Finding Joy in the Face of Adversity: How Laughter Yoga and Gratitude Shape a Life of Wellness with Katy Maag

Have you ever caught yourself in the middle of a full-bellied laugh and felt, for that moment, all was right in the world? Katy Maag, a nurse turned laughter yoga enthusiast, joins me to share how transforming hardships into humor has reshaped her life and the lives of those she touches. In an episode brimming with giggles and wisdom, Katy recounts her journey from the sting of childhood trauma to her advocacy on Capitol Hill, all while championing the cause of heart health through joy and jest. As she opens up about the therapeutic role laughter played in her struggles with bullying and caring for a child with cerebral palsy, you might find a glimmer of your own resilience reflected in her story.

Weaving together the threads of laughter, gratitude, and life coaching, Katy illustrates how these powerful practices can stitch together a fabric of wellness that holds strong, even in the toughest times. Her tales of bringing chuckles to the cardiac rehab room and lightening the load of stressed caregivers during the pandemic are not just heartwarming—they're a testament to the healing nature of humor. Whether you're looking for strategies to boost your own well-being or simply curious about the intersection of health and hilarity, this episode with Katy Maag will leave you uplifted and, quite possibly, with a new perspective on the laughable moments life throws your way.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello there and welcome back to the Overcome Yourself podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with Katie Mag, and Katie read two minutes of her story at the Stop Writing, start Selling Summit. She blew us away, so I'm so excited to introduce her here to you today. So, katie, take it away, tell us about you and tell us about your amazing story.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Oh, thank you. My name is Katie Mag. I'm a co-author to two books the Central Alamonologue and Live, live and Wow. I just had an article published in a magazine, a vision-made magazine, on life for yoga and how much benefits people can get for it. I've done that. I'm a nurse. I've been a nurse for over three decades. I've been doing speaking engagements since the mid-90s.

Speaker 2: 0:58

I actually started out as a nurse of hope and I would speak on cancer and what to look for if you have cancer. And then I've been a cardiac rehab nurse. I go to the Hill and advocate for heart health and I've been on different committees. And then as a kid, I had a lot of traumatic things happen to me. My first memory is actually when my dad had passed away and my grandma took us to the funeral home and she's like now, make sure you take a good look, because this is going to be a long time before you see him again, and my mom was not mentally well so I helped take care of her. I missed 45 days of school my junior year. Most people when they graduate high school, they look to see if their diploma sign on my head. I know it wasn't. I'm like, oh, whatever, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Basically, I would use humor a lot when I was growing up and I kind of didn't realize I did until I got older and I discovered I do cardiac rehab and my patients were exercising with their ears to their shoulders and I'm like, how can you do that? I know they're nervous and scared, so I started looking into ways to kind of help relieve their stress and I found laughter yoga. But we don't have it in our area so I had to go down to Cincinnati and be trained. First time I went, I'll be honest, they're a little more liberal than I am. I have no problem with that, but just in the area I live was more conservative, so I was kind of nervous oh my gosh, what's going to happen? We start in and we do this whole hour session and when we're done I'm looking around, looking at everybody and their faces are smoother and they look younger and I'm like, yes, fountain of youth, here I come. I knew right then and how much better I felt just doing that. And then I went on and became certified in laughter yoga leader Teachers like to teach other people and then I discovered the applied therapeutic humorous group.

Speaker 2: 2:52

So what that is is an organization that are a lot of teachers and medical professionals, a lot of people that realize how much benefit laughter has, or humor has, on the human body, whether you're a little kid or you know you're older and everybody can laugh. You can, you know. Actually that's one of the first things kids do as a social interaction is laughter. People look at me when I tell them that I'm like. They don't even talk and they still can laugh at you first and they're like, wow, but you think about it is.

Speaker 2: 3:28

And the studies show that, like children laugh three to 400 times a day, adults 17. Why? Because it gets into our amygdala. We have to be serious, we have to do this, this, this, this and this and we kind of lose our bigger and our BIM and our fun and you know all that just because we're going through the motions just to get to the next, to the next best, instead of taking a step back, enjoying the time, being grateful for what you have, because building and you can really work K Over WWW devotional at.

Speaker 2: 3:58

We just started focusing on Nothing's guaranteed in life. Nothing is guaranteed in life. So I try to help facilitate more laughter for people, whether it be in corporations or organizations. Or I even put a sign on a bathroom one time, just because it wasn't nothing nasty. It was like please remain seated until the entire performance is done. Number one it wasn't nothing mean, or it was just enough that somebody was sitting there and looked at it and just kind of laughed a little bit. Just enough, it wasn't, it wasn't neurogatory. Just add a little more humor to their day. I try to add humor wherever I can. I'm very quick with it is what I'm told. I guess that's good, bad. So.

Speaker 1: 4:49

That is amazing. That is like so amazing. So we got a small taste of laughter yoga in the Stop Writing, start Selling Summit, because one of your students also spoke at the summit Olivia as a shout out to Olivia for connecting us to you, and so it was amazing. It was amazing to see the different expressions of laughter. Can you give us an example of a laughter yoga exercise we can do?

Speaker 2: 5:17

I can. Actually I couple when you first do it. I'll be honest, I've done it before on podcasts and the lady she's like, well, you know this feels kind of odd. I'm like correct it does when you first start doing it because, number one, you're not used to it. Number two, it is kind of odd if you've never done it before. But it's like any other yoga practice or any other modality of exercise. Until you get used to it it's both kind of odd. It's like riding a bike with only one foot. You know you can do it. It's just a little hard, you know.

Speaker 2: 5:49

But one I usually do and I start off with it's just because laughter yoga is the practice of laughing and clapping your hands because of the pressure points in our hands. So it elicits that good feeling in our hands because the first thing you do what do you do with little kids? Paddy cake, paddy cake, paddy cake and that's a very good social interaction that they had and brings those positive memories back For one, plus pressure points in our hands, and then we do laughing and then we do a grounding at the end. But one thing that's called laughter yoga is because you increase oxygen to your lungs by at least 50%. So I usually have people take a couple deep breaths the first two just slowly let out, and then the third one just laugh.

Speaker 2: 6:34

You can laugh a little laugh if you want, or hearty laugh if you want, it doesn't matter. So if you want to practice now, we'll just practice that just briefly a little bit, okay. So if you wanna take a deep breath in and slowly let's exhale out, take another deep breath in nice and slow and easy, slowly let's go out. We're going to do that again when we get to it we're going to laugh. You can laugh a little or you can laugh a lot. Take a deep breath in.

Speaker 1: 7:40

Laugh.

Speaker 2: 7:51

You can laugh a lot. Have you ever drove your car or walked? You don't know what they're laughing at. It's a team builder.

Speaker 1: 8:01

It's hard to be mad at somebody after you've laughed at them. It feels good, you're like, oh, I'm laughing, that's wonderful, that's a great exercise to add to our breathing. A lot of times we do breathing, we do that, we do that and that is amazing Because breathing centers you and it helps you feel present and helps you ground yourself. But then to end with some laughter just to bring yourself up, laughter is the best medicine, right, and we can choose. We can choose to laugh.

Speaker 1: 8:34

It might be a little awkward at first but even practicing with Olivia, we've learned. We've learned a lot. We've learned a lot.

Speaker 1: 8:45

I love that one that she taught us and it does bring us back to that childhood right, where we would get excited and we would celebrate the small things. And that's going to like when we choose to do those things, that's going to release those chemicals, because our brain doesn't really know the difference. So we start feeling good and those feel good, chemicals are released and we're just helping ourselves with these tiny things. And we're just helping ourselves with these tiny things and we're just helping ourselves with these tiny things. I love that Because when we are, you know my book I talk about practicing gratitude and we have to be practicing in the moments when we don't necessarily need it, when things are going well, so that when it hits the fan, we have something right to rely on. Oh look, there it is. Because it's harder right, it's harder when things aren't going well to refocus, and I think that's a great idea of incorporating laughter Just to help us really reframe and see things in a different way, because laughter just brings it out of us. So I love that so much. Thank you for doing that.

Speaker 1: 9:49

So you mentioned that in the journey of overcoming yourself, you mentioned that humor was a big part of that. So can you talk to me a little bit more about that journey and how you discovered that?

Speaker 2: 10:06

I guess I discovered it. I would be very quick-witted on and I I don't typically make fun of somebody else because I know how it is. I used to weigh 350 pounds. So you know you think about it. I was bullied as a kid because I didn't go to school, I mean, but you know I don't know very many people that were not bullied, to be honest with you, and it's hard. It's hard nowadays to try to teach your children that being bullied is not about you know they they're technically something wrong with that person or they feel threatened. Like I tell my younger son when he was younger, I'm like look, they never kick a dead dog, do they? No offense, pita, don't come after me. But you know they don't kick a dead dog?

Speaker 2: 10:50

They don't. But if there's something that they feel like they're threatened or somebody, they feel like some and they resonate with each other some way or they wouldn't. You know they want to make them feel worse or bad or whatever. So, like I said, I was bullied. I had probably any kind of abuse you could think of. I've surpassed it, overcome it, whatever. My first child, my oldest child, was a pound and 12 ounces at birth and, to be honest, he had a trait for three months he has cerebral palsy. He he's my full-time caregiving job and then I have a part-time job and then I'm a regular job, you know, but I have to use laughter to get through some of that sometimes and I've even went out there to their clinic and we're not clinic, they're day camp and done laughter with some of those people.

Speaker 2: 11:40

And it's kind of funny because I've done laughter with little kids and I've done it all the way up, two senior citizens and there's not anybody who can't laugh. It's just, you know, you need to choose to laugh, because when you first laugh and you're not doing it for a feel of laughter, but actually it builds, and until you actually build and actually do real laughter, which is one that you know, positive chemicals come out. But I've used it a lot. I've had to use it just to keep myself in perspective of okay, this is short, you know. You know, would I tell you, no, I never fell and couldn't get out of something? No, I wouldn't say that.

Speaker 2: 12:26

I've had a manager, a previous manager, that was just not a nice person and I allowed her to take time and space in my head and I about done something that was very, very to the extreme. You'll have to read my book. But because I let her, I let her take space and time instead of, you know, getting back to you know, her opinion really doesn't matter. You know, why did I? Why did I allow that?

Speaker 2: 12:55

So I started laughing more high and it's kind of funny because once you kind of get used to the laughter that was a question this morning somebody put out on Facebook well, what do you do for self care? Well, I spend 320 minutes a day on self care because you need to exercise so many times a day, you need to meditate or be grounded with gratitude, and even you know thought process and laughter. So I spend 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon and 20 minutes in evening is more doable for me than just saying, oh, it's an hour, that's it. So I have to keep practicing that just to keep myself going. And I'll be honest, I got some really crazy friends who won't you know. They tease me and I tease them back and just laughing I mean, we were laughing last night about something, just just crazy.

Speaker 2: 13:48

We were playing scatting boards and they're like how did you think of those things so fast? I said, look, I do improv. You learned to think quick.

Speaker 1: 13:59

That's wonderful. I absolutely love it because bringing laughter intentionally into everything that we do, like you said, it lightens up the situation, like even at home, just having fun, letting loose, you know, and being able to laugh together. It's like eating together, like there's a bonds, like you said. And I love the example of babies, like that's the first thing they do in your right and when you hear baby laugh, that's like. That's like the purest sound in the world, right, it's just like this purity to it and we can stay true to that. We can come back to that in our laughter, when we enjoy, when we laugh with our families, when we laugh by ourselves, we watch something funny. So like, if it's tough for us, you know, maybe going and watching like a really funny, like clean funny YouTube video or something that'll help raise our spirits.

Speaker 1: 14:54

I love how you mentioned that you have this habit, cause in my book you know, the three big themes we talk about is gratitude, the success habits tiny, tiny, tiny success habits and then seeing the strength, what's actually the strength and what you always thought was your weakness, and so I love how you talk about you've incorporated gratitude, because gratitude is just like such a huge foundation for me. And then the success habit. One of your success habits is doing your laughter 20 minutes a day. And so even if we don't start with that, right, if we add, like we do our, you know some of my success habits, like 10,000 steps, drinking my water, you know, you know reading, doing certain things, but adding hey, let me laugh, even if it's for one minute, let me sit down, take a few deep breaths and take 30 seconds of just focused laughter until it just comes out of you, right? Cause then you start laughing at yourself, cause you're like what am I doing? I must look hilarious. And then you start laughing, right?

Speaker 2: 15:57

Yes.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Yes, yes. And then just bringing that up, I absolutely love that, even if it's for no reason. Just laugh for no reason. Sometimes I'll be like walking around and I'll start laughing and my partner's like what are you laughing at? I just thought of something funny. I don't think I can explain it to you, but it's hilarious. So I'm going to laugh and then we'll move on, you know. So, yes, I absolutely love that. And so let's talk about how do we, how do we hang out with you, how do we follow you on social media, how do we work with you?

Speaker 2: 16:30

Well, I am also a happiness coach, oddly enough, but I'm also a happiness coach. I have a webpage called KM Wellness Consulting and I'm on LinkedIn. I'm still working on that. That's a work in progress. That's always a work in progress, because I got 20 million hats that I'm wearing. Some of the hats are funny, some of them not so much, but you know, I love it.

Speaker 2: 16:53

I'm working more and becoming an individual coach versus I can do both, but I've had such, like I said, I've had such a diverse background and well, the one book I said I'm season with wisecracks because, yeah, I usually like to laugh, but it doesn't mean that I've stopped me and laughter changes your perspective. So I'm trying to get more and more one-on-one customers, of course, but corporate also. I had a company reach out and said our caregivers are actually starting to struggle because of the pandemic, which, frightfully so, they really are and wanna know how we can incorporate laughter into the business. And I said we can do that because it's you know, you think about everybody who wants to know. What is it for me if I do this?

Speaker 2: 17:43

Well, here's the thing as a corporate person if your staff is more unified because they've laughed together or have a better understanding of each other or feel like they're a part of us, something they're gonna stay longer and that, just if you're a caregiver, that goes down into who you've taken care of, then whatever, like I usually laugh with my patients sometimes, I have to laugh sometimes when they come in and they're all nervous and whatever, and I get it. I hate being on the scale. As I said, I weigh 350 pounds and everybody's like, oh, I gotta get on the scale. I'm like I know you gotta stop when you get to underwear, though I just that's the only criteria, you know. It's just enough that they look at me and laugh, you know. I'm like I'm just kidding, kidding, kidding, you know, but it's enough to break the because it is nerve-wracking, because they are coming in and being scary.

Speaker 1: 18:36

It is scary Going you know, working in medicine is the medical field is a monster, right, like the hours are long, it's very stressful, like you don't stop, the people are not very nice sometimes and there's a lot to deal with. And then, as a patient going in, it's very scary because you don't know what they're about to tell you or you don't know what's gonna happen. And, oh my God, was this lady gonna be one of those mean ladies? Now you know, because there, you know, because there's so many factors, and so that's amazing. And then the contact information for so speaking, corporate and doing these things. That's on your website as well, right?

Speaker 2: 19:13

Yes, it is Yep, it has my email that you can contact me. It's on LinkedIn. You can contact me there. As I said, I'm trying to get more one on one plus one more one on one, because I think people would do more one on one. I can help them. I'm also a stress management coach. Besides, I actually thought the first one was like, oh, that's pretty interesting. So I did a second one and then I did a brain health coaching class. That was very interesting because it talked about gratitude and talked about laughter and talked about all these things already do. So it incorporates it all and just made it more conducive. But gratitude.

Speaker 1: 19:51

I stumbled into gratitude and, you know, the more research I do, the more I realize that this is it. You know, it's not like this woo woo thing Like there is like measurable differences in the brain. There's measurable differences in like perspective, like there are, you know, like when nurses are surveyed about cancer patients and they're like Well, what is you know who's most likely to be able to overcome this? And the nurses will be like, well, whoever's the most grateful? The ones that have the most grateful attitude are the ones that are usually able to overcome, and obviously not not in all cases, but it's significant enough that the nurses are pointing this out. And so this is not only in in these situations, but in another podcast episode we also talked about how gratitude is not like a past thing. Right, we think about, we're grateful for the past, but because it changes our perspective, gratitude is actually like a future thing, so we are actually reforming.

Speaker 1: 20:55

It's the end. There's so much to dig into with gratitude Like this is. This is real scientific stuff, you know, and so it's absolutely incredible, and I love how you brought in the element of laughter to that. That is not something that I talked about and that's definitely, you know a vein that I'd love to dig down. That is absolutely incredible, and so for your one on one clients as well. If someone's interested in working with you one on one, they would just go to the website as well. Is there a specific spot you need them to go?

Speaker 2: 21:29

Yes, there is a calendar link, perfect.

Speaker 1: 21:34

Perfect and right on the website, so we will make sure that all of those links are down below, as well as those books. You have more than one book, right, katie?

Speaker 2: 21:42

Yeah, actually funny, they're behind me. One is. Cinderella monologues. The other ones live life and wow. And then Kyle Edgeall is a five year PD cumbers and she did my. She did my caricature, which I think is kind of funny in a way.

Speaker 1: 21:59

Show us. Yes, it's beautiful, oh, that's gorgeous. Look at that hair.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Yeah natural, I absolutely love it. Well, katie, before we sign off here, first of all I want to tell you you are an absolute superhero. Like with everything that you do, being a mom is being a superhero, but being a mom that's also a caretaker full time is next level. I grew up with my great grandparents. I remember from a very small age helping my grandma prick her fingers to check her stuff and then doing my grandma's feeding through her feeding tube when she was going through cancer, and so a lot of people don't understand the toll that it takes on people to be a caretaker. It is, it is really a full time thing, and so I just want to tip my hat to you and commend you and tell you that you are absolutely amazing and I'm proud of you and I'm so grateful for you.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Thank you, I am a viewer as well. Nicole, thank you so much. You can even be grateful for laugh.

Speaker 1: 23:13

Yes, so so, katie, now, before we sign off, I would love to know, you know, what is one final tip that you would like to leave with our audience about laughter, about life.

Speaker 2: 23:28

Oh boy, when. Here's the thing people don't grow old. They forget to laugh, which makes getting old even harder. Does that make sense? Yes, growing old is a privilege. Not everybody gets to do that. But, you get to choose. Look at Betty White. Look how a magnificent life and she was quick-witted and fun and light hard until the end. She, you know, she got to choose how she wanted to be. That way she got to choose.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Yes, I love that, and as someone whose mom died when she was 29, you know, my mom was only 29. I was one and a half I know exactly what you mean. You know, growing old is a privilege and so, yeah, it's beautiful to do it with laughter, to do it with grace, to do it with gratitude, right, and so to not miss what could have been to miss the past, right. Because even you always kind of you look back on some stages and you're like I wish I knew then what I know now.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Right, but sorry, come on.

Speaker 1: 24:41

No, no, you should have. And that's where gratitude, that's where laughter, that's where being present and taking breaths, we realize because if we don't enjoy right now, then the next season we're going to be looking back at this, the season, the same way. And so, oh my god, it's just beautiful. It's beautiful. I love you so much, katie. Thank you so so much for being here. This has been amazing and we will see each other on the World Wide Web. We'll see you next time. Alright, thanks, nicole. Thank you, bye.