Laughter #29

Tim Farrell:

We all have this voice. We all have this comedy voice. It's a running commentary that we have going all day long, but we don't say it out loud because it's socially awkward and unacceptable. But if you put it in the context of stand up or performing, you're allowed then to let that voice speak. And we want to hear it. We really do. And it exposes sort of the foibles of our day. The minutia of our day is really interesting when you think about it.

John McLaughlin:

We can't get too serious about it, but we have to be aware of it. And the laughter also brings awareness because only when we distance ourselves somewhat from what's going on can we get aware of what's really happening inside ourselves and what's really happening outside ourselves. If we're too attached, we don't see it. We don't have any perspective.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast which is airing first on Sunday, April 1, 2012. Today's show theme, appropriately enough for April Fool's Day, which today is, is laughter. This is show number 29 and joining me in the studio is our co host and wellness editor for Maine Magazine, Genevieve Morgan.

Genevieve Morgan:

Hi Lisa, how are you today? I'm great. I'm so excited about this show. I love to laugh.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I love to laugh too. And the people who are coming on are going to help us with this in various ways. We have director, writer and comedian Tim Ferrell. We have John McLaughlin, who is a spiritual counselor and holistic astrologer. Kind of interesting, right?

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And then we also have Celine and Heather coming in from Glitterati, which is the function that you're gonna tell us about. Also for The Telling Room.

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes. It's on April 5th, and it's a place to go and have a lot of fun. It's an annual fundraising bash that we do every year and there's live music by this way. People get all dressed up, we go dance and there is a lot of funny stuff that happens. Last year we played with kind of Glow in the Dark, big rubber balls. Do you remember that?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. It was at the Space Gallery last year. Is that right? Yeah.

Genevieve Morgan:

Time to get goofy and glamour.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Right. And that's April 5, which is going to be next week.

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes. It's coming soon, so get your tickets now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very good. We thought that this would be appropriate because it's April Fool's Day, of course, but laughter is not just about tricking people or fooling people. It also has very healing elements to it.

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes. I think that laughing is the biggest stress release that you can imagine. I mean, whenever I think of when I'm in a funeral, I always start to laugh. I'm starting to laugh now. I guess I must be stressed. But. Yeah, there's this weird thing that happens almost when emotions get peaked that you get into a giggle fest. I mean, it happens when. Even when, you know, from day one, practically.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is very true. I think some of us are more prone to laughing at maybe not completely appropriate times than others. Have you ever actually burst out into laughter in a funeral?

Genevieve Morgan:

I have strange reactions. I have the opposite reaction when I'm supposed I haven't actually laughed uproariously, like big belly laughs. But I will often smile and kind of not giggle, but chuckle because it's just. I think the emotions are too intense.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it really isn't that you're laughing per se, it's that you have this sort of energetic something that kind of needs to come out. You feel like it's sort of bubbling up from within.

Genevieve Morgan:

Yeah. And I think that laughing is easier than crying sometimes for me. But I don't know. I mean, I think everyone deals with their emotions in a different way, but laughter seems to be this universal human language that we all migrate towards. I mean, everybody wants to do it, but it's just sometimes it's really hard, especially right now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we know that the. There is a physiologic response that's produced by laughter. Endorphins are released and people do actually feel better. We know that people bond when it comes to laughing together. So there's a shared something that happens as well.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, how do you use laughter? Or how do you. What does laughter do for You?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I love to laugh, and I have a slightly different view of the world. I'm a Western trained physician with a master's in public health and two different residency fellowships. And so that's all very ser. I've delivered babies and been in emergency rooms and done all the very serious things. But I also trained in traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture and medical qigong. And my qigong master is a very funny and joyful guy. I mean, he is extremely learned and knowledgeable, but he finds the joy and humor in a lot of things. And I think that when I studied with him, it almost gave me permission to translate that into my practice. So when I meet with my patients, we talk about good things and bad. We talk about. About things that are happy in their lives and not so much. We talk about how they're coping with their own lives. So I use it in my medical practice. I use it also personally as sort of my own personal coping strategy, and I use it in my family.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, that's actually a pretty holistic thing that you're saying then, that in any situation, you can look for the bad or you can shift your perspective and look for the good or look for the humor or look for the joy.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. And you can also attempt not to take yourself too seriously, which I have to say that we do in this culture. We really take ourselves very seriously. And I'm, you know, I've. I'm just as. I mean, I've had a lot of transitions in my life over the last five years. I mean, I've had the same sort of job loss and housing, financial stuff. I mean, I've really experienced a lot of down days. But in the big picture, life is still pretty good. And there's a lot of times that I find myself still able to really laugh about some of the ridiculous things that I've done or said or situations I've been in. So if you can maintain that sense of perspective, I think you will end up a healthier individual.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, and that's a good note for today, April Fool's Day, when things are turned topsy turvy, that you can try to turn your own emotions topsy turvy, too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Absolutely. And I think this is what Tim, John, Celine, and Heather, our guests that are coming up, are going to help us do.

Genevieve Morgan:

Lighten up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Lighten up. Absolutely. The Dr. Lisa Radio hour and podcast is pleased to offer a segment we call Wellness Innovations. Sponsored by the University of New England, this wellness innovation comes from the New York Times. In five sets of studies in the laboratory and one field study at comedy performances, Oxford University evolutionary psychologist Dr. Robin Dunbar and colleagues tested resistance to pain both before and after bouts of social laughter. Pain came from a freezing wine sleeve slipped over a forearm, an ever tightening blood pressure cuff, or an excruciating ski exercise. The results, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, showed that laughing increased pain resistance, whereas simple good feeling in a group setting did not. For more information on laughter as a wellness innovation and visit Dr. Org.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we have the great privilege of speaking with writer, director and comedian Tim Ferrell, who's already laughing and I'm not sure why.

Tim Farrell:

A great privilege.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay, so maybe it's not a privilege. I'm not sure.

Tim Farrell:

I just put money in the meter and I walk through the door and I'm here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

All right, well, we think it's a privilege.

Tim Farrell:

All right, thank you. We're happy to have you. I'm glad to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And Genevieve Morgan is sitting next to me.

Genevieve Morgan:

Hi, Tim. Yeah, it's nice to be laughing before 9:00 in the morning.

Tim Farrell:

Yes. And you are actually sitting next to each other. That's not making that up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's true. And it's. And we're taping this, of course, in March, although this is airing on April Fool's Day. So we were talking about how maybe the joke's on you or maybe there's some pressure to be funny today. I don't know. But don't feel any pressure from us.

Tim Farrell:

No, I don't feel any pressure. But the fact that it's airing on April Fool's Day, which I call Amateur Day. Amateur Day, well, that's when everyone is allowed on some level to do something funny, sometimes to the point of cruelty.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what are you gonna do on April 1st? Well, you can't tell us. I guess if people are listening, then they'll know.

Tim Farrell:

But I have a couple of friends and we are very competitive. They're in the comedy world. And that is one of those days where, you know, good luck, don't answer the phone, don't believe anything that anyone says to you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that's fascinating, actually, because I think of, you know, Valentine's Day is for lovers and Christmas is for children and so here we go. It's April Fool's Day and it's for comedians.

Tim Farrell:

I had never thought of that before for some. Definitely. And again, there's a long tradition. There are some friends of mine that are trying to one up one another and they'll put off the date. Also, doesn't necessarily have to be April 1, anywhere within that week. There's a margin of error for April's Fool's.

Genevieve Morgan:

It's probably funnier if it comes when you're not expecting it.

Tim Farrell:

Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, Tim, for over 20 years you have, quote, unquote, saved salespeople through CEOs, trainers and teachers from delivering tedium to the world. So do you think the world is tedious?

Tim Farrell:

No, but I. And again, this is a side business to my core competency, which is comedy. But. But I got into the presentation skills business because I did a lot of corporate comedy and I had to sit around and watch a lot of presentations for over 15 years and they tend to be tedious. My job with presenters is really how to streamline it, how to add a little humor and deliver the message with a little more punch.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you were actually kind of saving yourself because if you had to sit through these presentations, you wanted to hear them be more interesting.

Tim Farrell:

And that's the approach too, is I've tried to put myself in the audience's position, which is, I mean, the classic is a speaker that gets up and says, I have 15 points to cover today. Well, you're automatically just going, okay, he's on number two, now he's on number three. That's tedious right there. I mean, and that's just a speaker's tick, is what I call it. Why are you adding a number to this presentation? Why are you indicating that you're going to cover 15 things? That seems like a awful lot of content.

Genevieve Morgan:

As a writer, one of the hardest things to do is be funny, write funny. And I think a lot of people think that being funny is a natural characteristic. But you've made a big career out of making people or having people understand that anyone can be funny. It's not a natural characteristic.

Tim Farrell:

Well, I think that especially when I'm teaching stand up comedy, which sounds pretty pretentious unto itself. When I run an ad or in some way promote a comedy workshop, stand up comedy workshop, people call and they say, my friends tell me I'm funny. My family tells me I'm funny. All my co workers invite me to the party. They always want me to come along. And that's valid. The trick is that you're funny in a social situation, and there's give and take, and there's no pressure, and no one in a social situation says, okay, Lisa is going to talk, and you guys all need to put $5 down on the table, and you all need to have two drinks, and you really can't talk. Only Lisa can talk.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tim, you've been performing in front of audiences since you were in high school. You went from college to Off Broadway, and you also teach workshops with students whose names are pretty familiar to, I think, most of our listeners. Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, Ray Romano. You've written for Comedy Central.

Tim Farrell:

How old am I?

Genevieve Morgan:

You're in good company here.

John McLaughlin:

Okay.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. And you've written for Nickelodeon. So you've been doing. I guess you are. You must be of a certain age because you've been around long enough to be teaching these. These comics. But it sounds like this goes far back for you. How. How did you learn that you yourself were funny? How old were you and how did this come about?

Tim Farrell:

I. I'm the classic. I don't come from, you know, a horrible. There's a myth, you know, stand up is you have to have gone through some torturous childhood and something, you know, awful has taken place in your life. And I came from a very supportive family. But humor was the driving force in our family, and it was also a great mechanism for me to get through school. I was not a sporty guy. I was kind of small, one of the smaller ones in the class, and humor was my way of coping. But funny attracted people, so I developed that pretty quickly, which is I knew that that's what would work for me. And in a way, I was allowed to be in any of the cliques in high school. Definitely. Great. You know, there are certain groups, but I take it back to my family, and I remember distinctly, like, you know, my dad saying, come in and watch this guy on Carson. And my dad was just a working collar, you know, guy, and he loved comedy. And it just translated. He had come, you know, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby. I mean, he had all the classics. And I don't think he was, you know, preparing me for a life of comedy. It just was just sort of organic to our family.

Genevieve Morgan:

So what makes people laugh? This is a show about laughter.

Tim Farrell:

Well, laughter, it's very subjective. What makes you laugh may not make Lisa laugh. So it's really, you know, how do you identify that? That's really. That's really difficult. There's so many different ways, you know, that people perceive, you know, what is funny and how they digest it. But it's been around forever. It's very primal. There's no doubt about it. I think, you know, the cavemen, whoever could, you know, tell the best story about hunting down the woolly mammoth was the winner, you know, at night. So. But, you know, what makes someone laugh? You tell me. I mean, it's different for everyone. There are certain common denominators out there. There are certain comedians and certain styles that people gravitate to. But specifically, I think it really. It's on an individual basis what makes, you know, what makes you laugh. You know, I can't answer that. I really. It's for. It's different for everyone.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And yet there are some comedians whose names you have mentioned, Bill Cosby and Johnny Carson, and I don't know that he would have considered himself a comedian per se. But there is a common denominator. And what is that?

Tim Farrell:

That is truth. The bottom line is truth. That on some level that you recognize some ounce, some nugget of truth in what they're saying and what they've done is they've taken it and they've exploited it, It. They've exaggerated it, but you recognize something. Cosby's a perfect example. He was a storyteller, and his stories were really. They're just chock full of. I recognize that. Oh, my gosh, that's something that I've always thought about. And the bottom line is that there's some sort of truth to it that you recognize, that you acknowledge. And then it really is just about how his voice is so strong and his point of view is so strong that you go for the ride with him. I mean, he's probably one of the fundamentally one of the greatest out there. You can. His textbook, you can teach by his chops, the way his style, his meter, but his storytelling, it's really basically story. He tells great stories.

Genevieve Morgan:

It seems as if laughter and humor and comedy, when it's delivering that truth, people are more open to it. It's more accessible. It's the pill and the meatball. You know, you can tell the joke. It has the. And it has a nugget of truth in it. And you might not have been willing to accept it when it was told straightforwardly, but if it's funny, like in John Stewart's case.

Tim Farrell:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Genevieve Morgan:

All of a sudden, it becomes illuminating, right?

Tim Farrell:

Well, the thing about stand up is you're allowed to say things that we don't say. We all have this voice. We all have this comedy voice. It's a running commentary that we have going all day long, but we don't say it out loud because it's socially sort of awkward and unacceptable. But if you put it in the context of stand up or performing, you're allowed then to let that voice speak. And we want to hear it. We really do. And it exposes sort of the foibles of our day. The minutia of our day is really interesting when you think think about it, but also like the hypocrisy of some of the things that go on in our world. And it's a sword. It really is, and levels the playing field.

Genevieve Morgan:

Sounds like a great stress reducer, huh, LISA?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think there's a lot of medicine that suggests that a lot of medical research that suggests that laughter actually is a very healing tool.

Tim Farrell:

Well, you know, that expression laughter, people say laughter is the best medicine. And they've done and you've probably seen some of the research they've done a lot of research on the mechanism of laughing and what it does, you know, bringing oxygen to the brain, going back to presentation skills, if you can, you know, no matter what you're pitching, you know, whatever, you know, you're, you're speaking to a group of 1,000 sales reps for AIG, whatever, it doesn't matter is that if you can, you know, bring humor to your presentation, the information sticks, they retain more information because humor has this this other chemical gets secreted in your brain and it becomes more memorable.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So do you think that having this exposure to laughter in your life and comedy in your life has kept you healthy?

Tim Farrell:

Yes, there's no doubt about it. I mean, you go through things in life, and I know in our family, like right now we have some things going on, and at the end of the day, if we're able to at least laugh a little bit about it and put it in perspective, it certainly, I think, makes it easier. We just gravitate to it. It's a way to sort of cope with life. I mean, this is a crazy world we live in and laughing a little bit about it. There's nothing wrong with that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that the rise in popularity of comedians coincided with some sort of societal shift? I mean, I remember that there was sort of this pre Cosby, pre George Carlin. I mean, there was always. There's always been stand up comedy, I assume of some form. But I really do think that it sort of grabbed us in maybe 1980s. Do you think that there was a shift that occurred?

Tim Farrell:

Well, yes, I think that. And you can go back to where this started and that is that there were two, suddenly two comedy channels, the HA Channel and the Comedy Channel. And then they merged and became Comedy Central. And Comedy Central all of a sudden became like the place where standup was full time. It wasn't just late night anymore. But I also think that you can chart this by where we are in our culture, especially in television, like right now. The top six programs in the last two weeks have been comedies. And that speaks to. And you can go back, way back historically, and watch how we are financially in this country or how we are emotionally in this country. And then what are the top. You know, we watch. Whoever says they don't watch tv, they're liars. I'm sorry. We watch a lot of TV and there's a lot of program out there that is comedy. But historically, when times are bad, comedy goes up. When things are going well, then dramas and cop shows become the fodder. I think it's also issue right now that reality TV is really popular. I find that very comical. But reality tv, if you think about it, it's like it's a chance to judge. You sit in your room and you watch other people in reality and you judge them. And I find that kind of comical too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So is it also the ability to read people that causes comedians to do well?

Tim Farrell:

And again, that comes with experience. The more stage time you have and the more content you have, the more of a catalog you have to fall back on. And then the other is really, you know, what's the venue? If you're working in a comedy club where they're serving drinks and it's a $12 cover, that's a completely different audience than someone that just paid $45 to see you in a 3,000 seat venue and you're there for one hour, there's a huge difference there.

Genevieve Morgan:

It's a real artistic process, though. It sounds a lot like creating a piece of music or writing a short story that you set out that piece of truth, you decorate it in a way. And then you revise it and revise it and revise it.

Tim Farrell:

It's always a work in progress. And that's the thing. No, everything evolves, no matter what. You've got certain jokes that work, certain content that works, but you're always. If you're good, you're really always re evaluating or at some point you're getting rid of it. I've run this long enough, but I think you hit something there that is musical. There's a musical quality to comedy, especially in Stand up. There's a meter to it, there's a rhythm to it. And there's actually. I always say there are notes.

Celine Kuhn:

Yeah.

Genevieve Morgan:

And I want to get back to that one point that you said about people having five minutes of content in them. And what you're really doing in your classes is a process of self discovery. Because I think that that's where that truth piece comes out. Because you have to be able to look hard at your own story and figure out what the universal element is in it.

Tim Farrell:

Well, again, that's probably day one for me, which is they want to know, where am I going to get my material? But you just don't pull it out of thin air. And I walk through, I say, what do you do? What's your life? What do you do for a living? These people that come to these workshops, they have lives. It's not like New York, where everyone wants to be in the business. This is a great town because everyone that comes to the workshop, they have a life, they have a job, they have a family. And that alone right there, what they do and their family. And then I go back to how did they view the world? What for them is exciting, what for them drives them crazy. And for everyone, it's something else. So for one person, going to the bank is the bane of their existence. For another person, going grocery shop. I mean, it's the simplest things.

Genevieve Morgan:

So do people come out of your classes with better understanding of themselves?

Tim Farrell:

Yes. I don't want to overstate it, but there's definitely. I mean, I think people that. I want to take this workshop because I've always wanted to try this, and I want to check it off my list of things I've always wanted to do. Number one, they walk away with a great respect for the art form itself. I think a lot of them come in thinking, this is going to be, I'm funny. My friends told me I'm funny. And come to find out that doesn't exactly get you through this process. There's a lot of Work involved. And that's the other thing too. After seven weeks, we do a graduation show and the audience comes in and they don't get a memo about the arduous journey that the workshoppers took to get to this five minutes. It's really hard work to grind out. To get five minutes. That's a lot of words and that's a lot of time. I mean, I used in the old days when I would run a workshop, the first night I'd just have someone stand on stage for five minutes and say nothing. And at first it's like everyone starts to giggle a little bit and then it just gets completely awkward. Five minutes is a long time and you can get a lot done in five minutes. You can cover a lot of territory in five minutes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One thing I'm interested in is the fact that the people that I see as patients who often outwardly are very funny and outgoing in the life of the party, when I see them as patients, there can be a world of pain behind that funny self, that sort of outward.

Tim Farrell:

I call that the tears behind the laughter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And is that common?

Tim Farrell:

It is common. And it's not just the comedy world. I think that's. You're talking about life and that is, I think that again, going back to comedy is a coping mechanism and it's a way, it's a good, it's a good public face to put on. And I think some people have, have you meet them and you, you're more entrenched in their, their, you know, the deeper part of their lives. But on the surface, you know, I think a lot of people can walk through life and you can think they're gregarious and they're very funny, but once you start to dig down, you know, they've, they've got some issues like everyone. I think it's a coping mechanism. It's a way to put on a face, a public face.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tim, how can people find out more about the work that you do?

Tim Farrell:

Well, I'm kind of like word of mouth. I don't have.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So we're just gonna send this out into the universe and people are gonna somehow find you.

Tim Farrell:

Call Tim. I have a website I have for my business before you speak, and I have a little website for the stand up comedy workshop. It's called the Comedy Workshop.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that is where people can go if they want to get on their computer and find you.

Tim Farrell:

Or as my mom said, you can goggle me. Okay, you can find me on the goggle.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

All right.

Genevieve Morgan:

Can you leave us with a joke? Do you have any in your repertoire.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And of course, there's no pressure. Yeah.

Genevieve Morgan:

Here's your five minutes.

Tim Farrell:

This is not a joke. This is really the truth. When I was coming this morning, which for me was really early, and I'm coming across the bridge from South Portland and traffic has to merge and you have to behave like a human being. And gentleman. I'm being kind, gentleman cut me off. And as he cut me off, I had to swerve. And then he got in front of me and slowed down, and his license plate. I'm not making this up. Said co exist.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I love that that's the way he's choosing to coexist.

Tim Farrell:

Exactly. But that he gets to be the doctor. But that's comedy in motion right there. I mean, I didn't have to. You know, that really did happen this morning. That's a lot of comedy right there, which is this morning that happened. I mean, so.

Celine Kuhn:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You can't make it up.

Tim Farrell:

No.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tim, thank you so much for coming in. We appreciate your being with us today.

Tim Farrell:

Oh, thank you. Are we ending now? We're ending jokes on me.

Genevieve Morgan:

April Fool.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Our next guest is John McLaughlin, who has a lot of interesting initials behind his name. Amdrs. And he has a lot of interesting training. He's going to talk to us about laughter, specifically laughter and healing, laughter in health. And, John, you practice in Portland now, but you've traveled all over the world to get your training. And first, I want you to tell me what am. Is that a master's degree?

John McLaughlin:

Oh, it's a master's degree. It's the way Harvard writes its master's degree is the reverse from an ma

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and actually Bowdoin does that too. So Genevieve and I both have. And Genevieve sitting right next to me.

Genevieve Morgan:

Hi, John.

John McLaughlin:

Hello, Genevieve.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And so she and I both have an AB as opposed to a BA Bachelor's.

John McLaughlin:

I have an AB as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There you go.

John McLaughlin:

The orneriness of certain institutions, they just

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

have to be special. But drs, Tell me what Drs.

John McLaughlin:

That's a Doctoranders, which is from Amsterdam,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

which is one of the places you studied. The Netherlands.

John McLaughlin:

It was in the Netherlands. And I Mean, it was really great to study in another language because it gave one a remarkable perspective. So, oh, this is a different way of thinking. And I was reading last night an interesting book on turbulence in weather. And the writer who's writing in first person mentions the fact that he would only work with another meteorologist who's German, if they were allowed to speak German together. This really had to do with the way in which our English language is always straightforward, and German and Dutch and the Scandinavian languages have a lot of reflection back on ourselves, which is really what a lot of humor is about. I mean, when we can begin to laugh at ourselves, we are well on our way to getting better. You know, it's as simple as that, because most of us take things very, very seriously, particularly ourselves and our stories and our stories to which we're deeply attached. And, you know, we go to therapists and we're not going to let go of our favorite neurosis. And to some extent, speaking and writing in another language that doubles back on itself the way German and Dutch do, particularly altered the way in which I saw life in a very major way. And at the same time, I was taking the train down from Amsterdam to Florence and studying with this remarkable Italian psychiatrist, Roberto Asagioli, who developed psychosynthesis so that my head was just. My American head was being unscrewed. And I sort of let it happen, said, oh, well, this is different.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And psychosynthesis, that is your field. That's your field of interest.

John McLaughlin:

Yeah, that is way I most like working with people as well as meditation.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me what that is.

John McLaughlin:

Basically, it's adept psychology that is done in a very, very deep trance state. So we call that hypnotherapy in this country. But I've been coaching a couple of hypnotherapists recently. And the training in this country, which I've also been through, doesn't go to the depth of trance that allows really ancient, personally ancient injuries to come to the surface. I mean, I worked with a woman recently who went, and continuing to do work, who went back into a point at eight months old where she was heaved against a wall and the wall became bloody. Her father threw her at the wall. Just terrible, terrible stuff. And she was able to release all of this material shrieking and screaming and the whole body shaking. And when she came out of it, her whole being had gotten so much lighter because we carry this stuff somatically. Now, one of the laughter muscles are on the sides of the body. Now, this week, going to have some Laughter. Because I could tell, I talked with her last night. And the laughter muscles, when they start releasing, release the material that we hold inside ourselves, mostly around our viscera. I don't know whether you remember the issue of Norman Cousins.

Genevieve Morgan:

He was the pioneer of laughter therapy.

John McLaughlin:

Yes. He was diagnosed with very serious cancer. And what he did was watch two or three movies a day that were really, really funny. Now, you know, in our medical profession, in fact all of the scientific professions, we cannot use anecdotal evidence. Just for the listener to define anecdotal evidence, it's Norman Cousins listening to Funny Things movies, and a year and a half later not having any cancer. Now, you can't do a double blind study with that.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, it won't work for everybody.

John McLaughlin:

No, it wouldn't work. And it wouldn't necessarily work for anybody but Norman Cousins. So you can't come to a conclusion. But boy, laughter makes us feel better. And often in working with people, I will give them the peculiar assignment to wake up in the morning in that sort of half state between sleep and waking and rollover. If they don't need to go immediately to the bathroom, put their hands on their tummies and start to laugh for five minutes, just laugh.

Genevieve Morgan:

Even if they don't just laugh, nothing's funny. Even if they feel like crying, just laugh.

John McLaughlin:

You just laugh. Fake laugh, fake laughter. Well, the first five to seven to 10 days, one feels like a real idiot. I mean, absolute idiot. I can remember when I did it because I did two 30 day periods of this. And the first time I did it, I thought, what is going on is this, you know, and the fact is I was living in the house up in Robin Hood that I had and we were all doing it. It was.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that's what I was going to ask. So you wake up in the morning and you laugh, but what if other people around you are not doing what you're doing?

John McLaughlin:

That's one of the things that we can laugh.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that's kind of ridiculous is

Celine Kuhn:

that you're sitting there laughing by yourself.

John McLaughlin:

Well, you know, that's part of it. Because if we can allow ourselves to see our ridiculousness and laugh about it, then we begin to go free. I mean, basically, I've always had the, the premise that not until we can stand up in front of 500 people and be seen as absolute idiots, clowns do we begin to go free. You know, and when we can do that, then we, we have our freedom because we say, oh, guess what? I just am who I am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this Is this disidentification from the ego self that needs to happen.

John McLaughlin:

Exactly. And that was one of the. That is the central premise of all of the Eastern paths, the whole Buddhist path is the core is disidentification that, you know, I have an ego, I have a mind, I have emotions, I have a body, but I'm not them. And if we actually look rather analytically, we're always able to observe ourselves. And when we start identifying with the observer, or what is often called the witness, we start going free and we say, oh, there goes John, he's doing that number again. And up there goes his mind.

Genevieve Morgan:

There's that same mistake. Oh, yeah, there, I'm doing it.

John McLaughlin:

That's it, Jim. That's the. Oh God, I'm doing that again. And if we've started to laugh at ourselves and we've done our 30 days of ridiculous laughter, then we can approach that habitual mind patterning and we can say, oh, guess what, he's off on it, or she's off on it. And we start referring to ourselves with a sort of distancing, which is not pathological condition. It's really sort of saying, oh, well, don't take it all too seriously. It's going to go pretty fast.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So as long as you don't speak about yourself in the third person, it's okay to look at yourself from the third person.

John McLaughlin:

Yes. And sometimes, actually, particularly when I'm working with people, I will encourage them to refer to themselves in that third person way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh, well, I just meant in polite company. So people don't think you're somehow, you know, to the manner born or, you know, the royal we. Yes, right.

John McLaughlin:

Would be Downton Abbey, you know, or upstairs, downstairs. No, no, royal we, though, if we look at ourselves, we're probably usually many different people, depending on the day and depending on the people that we're with.

Genevieve Morgan:

I have a strange question for you. Are humans the only species that laugh? Do monkeys.

John McLaughlin:

Well, monkeys seem to do this funny chirping laughter and there are times when the primates seem to have some sort of sense of humor or perspective, but I don't think any other animals do.

Genevieve Morgan:

So it is a part of consciousness, then?

John McLaughlin:

It's part of consciousness, yeah. And it releases us from attachment. And that's the real issue. I mean, the degree to which most of us are attached to whatever it is we're attached to. I mean, we grab ahold of it. We wonder why. We get tired and our hands get stiff. When we release that, we start to be able to breathe, you know, and often when I work with people, they will stop their breath when the emotions and the feelings really start coming to the surface. And I'll say, breathe, breathe. And then that starts to open up the body. And laughter does the same thing. It's these lateral muscles which also get worked in Pilates. Matt. Pilates. Boy, do they get worked.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think I'd rather laugh if I'd given the choice between that and Pilates. Don't tell the Pilates people who are listening.

John McLaughlin:

No, no, no, no, no. The bad Pilates will help the laughter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh, I see. Okay. So you get to do both, then.

John McLaughlin:

You get to do both and laugh

Genevieve Morgan:

at yourself while you're doing it.

John McLaughlin:

Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why is it that you decided to go towards laughter yourself in your own life? I mean, I guess you went to Harvard. That's pretty serious and straightforward.

John McLaughlin:

Or really, really funny, depending on where you were.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Right.

Heather Davis:

Okay.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But why did you need laughter in your life for?

Tim Farrell:

Hugh?

John McLaughlin:

I was raised in a rather serious household. I mean, my mother was a writer, published poet and essays and things of that sort. And my father was on the Supreme Court in Massachusetts. I mean, came from a long line of jurists. And this was a household where we had very intense discussions at dinner, but laughter was fairly rare. My father had a wonderful sense of humor, of which my mother disapproved mightily. So that put a bit of a cap on things. And, you know, I went through a Quaker boarding school. Well, you know, the Quakers take themselves very, very seriously.

Genevieve Morgan:

Quaker meeting has begun. No more laughter, no more fun.

John McLaughlin:

Exactly. And though it was a wonderful introduction to meditation because we started every school day with 15 minutes of absolute silence. Well, you can imagine in boys school, absolute silence for 15 minutes at the beginning of the day in a room that was, you know, from the 17 to 8 and the floors were creaking. Well, forget it, kids. And there were times when I would just start to giggle. And I realized, oh, maybe this is a whole part of this path, that as we get a little quiet and inside ourselves, we get a little Perspective. I didn't have the words for it then, so that was some of it. And then my undergraduate work was at Oberlin, and Oberlin was a Congregational college, and we were still having to go to chapel on Thursdays, and chapel was very serious. And I said, oh, this is all too much. And I started doing theater. And I only played one serious role, a lot of very, very funny roles. But the one serious role was Tiresias in Oedipus Rex. And that also sort of opened up something in me that people call psychic. But this sort of, oh, I just saw certain things and I started realizing certain things. But the comic roles were just wonderful. And at the time, I had a very Boston accent. And the drama coach at Oberlin said, we've got to do something with your accent. He said, you cannot take that accent out onto the stage. So we managed sort of semi to get rid of it. And my first role was the barber at the very beginning of Matchmaker. I had seven measly lines. I got eight major laughs every evening and applause as I got off the stage. I thought, okay, this is where I belong, which is in the middle of something funny, because, you know, I got this 6 foot 4 frame or 6 foot 3 and pretty skinny. And right from the beginning, it was, this is a clown figure. So let's not take it too seriously. And I think here, our culture tends particularly in this time, to be a very, very serious culture we're living in. I mean, I had drinks last night with another therapist and her husband and my partner and another friend. And she looked and we started talking about the clientele that she's getting. And she said most of them have major injuries as a result of working in corporate America or in the business environment that we're working in, where people are not cared for. And, I mean, they're just throwaways. And we had a lot of laughter last night. It was a lot of laughter because sort of we had to take that standing back and say, oh, well, we can't get too serious about it, but we have to be aware of it. And the laughter also brings awareness because only when we distance ourselves somewhat from what's going on can we get aware of what's really happening inside ourselves and what's really happening outside ourselves. If we're too attached, we don't see it. We don't have any perspective.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We'd love to speak with you for so much longer. I feel like we've just started this conversation, and maybe we'll have you back. Been great to talk with you. How can people find out more about you, John, or how can they reach you?

John McLaughlin:

I have a phone number. May I give that out over the age?

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes, sure.

John McLaughlin:

It's 522-4465. You can find me on Facebook and you can contact me that way. I do not have a website. I do have email which is simply john dwyer mcel mclol.com and are you accepting new patients? Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And we will put this all on the Dr. Lisa website. So wonderful people will be able to get in touch and learn how to laugh and disintegrate from their selves and

Genevieve Morgan:

all the good things that you offer.

John McLaughlin:

And reintegrate.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And reintegrate.

John McLaughlin:

That's the important thing. We don't want disintegrated people putting ourselves back together, but in a different way and living. And living. Dare to live well with that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We will leave you. And thanks so much for coming in.

John McLaughlin:

Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Jen.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. We've had the good fortune of being associated with the Telling Room from the very beginning. Our very first show featured an interview with Gibson Faye LeBlanc, who was, I believe, the outgoing president, director, executive director. Executive Director Genevieve Morgan is correcting me because she's very involved with the Telling Room herself, but he was one of our first guests. And so we're circling back around about a half a year later, and we're about to celebrate an interesting and exciting event on April 5th. So I'm going to bring in our Glitterati guests to talk about it. So this is Glitterati, the event on April 5 to raise money for the Telling Room. Thank you for coming in today.

Celine Kuhn:

Thank you for having us.

Heather Davis:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And your names are?

Heather Davis:

I'm Heather Davis. I'm the executive director of the Telling Room.

Celine Kuhn:

And I'm Celine Kuhn. I'm the vice president of the Telling Room board.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, Genevieve has given us a little bit of background sort of over time about the Telling Room. And Gibson came in on the first episode of the first Podcast that's still out there that people can listen to if they go to itunes. But I'd like a little bit more background about the Telling Room.

Heather Davis:

Absolutely. The Telling Room was founded in 2004 by three local writers, Sarah Corbett, Mike Paternini, and Susan Connelly. And they have incredibly successful careers as writers for the New York Times magazine gq. They're all published authors, and they travel the world to gather stories, but they make their home in Portland, Maine. And what they decided was that they wanted to be more involved in their community. And so they gathered together a group of volunteer writers and educators to go into the schools and start offering free writing programs. And from there, they developed a number of different projects that engaged local kids in telling their stories, publishing them, and then giving those kids a real audience for their work by touring their stories around. They had gallery presentations that toured around, and they did public readings of their work. So from there, the Telling Room was born. We became a nonprofit in 2006, and we've grown from having one staff person in a very small budget to now serving 2,000 students between the ages of 6 and 18. Every year, we have eight staff members, and we offer a variety of free creative writing and arts programs to the community.

Genevieve Morgan:

So Glitterati is on April 5. Tell us what we're gonna find out, what we're gonna do.

Heather Davis:

So this is our second annual bash. We started offering it last year, and it's sort of the Telling Room's first major fundraiser for its program. So it's called a sparkling literary ball. We're gonna feature many notable authors. We're gonna have great live music, catering by Blue elephants. The event takes place at the Masonic Temple on Congress street, which is a really incredible building if you haven't been there. It's a historic. It's on the historic register. So throughout the evening, there will be tours of the space and where the Masons meet, which is very mysterious and interesting.

Celine Kuhn:

It has an amphitheater that can seat 700 people.

Heather Davis:

Absolutely.

Celine Kuhn:

Original furniture and artwork and marble.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So the Masons, this very sort of Da Vinci Code is.

Celine Kuhn:

Yes, yes, exactly. Secret handshakes.

Genevieve Morgan:

And what is gonna happen at Glitterati, aside from the live music? We have an auction coming, right?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Mm.

Celine Kuhn:

Well, we have a pre party for authors that will take place at 5:30, and people can mingle with the authors. Do you want to name a few?

Heather Davis:

So some of the authors that are coming are Mary Poles, who's a local writer, and Ron Curry Jr. Who published a book called Everything Matters. It's a really fantastic Book we'll have who else is on our list?

Genevieve Morgan:

There's Claire Massoud. Claire Massoud, James Wood, Sarah Bronstein, who is a favorite of Maine magazine. She and I write for Maine magazine, number of others.

Heather Davis:

And her husband, Justin Tucing, who's a really accomplished author, is going to be there as well. Jed Coffin, he's a writer living in Brunswick who has a new memoir coming out soon, but he's known for writing about year that he spent in Thailand, getting to know his ancestry. And so there's, and there's many more authors, but they're going to be there all throughout the night to mingle with. And like Celine said, we're having a special champagne reception where, you know, if you're really have been dying to ask these writers a few questions about, you know, how they became writers or, you know, or their lives, that's a great chance to come and mingle with them really in an intimate setting.

Genevieve Morgan:

And there's another connection too, which is Glitterati, sponsored by Maine Magazine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I was at Glitterati last year and you did a really great job. I think I remember that there were actually some of the writers there as well. Is that going to happen this year?

Heather Davis:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So some of the young writers, not just the published writers.

Heather Davis:

Yeah, because it's, I mean, we have a couple of goals with Glitterati. One is to throw an incredible party. We want everyone to come, whether they know what the Telling Room is or not, to have a really great experience.

Genevieve Morgan:

Writers throw amazing parties. It started with Ernest Hemingway and it's continuing today in Portland, Maine.

Heather Davis:

Yes, absolutely. And so we want to throw a great party, but it's also, it is for a cause. It is to support our mission. And so we want some of our students to take to the stage to remind party goers why they're there. It's because of people coming to parties like this and spending their time and investing their resources, bidding on the auction, buying tickets, having this great experience. Experience. We take that. And that goes directly towards being able to offer our programs to kids, all of which are free. So it's a big, it's an important party for us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How can people find out more about the Telling Room?

Celine Kuhn:

Well, they can visit thetellingroom.org

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and do you have a Facebook page?

Celine Kuhn:

We do have a Facebook page.

Heather Davis:

We do. We have a young, savvy staff. So we're everywhere. We have not only a Facebook page, but a Twitter feed, a Pinterest site, a Flickr page and a YouTube channel. It's almost embarrassing. I mean, but we have we sort of have the whole spectrum of social media and on the homepage of tellingroom.org, you can find really quick, easy buttons to each of those things.

Genevieve Morgan:

And will you speak really briefly about the movie that David Michael Jon is making? Because you can see that on YouTube and on Facebook.

Heather Davis:

Absolutely. This year we have a program called Young Writers and Leaders that's a nine month long program for refugee and immigrant teenagers. They're with us twice a week after school during the entire school year. Part of what they do is they complete a major piece of writing for publication and they also complete another creative project because we really like to help kids tell stories in a variety of media, which is really helpful going into the 21st century. They need that broad skill set. Last year they created a whole repertoire of hip hop songs and spoken word that they performed. And this year they're making a film with a local filmmaker named David Michael John. He made a movie called My Heart is an Idiot that's starting to be shown nationally and features Ira Glass and other notable people talking about love. And he is really generously giving a lot of his time to work with our students this year the project is also being overseen by Sonja Tomlinson, a local hip hop artist and educator. They're working with the kids to tell their stories about coming to Maine and sort of what myths they held about America and about Maine and what myths Maine and America might have held about them. They're each creating a short segment that will blend together in a feature length film that we're going to premiere on May 24th at Space Gallery.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that will be after the April Glitterati event.

Heather Davis:

It will be after the April Glitterati event. But some of those young writers and leaders students will be at Glitterati either reading or talking about their work. So that's going to be really exciting.

Genevieve Morgan:

Celine, how do we buy tickets to Glitterati?

Celine Kuhn:

You can buy tickets@tellingroom.org or you can access it through brownpapertickets.com and just type in Glitterati.

Genevieve Morgan:

And on the Facebook page we have

Heather Davis:

a Glitterati event set up on Facebook and there are links to buy tickets there as well, so. Absolutely. But it all comes back to tellingroom.org and the Brown paper tickets site.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Celine and Heather, thank you so much for coming in today and talking to us about the Telling Room and Glitterati and all the projects you're doing. I see. Suspect that the reach is going to continue out into the community and we appreciate the work you're doing.

Celine Kuhn:

It's our pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Heather Davis:

Yeah, thank you for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 29, Laughter, which aired first on Sunday, April 1, 2012. Today's guests included writer, director and comedian Tim Ferrell John McLaughlin, spiritual counselor and holistic astrologer and Celine Kuhn and Heather Davis from the Telling Room discussing the event coming up very soon. Glitterati. These guests gave us their perspective on the importance of laughter and telling stories and generally having a sense of lightness and joy in one's life. For more information about these guests, Please go to drlisabelisle.com to download this podcast or any other of our past 28 podcasts, we suggest that you go to iTunes Dr. Lisa Belisle and maybe even sign up as a subscriber. We appreciate your joining us every week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour M podcast and we hope that you will be inspired to go out and laugh and find joy in your own worlds. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being a part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam. Sa.