Laugh Your Way into Your Week with Tonight's HeartStart Call (not to be missed!): Sheva Carr Interviews Stand-up Comic Vanda Mikoloski on Vanda-lisms to end your Stress.

HeartStart to Your Week, Monday, May 5th
5:00pm - 6:00pm PST

Free Conference Call
Conference Dial-in Number: (605) 990-0700
Participant Access Code: 992522#

"I think if Fyera has a sound, it's laughter."

-Vanda

Why does laughter feel so good?

What is this apparent link between laughter, sharing, love, truth, joy, connection and stress relief?

Why does laughter help heart issues like high blood pressure?

What about laughter and enlightenment? Is laughter enlightenment?

In this interview with �Spiritually Incorrect� comic/yogini, Vanda Mikoloski, we will explore these questions and have fun �enlightening up� �sharing some ha-has and some a-has.

"Laughter is people realizing they�re not alone."

-Uncle Dirty, comic

Vanda's Story

I began my official stand-up comedy career in 1982 at New York City�s famous Catch a Rising Star comedy club. But my use of comedy started before that, after my big brother, Bryan died at age 15. I made a decision to never feel that pain again and always controlled the amount of love I would let in. In this case, humor became a control, a barrier to love. Just like any strong suit in the personality, it has its up side and down side. I used humor to keep people at a distance.

After many years of thinking I didn�t have love in my life because the wrong people were coming along, a friend suggested that perhaps the reason all my relationships didn�t work out was� ME! ME? Could that be?

So I left show business and moved to the Pacific Northwest to �check in, rather than check out,� clean up my act and study metaphysics. I became a yoga teacher and toured with the Dixie Chicks. Because of my irreverent style, I became known as �The Wild Woman of Yoga.�

I began to explore the possibilities of letting love in, of being willing to love and be loved even though the risk of loss of the object of one�s love is always there. I fell in love with a man who continues to be the dearest friend of my life. We fell out of love, we deepened our love. We reviewed the form our connection takes and decided it is not a romantic liason. We are still behind each other 100%. How fulfilling, without attachment.

The idea that love could be a ME-based thing, something I generate, began to inform my work as a comic. Now all of my relationships work out. They may not take the form of a romantic liason, but they all work out. And the comedy I do now is an excuse to love people for a living and receive their love.

I�m delighted and honored to be exploring these ideas with Sheva, a pioneer in the new understanding of the wisdom and power of the heart.

Sheva's Notes:

My father was hilarious. Often his sense of humor broke the ice where nothing else worked. One of the most stressful times in my life was when he was dying. He had been in a coma for a week, having suffered a sudden heart attack, and finally the doctor's assessed that he was brain dead and decided to "pull the plug." It was a sober and tense time for my mother, my brother and I. We argued about how it should be done, who should be there, whether the doctor's were right or wrong. We argued about who should drive, and what restaurant to attempt an aimless dinner in. We were grieving and it seemed like the stress had nowhere else to go but toward one another.

We all held him in our arms at the hospital, stagnant and silent like a swamp as his heart rate slowed in the absence of machines to keep him alive. Aeons seemed to pass, and we even got impatient at certain moments. "Get if over with already!" You could cut the air in the room with a rubber spatula it was so thick and sticky. Then- his breath stopped. Ours stopped with it. Was this it? Was my father no longer here? How could this be? It was so strange. The nurse politely stepped in and, with deep sympathy, said, "He's gone." She stepped out to respect our privacy. And sixty seconds later, just as he had throughout the years with his snoring, my father snorted a loud and obnoxious inhale through his flaring nostrils as if, in typical Ron Carr style, to say, "F--- you! I'll tell YOU when I am dead!"

My mother, my brother and I burst out laughing. It was the most hilarious thing we had experienced in days. It tickled our funny bones that my father, even from a coma, was still true to form. The humor of the moment brought the three of us together again. It entrained our hearts to a connection to my father that transcended death, and it entrained our hearts with one another such that the events following his death flowed easily and gracefully in mutual support.

Humor is a powerful stress management tool. It lightens the emotional significance we assign to things and brings positive heart based emotions like joy and comradery and compassion into our bodies even in the worst of circumstances. Like when my father died, it can change our point of view on what's happening, and even allow us to find the blessings hiding in disguise. Some of this can be attributed to the what researchers from HeartMath have discovered: positive emotional states translate into ordered heart rhythms, which impacts over 1400 other things in the body including how the brain works. We know that positive emotions, through their impact on heart rhythms and hormones, do indeed boost the immune system. People have written books on healing their cancer through watching comedic movies. Humor not only feels good (Fyera!) but is good for us.

Humor can also help with phobias. I once met a man who took a humor based psyhcotherapy class. Every person in the group was required to do a stand up comedy routine about their worst fears. This man had a phobia of asking women out on a date. Sometimes he would even run away and hide if he saw an attractive woman. After he did his comedy routine, women started asking him out on dates! Humor is transformational.

One of the things I love about teaching the Beginner HeartMath Webinar is that it really allows me and the students in class the opportunity to see the humorous side to our stress. Most people are experiencing stress because they are reacting to modern stressors like traffic or deadlines as if they are saber toothed tigers. There is nothing like writing notes about your reaction to a frustrating e-mail, and realizing that your jaw is getting tight just revving to bite the computer and claw at it, to realize the humor in the fact that our biology has not caught up to our technology. One time, in a fight with my boyfriend, he offered his hand in a gesture of friendship and I leaped back in terror. Both trained in HeartMath, we burst out laughing realizing that I perceived him as predator and myself as prey, because we had been fighting. You can imagine the fight ended with the laughter!

I am honored tonight to bring Vanda to the call, a woman who has started a comedy troupe for the purpose of uplifting consciousness on the planet through humor!

Join us tonight for some laughs, and in Vanda's words some "Ha ha's and ah ha's" and boost your immunity and antiaging hormones in the process!

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Not a problem, listen to the recorded version until May 12th, 2008.

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Playback Number: (641) 985-5108
Access Code: 992522#

To listen to previous Heart Start calls go to www.fyera.com/heartstart.html

For more information about our four evening HeartMath class series e-mail [email protected]

About Vanda:

Passionate about personal growth, she offers powerful spiritual principles and transformational distinctions in a ridiculously funny way that leaves the audience inspired. She begins by questioning our point of view about our point of view and then challenges many of our beliefs about reality, riffing passionately about enlightenment and the healing power of laughter. She opened the movie �What the Bleep do we Know� as it premiered in venues nationwide and she recently co-wrote a film with Mikki Willis called �Enlighten Up!� which won the Elevate Film Festival 2006. With comedian Craig Shoemaker, she is making a documentary about the healing power of laughter due out in 2009.

http://www.vanda.us

Vanda is playful where others are pious and grab-your-gut funny where others are significant. Her observations about the human dilemma are insightful and hysterical! Vanda is where streetwise meets wise. Welcome this audacious zeitgeist in comedy. It is a sorely needed voice in a world can take itself a tad too seriously.

~Mark Vicente, Director, �What the BLEEP Do We Know!?�

Fyera! Beginner HeartMath Workshop

For people who are either looking to get the edge in their performance, struggling with all different types of stressors, or have loved ones who are, can benefit from the Fyera! Beginner HeartMath Workshop.

In the Beginner HeartMath Workshop taught at Fyera! you will
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Learn the science and physiology of what gets in the way of feeling good: ie stress.
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Receive a biofeedback technology called an emWave® Personal Stress Reliever™ that actually shows you your heart rhythms in real time.

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Plug energy drains and learn to recharge energy anywhere anytime.
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Whether you or someone you love has a health concern they want answers for, or is seeking relief from anxiety and depression, this workshop is a place where you can hear the how-to of how to start- with the power of the heart.

To register for a Fyera! Class:
Call (626) 844-7171email: [email protected]
Gift certificates, scholarship donations and scholarships also available

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