INTERVIEW: Meet The Laughing Lovebugs Who Are Promoting Spiritual Healing Through Laughter Yoga
With all the adversities we face in life, you must create a daily routine that makes room for you to give yourself grace and discover joy.
Lauren and Alik, the Laughing Lovebugs, are a husband and wife team of Certified Laughter Yoga Experts attempting to cultivate human connection via laughter.
Scientific studies show that laughter yoga strengthens the immune system, increases the presence of infection-fighting antibodies, alleviates pain, relieves tensions, lowers blood pressure, controls blood sugar, and keeps the heart healthy. Other proven benefits include but are not limited to a boost in confidence and motivation, reduced burnout, and improved sleeping patterns.
Since launching their business, they've offered customized laughter yoga sessions for individuals, groups, couples, workplaces, schools, mental health organizations, summits, retreats, hospitals, senior centers, and more. They've also partnered with corporations such as Google, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, LYFT, Paypal, 1800 Flowers, and more.
We recently had the opportunity to chat with the couple to discuss the inspiration behind providing these services, the pros and cons of being in business with your partner, overall goals, and more. Check out the full interview below:
What inspired you to pursue Laughter Yoga rather than traditional yoga services?
Knowing us now, you’d be amazed to learn that before experiencing this practice, there was a lot less laughter in our lives. Things were tough… challenging.
When we made the shift to laughter yoga and started Laughing Lovebugs, we were each in a vulnerable place with our careers. Lauren had been temporarily laid off due to budget cuts. The lay-off lasted a long time, but finally got hired again — but into a highly stressful situation. She was working as a behaviorist with individuals with developmental disabilities and severe behavioral issues. A highly intense work environment after enduring the stress of unemployment was enough to cause her health to suffer. As a result of this all, Lauren experienced numerous stress-induced health issues.
At the time Alik, a commercial carpenter got injured when a brace fell from above while working on a high rise. He went on disability and thereafter got laid off. The spike in stress for both of them were intolerable. Overall, They both realized something had to change with poor stress management; Lauren did not know how to emotionally regulate and Alik had no way, of emotional release.
Meanwhile, through all of that, we were planning our wedding. - Lauren came upon laughter yoga while scrolling through some Google search results about unique ways to relieve stress. She registered for two separate sessions with two different instructors. The first one was interesting, but not life changing. She decided to keep her appointment with the second instructor, and invited Alik to join.
Alik was pretty skeptical, especially since Lauren had told him how non-impactful the first class had been, and he had never done any kind of yoga before, so was hesitant, but went.
We completed a self-evaluation, rating ourselves on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being entirely awful and 10 being “never better.” Alik's initial self-rating was a 2. After a few minutes into the session, there was an undeniable mind and body connection in which he realized he felt different than before the session. He was surprised his number went from a 2 to an 8!
The shift that took place during this session internally for both of us was life changing. Alik and I became avid laughter yoga participants and eventually became certified laughter yoga experts. We knew we had to make it our life’s work to help people experience the power of laughter to transform their lives, feel renewed, alive, happy, and healthy!
What are some of the benefits someone can gain from doing Laughter Yoga?
Laughter yoga (Hasya Yoga) is unlike traditional yoga , no yoga mat or flexibility required- Laughter yoga combines laughter exercises with yoga breathing techniques (Pranayama) which brings more oxygen to our body and brain making us feel more energetic. It's an amazing feeling to lead laughter yoga sessions for people of all walks of life and all ages to cultivate joy, relieve stress, and improve overall health and well-being
An open mind & heart is all you need to bring.... We love that you don't even need to be in a good mood to receive the benefits of laugh yoga.
Some benefits of laughter yoga include the following:
Improves mood
Releases “feel-good hormones” like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins
Lowers cortisol (stress hormones)
Improves Cardiovascular Health
Lowers Blood Pressure
Boosts Immune system
Improves Blood Sugar
Increases Blood Flow
Eases anxiety, anger, stress, depression.
Increases social connection and improves bonds
Improves relaxation
Increases confidence-Heightens feelings of trust, security and safety
What type of adversities did you two have to overcome while being in business together?
We were trained only how to hold laughter yoga sessions in person; when the world shut down due to covid, we remained optimistic l even though we could no longer hold sessions in person. We had to find a way to continue laughter yoga virtually and now we are providing services for people without location limits, just because we did not give up and had an optimistic approach to continue.
Also, we were never trained on how to facilitate a session together as a couple, we had to learn to combine our efforts and assess how each of our skills add value to the united growth of our business. We learn from our mistakes and champion each other through highs and lows while optimizing our communication when challenges arise.
What inspires you to keep going on the days you may not feel like pursuing the element of laughter?
One of our mantras is “The Most important time to laugh is when you feel like you can’t or don’t want to laugh.” We understand that Laughter has multiple health benefits…mental, emotional, physical, and social.
This is not just our business, we actually live a laughter life as this practice has helped us to improve the quality of our lives. We understand that there is an inner child within our soul that desires freedom via laughter.
We love that laughter yoga can be done anywhere to help alleviate, reduce, or eliminate tension, anger, loneliness, anxiety, grief, pain, depression and more. Most importantly, laugh yoga allows the opportunity to experience the present moment.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, what advice would you give someone battling depressive thoughts?
We would offer our empathetic listening while showing compassion and offering gentle reminders that every moment we experience in life is a temporary moment, so you don’t have to believe everything you think when you’re feeling sad. We would let them vent and remind them that they don’t have to go through the challenge alone and assure that we are here to support and help them to cope by normalizing the emotions they are experiencing. We would reassure them that it’s okay to feel ALL emotions and affirming that there is strength in vulnerability-“you are enough” “ you are valuable “
We would offer encouragement to take their time to slowly lift the depressive thoughts by helping them to find resonance and connection with the fullness of who they really are by refocusing on the miracle that they are - just because this person exists.
Forgive yourself , Trust Yourself, be easy on yourself, take a couple seconds, a couple minutes at a time give yourself a break by not making yourself wrong..all life experiences teach us that we are one in love.
Also, the most damaging misconception about finding joy is that you have to have a reason to feel good. That you must earn the right to feel good, and worse yet, that if you don’t feel happy or joyful, it’s because you don’t deserve to. Similarly, people believe that you have to have a reason to laugh. We would encourage “fake” laughter since the body and brain doesn’t know the difference to help the body release the feel good hormones.
What’s your ultimate goal with Laughing Lovebugs? What’s next?
Laughing Lovebugs philosophy is to add value to as many people’s lives as we possibly can by cultivating joy via Laughter Yoga. We set an ongoing intention to ensure that anyone that we engage with benefits as a result of feeling better. We continue to strive to be a catalyst to helping people feel good.
We will have merchandise soon.
Our ultimate goal is to expand our reach to provide our wellness services nationally and internationally and eventually open up a retreat center. We think helping people feel better is important because so many people are stressed, angry, lonely, or depressed. We have a passion to empower, inspire, enlighten, and awaken the inner joy within every single person we interact with.
For more information about the Laughing Lovebugs be sure to follow them on social media @LaughingLovebugs