shallow and your blood flowing to your big muscles.
Your body looks at this and says, wow, the body is in a constant state of stress.
So we need to shut down other process that is also require quite a bit of energy.
The primary systems that get shut down when you're stressed is growth, re production, and digestion.
This ensures by shutting down these processes the energy that would have gone to growing or reproducing or digesting big mac is used to ensure you have the energy in your muscles to run away for your life.
Or fight the danger that you are facing.
But we don't expend that energy.
It builds up in our body and we feel this tension.
And that's where back pains comes from and headaches and cramps and things.
It's from our body being in are a constant state of stress and being prepared to do something.
And yet we don't do something.
You have to think of this as a state of nature.
It makes complete sense.
If you're not going going to survive the next 5 minutes, you don't need to grow.
If you are not going to surface the next 5 minutes, we probably don't want you reproducing.
If you are not going to survive the next 5 to 10 minutes, you probably don't need to digest that food.
So your body shuts down and provides that energy to the muscles.
And we see this in child development research.
Children who grow up in stressful environments have a condition frequently called failure to thrive.
Which essentially means the child stops growing.
Because when a child is in a chronically stressful situation, that growth, again, is shut down.
We see the same thing in reproductive medicine now.
When people are going in for reproductive treatments if they are infertile and going in for fertility treatments, what they are doing now is helping people manage their stress.
If you are manage your stress and turn off that stress response you can turn these systems back on.
Children who have failure to thrive, you can help them manage their stress or put them in a less stressful environment.
And they can grow again.
Same with reproduction, if you can remove yourself from a stressful situation, your reproductive system will turn on again without any invasive procedures.
But again, we are not good at managing that.
We tend to keep ourselves in states of stress for a long period of time.
The other thing our body shuts down is our immune system.
Your immune system takes a tremendous amount of energy.
To keep it in balance requires, again, a lot of effort on the part of the body.
And so when you're chronically stressed out, your body also suppressing your immune system.
This is a two‑fold process.
It suppresses the immune system.
But also the stress hormones that are released, cortisone and cortisol are toxic to your body.
They cause oxidation.
So like when metal or iron is in water and it rusts and falls apart, adrenaline and cortisol when they're in your body consistently does the same thing.
It oxidizes your cells and causes them to age prematurely.
And it can kill and throw your immune system out of balance.
And so most people have experienced this from school.
And teachers and administrators are very familiar with this.
Teachers and administrators in school and they work, work, work, up to Thanksgiving break or Christmas break and they are trying to get grading done.
And handle the students and all the activities and they go on break.
And the first thing that happens is they get sick.
Because they had this burst of adrenaline and they had the energy they needed to get through.
But the minute they relax, their immune system was repressed and it left them open to a whole host of infections.
And so they are sick over the entire break.
And by the time they are better again, it's time to go back to school and put yourself in that stressful situation.
Students also deal with this.
Students who struggle in school will frequently do great.
And then on the weekends or up to a break, they get sick.
And they are sick over the break.
And then by the time they have things back in balance then, they go back in that situation.
So stress from your body, from your neck down is actually a pretty toxic response.
You don't see animals in the wild deal with these same things.
Zebras in the wild don't have cardiovascular disease or ulcers.
A lot of things we deal with as human, in fact, research seems to show that 70% to 85% of health care complaints are related to stress‑induced illnesses.
Or they are illnesses that are exacerbated by stress.
Because we are in the stress response all the time.
And it's actually toxic to our bodies.  So that's kind of from the neck down.
What I want to do now is talk what happens to your brain when your stressed.
Because I think this is even more scary.
The important thing when we talk about your brain is make a distinction.
And oh, this got cut off.
I want to make a distinction from the upper and lower brain.
There's two brains.
We are mostly familiar with the left and right brain.
If you are left brain, you are more logical and like math.
If you are more right brain, you are creative and like art.
And that's what we're taught.
Left or right brain doesn't matter.
What is a distinction is the upper brain and lower brain.
The lower brain is also called the limbic brain.
And the upper brain is this part that makes us human.
And this most developed part of the brain in humans is this frontal lobe up here.
This is the part of the brain response for paying attention.
Or learning.
For compassion, for looking at another person and saying, that's another person, I should be nice to them.
It's the part of the brain that's responsible for your executive functioning and organizing your day.
So it's a really important part of your brain.
The other part of your brain is your limbic system.
Which is sort of [off microphone] in your brain.
And it's the part of the brain every animal has.
And essentially, it's responsible for eating, breathing, and reproducing. It's the part of the brain that ensuring your lungs and heart are working.
It's the part of the brain responsible for emotional responses.
For survival type responses.
It's the part of the brain that keeps you alive.
It's not the part of the brain that helps you with organizing your day or remembering things or anything else.
Unfortunately, when we are stressed out, the chemicals that are released ‑‑ and again, these are primarily adrenaline and cortisol.
Temporarily rewire our brain so we are focused on survival when we are stressed out, our thinking shifts from our upper brain t part that makes us human.
To our lower brain.
And the lower brain is the part that makes us an animal, as it were.
And you become selfish.
This supper part of the brain is the part of the brain that looks at other people and says I should be nice to other people and they'll be nice to me.
Your lower brain says I don't know if I'll survive the next 5 minutes.
I have to take care of myself, I can't worry about you.
And you have all experienced this at some point.
You have all come home from work or a stressful situation.
Or you just been stressed out at home.
And you've been mean to somebody that you love.
I have three kids.
I have dogs.
I have a wonderful partner.
And I love them more than anything in the whole world.
But I am occasionally mean to them when I am stressed out.
And now you can explain that.
When you are stressed out.
The part of your brain that says, wow, you should be nice to these kids because they are your biological progeny and they are the only hope you'll do anything good in the world.
That part of your brain is not working.
It's the part of your brain that's selfish.
And you snap and you're mean.
And you say things you didn't intend to the people you love because that part of your brain that allows you to be compassionate is turned off.
Herbert Benson who discovered this function of your are brain works at Harvard Medical School in the mind body clinic there.
He said when you're stressed out, you are essentially giving yourself a chemical prefrontal lobotomy.
You are taking that part of your brain that makes you human offline.
And you are functioning at a much lower level than you could.
This is why when you're stressed out that's difficult to pay attention.
I'm not sure if you noticed that, but when you're stressed out, it's harder to pay attention and focus.
Because the part of your brain that requires this and says you need to do this to get this done is offline.
It's the part of your brain when you're stress out, you forget things.
A great example is when you lose your phone.
If you lost your phone or misplaced your phone, you get very stressed out.
A lot of times we'll be rushing around looking for our phone and we are angry and upset.
And we are sure our life is over because people will get all our contacts and financial information and use it against us.
And then when you sit down and give up, essentially say, oh my life is over.
I'll never find my phone.
I'll have to go and move to a foreign country.
When you relax and take a deep breath and say, okay, I can't find it, you take a deep breath.
And your brain opens up and goes, oh, yeah, I remember where I put it.
Learning, kids who are stressed out have a incredibly difficult time learns.
We learned in schools specifically that kids who come from stressful home environments frequently they perform less well academically.
Not because they are not intelligent.
But because the stress that they are subjected to on a daily basis is impacting their ability to access that prefrontal cortex.
And to remember things and to actually make connections.
We learned when we can help kids manage their stress, they can learn and grow and synthesize and remember information better.
Again, stress does terrible things to your body and to your brain.
And the thing I like to remember is essentially stress oxidizes your body.
So think of a iron rod rusting in a pool of water.
That's essentially what's happening when you're stressed out.
You are slowly rusting and aging and you are falling apart.
Which is why we don't want to be stressed.
So I'm going to give you a few tools here to hopefully help you manage that.
If we have the stress response in our bodies, if your bodies have a stress response and if your bodies are subject to the laws or nature and physics.
Then there must be a equal and opposite response.
That's newtonian physics.
And thankfully we do, we have the relaxation response.
Unfortunately the stress response because we see it so frequently and it's held up as a status symbol, we are much better as getting stressed out.
We are not as good as relaxing because we don't have as many good role models to show us what it means to relax.
And we are not taught how to relax.
But the relaxation response was discovered in 1973 by Herbert Benson.
He published his book Relaxation Response in 1975.
He found doing work on high blood pressure is medication can reduce high blood pressure.
But he also found doing certain things like meditation, exercise, dancing.
Knitting.
So a pretty simple mindless task we would call it can induce your blood pressure, lowers your heart rate and respiration.
And brings your body back to a state of homeostasis.
A state of balance.
What he found is there's two basic steps to the stress response.
He found the stress response can be induced by a repetition of a word sound, thought, sound, thought, phrase or muscular activity.
And the passive return to the repetition when other thoughts intrude.
If you have done mindfulness or other meditation activities, this probably sounds familiar.
When you meditate.
And most basic mindful meditation practices ask you to pay attention to your breath.
You pay attention to your breath.
And as your mind wanders, you notice it wanders and you bring your attention back to your breath.
Doing this and bringing that repetition back to your breath allows your body to relax.
Turns off the stress response.
Your pulse rate drops.
Your blood pressure drops.
It causes your brain waves to even out.
It allows body to release the hormones that are the opposite of the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol.
And the hormones released when we're relaxed is serotonin and dopamine.
If you know anything about serotonin and dopamine, they are the hormones that antidepressants and other drugs intend to boost in our body.
Essentially by relaxing, we increase the good hormones that will make us feel better.
Well, let me go back to the relaxation response.
Lots of ways to induce this.
I said meditation but there's lot of ways to do this.
You can induce the response by running.
It's a repetitive exercise.
It's a muscular activity.
And if you are tone other repetitive exercises, rowing, dancing, things like that, you know that your brain kind of turns off.
And you become present in the present moment.
And you're like, oh, this feels good.
I'm okay.
In fact, many people before we understood this went running and would exercise because it made them feel better.
Because it helped them manage their stress.
We didn't really way back in the 50s and 6 0s, we didn't have the science to explain why that happened.
but today, we know that it's essentially kicking in the relaxation response.
And your body is turning off the stress response and bringing your body back into a state of balance.
And again, anything that's repetitive.
And forces you to be in the present moment can reduce the relaxation response.
So we talk exercise, dancing, knitting, crocheting fly tying.
Fishing.
Yoga.
Meditation.
Prayer.
Doing the rosary.
This is a big one.
A lot of this research has been done on religious traditions.
And whether it's the Buddhists who do mala beads and recite a mantra for every bead on their mala.
I probably have some here.
I do.
Let me pull it out.
I have mala beads here.
These are from Tibet.
And so the mala beads, you take each bead in your hand very much like the rosary.
And you recite a particular mantra and you repeat it all the way around.
There's 108 beads on a mala.
By doing that, it forces you to turn off your brain.
To bring you into the present moment.
And to say, oh, it's okay, things are going to be fine.
I'm all right.
And your body turns off that stress response.
So anything, it doesn't have to be religious, although a lot of the research is on religious traditions.
But it explains why those in a religious tradition live longer, have more relaxed, have more fulfillment.
A lot of that is due to the fact there's built‑in techniques in religious traditions that turn on the relaxation response and turn off the stress response.
When we do this, heart rate decreases, glad pressure decreases.
Respiratory rate decreases.
Oxygen consumption decreases.
Everything slows down.
Muscle tension decrease.
Slow brains waves decrease.
From a psychological perspective, you feel less stress.
You feel reduced anxiety because when your heart is pumping really fast and you're feeling worked up, you're going to feel anxiety.
You tend to perceive things as stressful when you're in a relaxation response.
You tend to want to take care of yourself to promote health promoting behaviors.
And you tend to feel more in control of your life.
That locus of control.
People who tend to be stressed out tend to be reactive.
As opposed to people in the relaxation response, they tend to be more responsive.
Thoughtful.
And mindful in how they respond to things.
And again, part of that is the fact that your body is calmer.
It's also that your brain is also functioning in a way that helps you think more rationally about how things work.
But what we learned through this research over the last 40 years is that healthy mind leads to a healthy body.
And a healthy body leads to a healthy mind.
They are intertwined.
You can use the body to relax the brain.
An exercise like run organize dancing or rowing or fishing, even, fishing fly fishing with that repetitive motion.
Is a physical activity, but you have to be present to do it.
So your body by engaging in that physical activity, your body relaxes your brain.
You can do it the other way too.
You can do a meditative or calming practice where you use your brain and meditate and pray and sing, things like that.
More of a passive practice.
But you can use your brain to calm down your body.
It works both ways.
And one way is not better than the other.
The important thing is you figure out which way works for you.
So I'm trying to check my time here.
Let's see.
Let's see what time.
Okay, I'm good.
I wanted to give you a few relaxation response activities that maybe we can try here together before we talk about laughter.
One of the things that this stuff has become science and become integrated all over our world.
And one thing they've been teaching the navy seals over the last 10 years is this thing called box breath breathing.
If you think of Navy Seals, they are in incredibly tense and stressful situations all the time.
And looking at this research around stress, they realize when someone is stressed out in a dangerous situation, they don't think as clearly as they should because the brain.
Those chemicals released cut off that part of your brain that's responsible for making good choices.
So they teach navy seals this thing called box breathing.
What it is, you envision a box.
And each side of the box is a same length.  So can be a count of 3 or 5.
But breathe in through your nose for to a count of 5.
So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Hold it with your lungs full for is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
And you breathe out.
Count of 5, slowly.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
And then you keep your lungs empty for a count of 5.
And that's how it works.
What I want to do is do this for you.
You're okay, you can sit up where you are at.
And hands in your lap and sit on feet on the floor.
And sit upright.
And we'll do a couple rounds of box breath.
I'll count them.
We'll do a count of 5.
Start by breathing in through your nose.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
And keep your lungs full.
Holding your breath.
3.
4.
5.
And breathe out.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Keep the lungs empty.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Breathe in again.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
keep your lungs full.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Breathe out 2.
3.
4.
5.
Keep your lungs empty.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Last time.
Breathe in. 2.
3.
4.
5.
Keep your lungs full.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Breathe out.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Keep your lungs empty.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Okay.
And you can let your breathing return to normal now.
But what they teach Navy Seals as you do this.
It actually forces your body to slow down by being mindful in having to think about this in count.
Count the breath breathing in. count, keeping the lungs full.
It forces to turn off the part of your brain that says, oh my goodness, I’m in a dangerous situation.
Someone is going to kill me.
I don't know what to do.
It induces the relaxation response.
You're using the body to relax the mind by forcing the body to breathe slowly.
As a result, it opens up the brain and helps people make better choices and feel more relaxed and they found survival rates and injuries among Navy Seals have decreased substantially.
Since they started implementing this protocol.
And really it doesn't take long.
The navy seals will do this five times.
They'll do 5 rounds of box breath when they're in a dangerous situation.
And they find 5 times of doing that makes a huge difference in their overall performance.
So that doesn't work for everybody, especially if you have a breathing disability.
If you have COPD, chronic pull nary obvious instructive disorder.
Cystic FBI row sis.
There's other ways to do this.
And I'll send the link to Christine.
And another way to is to make a calm down jar.
And we do this with students in school to induce the relaxation response.
Take a car and water and put el pers glue to thicken it up.
I'll send the page with a recipe.
And you put glitter and screw the lid on.
Essentially when you're feeling anxious or stressed out, take a jar and you shake it up.
And it's like a snow globe.
The glitter goes everywhere.
And it sort of represents how you feel.
You feel shaken up and a little bit discombobulated when you're stressed 90.
And then you set the jar in front of you and watch it.
A as you watch the glitter settle down, you feel your body settle down.
And you're using your eyes essentially.
And you watch the glitter settle.
And as it settles, it forces you to calm down as you pay pay attention to that.
And students with behavior disorders or attention difficulties, this can make a huge impact because this can help them see how they feel by shaking it up.
And as they see their body calms down as the glitter settles, they induce the relaxation response as well.
And we find their behaviors decrease.
They find their ability to pay attention increases.
And the performance of students who use this trick in school increases substantially.
So just two little tricks for you to use.
You can do glitter jar if that's what you like.
You can do a box breathing if you want to be a cool navy seal.
Sometimes we see mindfulness and other tricks and being new agey and maybe hokey pokey.
But the fact that navy seals use it is proof that tough guys use this too.
Now we want to get to laughter.
And I'm going to tell you a little bit about laughter and the science of laughter.
And then I'll teach you how to laugh.
Laughter also induces the relaxation response.
Laughter is been studied for many years.
There's a field called gelotology, which is the study of laughter.
Gelos is the Greek root word for laughter.
If we were in person I would tell you my Utah joke, jellotolgy is the study of more mom history in Utah.
But that's inappropriate so I won't say it.
It's really hard not hearing your laughter.
I'm sitting here trying to get a laugh and I can't want get it.
>> I'll let you hear my laugh.
Because I love yellow [Laughter]
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Laughter has been studied for many years.
And it's been found to be incredibly helpful.
Unfortunately we don't laugh enough people feel laughter means you are not serious or you are not a intellectual or a smart person.
So it's been seen, we've seen we moved laughter out of our culture and it's seen as frivolous.
Laughter is a natural stress response.
And by laughing we can induce the relaxation response and other things and make ourselves feel better.
Most animals laugh.
Most mammals laugh.
Dolphins.
Wheals.
Dogs.
Cats.
Rats.
Wolfs.
What else?
Monkeys.
Essentially if you are a mammal, you laugh.
In animals it's called chuffing.
And it's hypothesized they do it to signal social acceptance and making other animals feel safe.
If you look at herd animals, if you've been to a elk herd if you’re a hunter or you've seen a heard, they are usually eating or drinking.
But there's one or two animals watching for danger.
When danger comes around, the animals mic a high‑pitched sound.
And when the danger passes they make a chuff sound and that makes the animals relax and go back to eating.
We do the same thing, when we hear a laughter, we relax.
It's a natural response.
You don't even have to laugh, but listening to laughter, you relax and you feel safe.
It's one of the reasons why they put laugh tracks on sitcoms and other television shows.
It's not that they are funny.
But when we hear the laughter on the shows, we feel safe.
It makes us feel like we belong.
And we feel a connection on the screens.
And they found laugh tracks got people to watch the shows day after day, year after year because hearing the laughter induces the pike logical response.
And now you know when there's a laugh track even when the show is not funny.
Because when you hear that, you're like, this is good, I want to watch that some more.
And then after it's over, you like I can't believe I watched that show.
It's psychology being used against you.
It's hypothesized in animals and humans laughter was probably important on a evolutionary level making people cooperate.
Because when we hear laughter, we can relax and work together.
Like animals when they hear that chuffing, they relax and go back to doing what they are doing.
They are not in that state of anxiety and fight or flight they are able to eat and do what they need to do.
When we hear laughter, we relax and we are able to focus on what we need to focus on.
Seligman t father positive psychology said laughter and singing to a group emotionally getting them on the same wavelength so you can work more effectively with a group.
We find when you laugh with people, sing with people, you work together, you are more collaborative and there's better outcomes.
So you need to laugh more.
I'll cruise through these next ones because we are running out of time.
But one of the other things is laughing promoting cardiovascular health.
When you laugh, especially a longer bout of laughter is similar to aerobic exercise.
You probably laughed at some point in your life you felt urn short of breath.
And you started to sweat if you laughed a lot.
It's because it's the same as cardiovascular exercise.
And they use laughter now in assisted living facilities and nursing homes to help people who maybe can't do cardiovascular exercise like walking or running to maintain their cardiovascular health.
You can laugh and get the same results.
Laughter causes blood pressure to drop, blood vessels dilate.
So they get more open.
Your blood vessels wall mechanic more slippery.
And the blood moves through.
And you feel better.
It's the relaxation response.
All of these things are things that happen during the relaxation response.
Laughter also strengthens the immune system.
This is terrible research they do with cancer patients.
But they do this with people who have compromised immune systems.
And they take them in and of course chemotherapy kills your immune system.
But they take one group of people with chemotherapy, they have chemo and go to a movie and watch a more roar or stressful movie and then another group watches a funny movie and day take their blood and see how their immune system is functioning.
And they found laughter boosts boost the immune system and helps people fight off infection.
There's something about laughter and the hormones released that helps your lymphatic flow.
And helps the natural immune cells be boosted and keep your healthy.
So again, stress suppresses it.
Laughter increases it.
Laughter also releases endorphins.
As I said, endorphins are the feel good hormones like serotonin and dopamine that make you feel good about life.
And give you a positive state of mind.
And boost your confidence and optimist.
When you laugh you feel better about laugh, you feel less stress.
And it decreases the adrenaline and cortisol t two primary stress hormones.
So like exercise, another relaxation response activity, laughter increases feel good hormones and decreases feel bad hormones.
Finally, laughter also promotes attachment and bonding by secreting oxytocin.
If you read the research on it it's a interesting hormone.
That's lot that came out about it over the last two months because of COVID‑19 virus.
People felt lonely and depressed and disconnected.
Because there's a lack of oxytocin.
When you are with other people and touch other people and hug other people, your body secretes oxytocin.
And it creates a chemical bond between you and another person, helps you trust another person.
Oxytocin is released at few times, when you hug somebody, oxytocin is released, when you have sex, oxytocin is released.
When you a mother breast feeds it creates the mother child bond.
When you laugh you feel more connected to that person because of oxytocin.
Laughter switches on all the symptoms laughter switches off.
I'm going to show you now we can laugh.
Are we still good on time?
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  It's 2:00, you still have a half hour, more like 25 minutes.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Perfect.
I'm going to introduce you to laughter yoga.
And we are going to laugh together.
Laughter yoga is a thing.
It's not like regular yoga, another it originated in India.
And laughter yoga was we'll say discovered by Dr. Kataria (sounds like).
She was writing an article in the 19900s about stress and laughter.
And he found the research indicate that laughter showed laughter was really, really healthy for us.
He thought we should laugh more.
And he got a group of friends together and we went to a park in Mumbai, India.
And they told jokes.
And it worked for a lit a little bit.
And they told jokes and laughed until somebody told that joke that pissed somebody off.
Because not every joke does everybody find funny.
And people weren't laughing anymore.
And so Dr. Kataria went back to the drawing laughter is separate from humor.
Humor is culturally‑mediated.
What I find funny, what you find funny, what my grandpa who is from Great Britain finds funny are all different things.
That's why if you watch a funny movie from another culture.
I don't know if you watch a foreign kin ma, if you watch a comedy from India and China and then Great Britain and France.
What we find funny is dependent on the culture they come from.
So Dr. Kataria realized we needed a way to laugh without humor.
And he developed a set of silly exercises.
Kind of based upon warm‑up exercises from theater.
And he realized what we can do is fake laugh.
And when we fake laugh, when we laugh pretend laugh, essentially, we eventually start to laugh for real.
We fake it until we make it.
That's what he says.
So he's developed a whole series of silly little exercises I'm going to walk you through.
And we're going to pretend to laugh.
And as we pretend to laugh, you'll find it quickly turns to real laughter.
Now, we're in a bit at a disadvantage here.
Because we're not in the same room together.
It's really much better when you can hear other people.
And when you're with other people to laugh.
But you can't [audio out] you have to relax and let it go.
But if you can turn your microphone on.
And you can hear other people laugh.
And we can hear you laugh.
It will help.
So if you don't mind, I don't know if Richelle.
Richelle can help people turn their microphones on.
Richelle, you might have to monitor this a little bit.
>> RICHELLE TIERNEY:  I unmuted everybody, we are here to laugh.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  We are going to teach you to laugh.
The first thing we have to do is get in the spates to do this.
So what I want toured to do is like with boxed breathing.
Sit up and take a couple deep breaths.
Open up your body.
Make sure that you're not crossed up and small.
You want to be big.
Relaxed.
And take a couple take breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Just see how you feel.
[Laughter] 
>> People are already laughing.
[Laughter] 
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Check in with yourself and see how you feel.
And then I'm going to show you we are going to use clapping.
If we were together in a room this would be our organizing principle.
When I start clapping, I want you to clap along with me.
The clapping is scientific.
We go, ho‑ho‑ho.
Ha‑ha‑ha.
Ho‑ho‑ho.
Ha‑ha‑ha.
Let's all do it together.
[clapping] 
Ho‑ho‑ho.
Ha‑ha‑h a a.
Ho‑ho.
Ho.
After you do that, you are going to go very good.
Very good.
Yay.
[Laughter] 
Are you ready?  Let's do it.
Very good.
Very good.
Yay.
[Laughter] 
I really hope you are in a private place.
So we're to get our laughter warmed up.
Laughter lives in different parts of our body.
[overlapping speakers] 
Be using our fingers.
And we are going to take our thumbs and put our thumbs together and we are going to go ho.
Ho.
So you just follow me.
And then we'll take our thumbs and pointer and go ho‑ho.
And then you go thumb, pointer, ring.
Ho‑ho‑ho.
Ho‑ho‑ho‑ho.
And all the way to the pinky, ho‑ho‑ho‑ho‑ho.
And now you're going to go all the way through.
Go ho‑ho‑ho‑ho‑ho [Laughter] 
[Laughter].
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Okay.
Here we go.
We're going to do has now.
Ha.
Ha‑ha.
Ha‑ha.
Ha‑ha‑ha‑ha.
[Laughter] 
Ha‑ha‑ha‑ha‑ha.
All the way through.
Ha‑ha‑ha‑ha‑ha [Laughter].
[Laughter].
>> That's funny.
>> Are you laughing?
>> He‑he.
He‑he‑he.
[Laughter] 
He‑he‑he‑he.
[Laughter]
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Go all the way through, go he‑he‑he‑he‑he.
[Laughter].
[Laughter].
He‑he.
He‑he‑he‑he.
He‑he‑he.
Ho‑ho‑ha‑ha.
Ho‑ho‑ha‑ha.
Ho‑ho‑ha‑ha‑ha.
Very good.
Very good.
Yay.
[Laughter].
Good job.
I feel like those who don't have your camera on were really missing out.
[Laughter].
We're going to do our laughter motors.
We're going to turn ourselves on, which it's a good thing we're not in public.
I saw that face.
Somebody is like...  You're going to take a key.
And put your key in your bell belly right here.
And you're going to turn it and go ho.
Ho.
And you turn it again and go ho‑ho.
And turn it again and go ho‑ho‑ho.
And now you turn yourself on, ho‑ho‑ho‑ho.
Ho‑ho.
Ho‑ho.
[Laughter].
Ho‑ho‑ho.
Your chest and you go ha.
Ha.
Ha‑ha.
Ha ha ha.
Now turn yourself on.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.ha ha ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
Okay.
Take your key, put it in your neck.
Go he.
He.
Go he he.
He he.
Go he.
Go he.
Now turn yourself on.
He he he he he.
[Laughter].
Ho‑ho‑ha‑ha‑ha.
Ho‑ho‑ha‑ha‑ha.
Ho‑ho‑‑ha‑ha.
Very good.
Very good.
Yay.
We're getting warmed up.
>> Yes.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Good.
Should be.
So why don't we do this?
This is power posing.
You can there's a Ted Talk, I know the science behind it is interesting.
But you spread out your body.
And you take up a lot of space, it makes you feel more confident.
And when we're small and crossed up like this, we are protecting ourselves.
And obviously, that's a symbol of stress.
So when you are able to spread out and take up space, you are able to feel better and your body relaxes.
So we should do this more often.
Should we do more laughter?
>> Yes.
>> Yes.
[Laughter].
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Okay we're going to do the belly drum.
It sounds exactly what it sounds like.
Bang on your belly and go ho‑ho‑ho‑ho.
[Laughter].
[Laughter].
Ho‑ho‑ho.
Ho‑ho‑ho.
[Laughter].
Ho‑ho‑ho.
[Laughter].
Are we recording this?
>> Yes.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Good.
[Laughter].
Some of these we can't do on lean.
So like sun breath where we stand up and raise your hands, we don't do that because it's harder to do.
We will make milk shakes though two containers.
And you take these containers and you're going to mix them together.
So you go oh.
Oh.
Ha ha ha ha.
[Laughter].
Ready?
Oh.
Oh.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Make another milk shake.
Oh.
Oh.
[Laughter].
Good job.
Let's do one more.
Oh.
Oh.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
[Laughter].
Good job.
We can make martinis now.
You had three milk shakes, you are feeling poorly about your life choices.
So these are James Bond martinis.
They are shaken, not stirred.
You do similar to containers, oh, oh, blah blah blah blah.[Laughter].
Ready?
Oh.
Oh.
Blah blah blah blah.
[Laughter].
[Laughter].
One more.
Oh.
Oh.
Blah blah blah blah.
[Laughter].
Very good.
I'm impressed.
One of the things we want to do in a typical laughter yoga session is a lot of sharp short breaths.
So we want to blank that out using yoga principles of balance.
And balance the breaths out by using a sun breath.
Take your hands in in your lap, if you can.
If you can't, it's okay.
And take a deep breath in and bring your hands over your head.
And breathe out.
Breathe in. and breathe out.
And breathe in. and breathe out.
Okay.
We're going to do laughter cream.
With some of these I can't do online unfortunately.
It's a little bit harder.
But we'll do laughter cream.
And the idea is with laughter yoga is to do silly things that make you laugh.
To make your laugh.
And we have a container with cream and you'll spray in your hand and rub it on your body and it will make your laugh.
You have a container.
Spray it in your hand.
Rub it together.
And as you rub it on your body, it makes you laugh.
[Laughter].
Ha ha ha ha ha.
[Laughter].
Ho‑ho‑ha ha ha.
Ho‑ho ha ha ha.ho‑ho ha ha ha.
Very good.
Very good.
Yay.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  So laughter is a very social thing.
And you frequently it's a lot easier to laugh with other people, especially when they're in the same room.
So it's a little harder to half on your own.
But you can laugh on your own.
Just people look at you a little bit weird.
[Laughter].
Okay.
But laughter, the more you understand about laughter and the more you practice it, the better you get at it.
And the benefit you get from it.
Laughter is like any other skill t more you practice, the better you get.
So I'm going to show you how to laugh on your own.
I laugh on my own all the time.
Unfortunately.
[Laughter].
[dog barking] 
When I'm traveling, I get pretty stressed out when I travel.
I'm a relatively big guy.
I don't like to get on planes.
And so sometimes I like to laugh at the airplanes before I get on a plane because it relax me and make me feel better.
At the airplanes, it's a little bit weird to laugh.
You can imagine sitting in the entry area to get on your flight and you are getting ready to get on.
All of a sudden, I decide it's time to laugh.
If I sit there and go like this.
[Laughter].
Ho‑ho ha ha ha.
They're not going to let me on the plane.
So that's why we have these remarkable depressions here, cell phones.
Cell phones are great.
Cell phones are allowed you to laugh on your own in public and be seen as completely scene.
I can sit at the airport gate or at my car and take my phone and put it up to my ear and [Laughter].
[Laughter].
All of a sudden you're the most popular guy.
Just remember your cell phone is a remarkable tool to help you laugh in public.
What else can we do?
I think we should try silent laughter.
I think silent laughter might be good to do in a group here.
So silent laughter is exactly how it sounds.
And silent is what we do at the end of the laughter session.
We have a laughter club and we get together and laugh for 30 minutes a couple times a week.
And we go through all these different exercises and there's more than what is up on the screen now.
At the end, we do silent laughter.
And then we down on the floor and do a laughter meditation.
Where we lay on the floor as a group and laugh for 5 or 10 minutes.
And then it's absolutely delightful.
I wish I could do it with you.
It's harder here.
But I think we can still do silent laughter.
And do lotus breath to come down.
Silent laughter is as it sounds.
Laugh silently.
Think of you've been some place it's inappropriate to laugh, you're at work or school or church and you have to laugh and you can't hold it in. we are going to try silent laughter and keep as silent as possible.
And then I'll tell you when to let it out.
We'll sit here.  And then I'll tell you when to laugh silently.
Okay, you can let it out.
[Laughter].
Ha ha ha ha.
Ho‑ho‑ho.
[Laughter].
I should tell you, don't do this while you're driving, whoever is in the car there, please be careful.
>> We're not driving.
We're sitting.
>> I think it's way funner watch the people at the other car laughing at us.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Let's do lotus breath.
Lotus breath is kind of funny.
You pretend you're a flower.
It's tough for a big guy like me to pretend I'm a flower.
But it relaxes me.
Put your hands on your shoulder and as you breathe in you bloom.
And as you breathe out, ah, you bring your hands back in. breathe in. breathe out.
Breathe in. 
And breathe out.
Good job.
So now you laughed a little bit.
And hopefully what you learned is you don't need to tell jokes.
You don't need to watch a video.
It's okay to laugh.
When you laugh a whole host of wonderful things have hatched in your body.
Most of you will probably find in you're tired and a little bit maybe a little bit sleepy this afternoon that you are now quite awake.
And ready to go through a rest of your day.
It does just enliven the body.
And helps make you a little more awake.
As I said earlier, laughter is not something that we are naturally taught to do.
In fact, most people probably the first time we do this, most people find it to be a little bit uncomfortable.
And the first time you try to do it alone, it's even more uncomfortable.
And that's because we're not taught how to laugh.
We are taught how to be serious and to be stressed out.
But as Jake from my adventure times, being second at something is the first step to being sort of good at something.
And you have to start somewhere.
And doing the simple laughter exercises, go in YouTube and type laughter yoga.
There's hundreds of thousands of videos of people doing what I did and you can follow along with and laugh with.
And get the benefits of a laughter session.
So again, the more you practice, the better you get and the more benefit you get from the laughter practice.
Now, the one question I always get at the end is your point to avoid stress completely?
Yes, stress is bad in large amounts.
And yes, stress is something that can have tremendously debt criminate tall effects on your body.
But we need a little bit of stress to get out of bed in the morning.
You need a little bit of stress to go to work and take care of your family and yourselves.
We need a little bit of stress.
We don't need too much stress.
Woe don't need to be in stress all the time.
A few years ago when I was in India, we went to this pottery kiln.
And this guy there was firing pots.
And one thing he said is that every pot of clay needs to pass through fire to get strong.
And man is just another pot of clay.
I would argue he means woman as well.
But with you need a little bit of stress.
It makes us strong.
The problem is when we are in stress all the time.
And it has a detrimental impact on your health and mental functions.
The other thing for those who work in human services, we are renowned for getting stressed out because we are going to save the world.
I fall into exactly the same trap.
I'm pretty sure I will save the world one day.
And that stresses me out.
And it's a big weight to carry.
I'm sure the rest of you feel the same sort of pressure.
We have a responsibility as leaders and as people who are sort of examples for others in the field to show them that we can do this work.
And we can manage our stress in a healthy way.
We need to teach each other it's okay to laugh.
It's okay to relax.
It's okay to have at your job.
It's okay to be to find joy even though you considered all the facts.
This is a world where it's hard to feel joy and people tell us we should be depressed and scared and everything else.
And unfortunately, it's not healthy if you are us in the long run.
And we need to be truly a leader, a person who is able to find joy in spite of all the facts of life is facing them.
We have a responsibility as each other's.
And be each other's if you don't practice.
This is one reason I do this.
I teach and I really try to practice managing my own stress so I can teach others, the staff I work with here.
The people I work with on my various projects.
If I can do it, you can do it too.
And with that, thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me.
Thank you for sticking with this.
And for being brave enough to laugh on your own there at home.
Thank you.
And I'll hang around for any questions.
Nice, Tracy.
Thank you.
>> Anyone have questions for Matt?
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Wow, I was clear.
For the first time ever.
>> CHRISTINE PISANI:  Well, if there weren't any questions, I would like to thank you Matt Wappett for agreeing to do this.
We asked Matt last Friday.
And he was like, yeah, I got nothing going on at that time.
I would be happy to do it.
And we are really grateful you would spend your time with us on a Friday afternoon.
And I know that I really got to laughing.
I hope that all of you enjoyed laughing.
And I know I feel more energized.
And like I don't need to have a take a nap right now.
So I also want to say how nice it is to see all our old friends.
And some new friends.
And everybody that's joining.
It's so good to see your faces.
It's really great to see all of you.
And we like it when you put your camera on to see your face.
As an extrovert, this has been difficulty not to connect with people.
And it's great to see y'all.
And thank you.
I want to introduce you to an idea that our vice chair of the council came up with.
Her name is DR.  And she came up with the idea to help people not feel so lonely and isolated called the pen pal club.
And we're going to show you that announcement that came out soon.
This is all DR's idea.
And she wanted to do this to help people connect.
And maybe not feel so alone.
And feel lonely.
And really, this is about connecting in any way that you can.
You can do it through the mail.
You can do it on email.
You can send art.
You can send a video.
And if you're interested in being part of the pen pal club, please send us an email.
You can send it email to Trish Hammond here at the council.
Trisha.hammond at ICDD.idaho.gov.
If you're interested in being part of the pen pal club, we would love to have you.
And Amber Gardener, DR is trying to reach out to you because you are such a prolific letter writer.
And we want to applaud DR's efforts.
She's been spearheading this work.
And we are excited to help connect people and not feel so lonely and anxious.
And feel so isolated right now.
If you're interested, let us know.
We are excited about supporting DR to lead us in this effort.
And let's just start connect.
Start connecting.
We hope that helps at this time.
I would like to thank Miguel Juarez and Sande Katana who are Spanish language interprets.
We love working with you.
And we so appreciate your help in getting these webinars done for our Spanish speaking community.
And I would also like to thank Kelly Crowley, who did our captioning for today.
And also of these people make these webinars possible.
So I want to send a tremendous amount of thank you to all of you.
And to let you know that this will be all on our website.
And we will have the captioned version translated into Spanish so that will also be on our website.
If you would like to review those notes.
And you can review the recording also to review the laughter techniques Matt presented.
And also review the science presented behind why we need.
And take care of ourself and the harm stress causes our bodies.
We have a poll.
Does this webinar meet your needs?
If you could answer that, that would help us a lot.
You'll also receive an online survey if you participated in the webinar.
Those are helpful to us to figure out what we need to improve.
And also if you have ideas you want presented in the webinar, let us know what those might be, we are always trying to meet those needs.
And thank you to the people who us ideas.
We are really trying to meet the needs of the community at this time through these webinars.
Thank you all, I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.
We send our love and good day to all of you.
And take care of yourself until next time.
Bye‑bye.
>> Thank you, Matt.
>> DR. MATT WAPPETT:  Thank you.
[end of webinar]