Laughter Is Medicine: Joy as a Nervous System Reset

Featuring Melissa Abell

What if laughter isn’t a break from healing… but part of the healing itself?

In this uplifting and surprisingly practical conversation, Dr. Sandra Marie welcomes intuitive reader and teacher Melissa Abell to explore how humor, play, and spiritual lightness help regulate the body, restore perspective, and reconnect us with a sense of safety.

While so much growth work focuses on effort, processing, and fixing what’s wrong, Melissa opens another doorway, one available in ordinary moments, shared smiles, absurd mishaps, and even deliberate practice.

Together they bridge neuroscience, trauma recovery, intuitive guidance, and lived experience to ask:

👉 What if joy is not a reward at the end of the journey?

👉 What if it’s fuel for the path itself?

You’ll hear stories of “pre-emptive joy,” the biology of laughter, how connection changes our state, and why many therapists believe trauma healing is impossible without moments of play.

The episode closes with a gentle, guided 90-second nervous system reset you can return to anytime.

In this conversation:

• Why laughter immediately shifts us into the present moment

• What happens in the body during humor and connection

• The role of shared laughter in co-regulation

• How children naturally access vitality through play

• Building a personal “laughter library”

• Why joy can prepare us for difficult experiences

• The difference between supportive lightness and avoidance

• How humor shows up in caregiving, emergency settings, and hospice

• Laughter as a fast track to alignment

• Simple ways to weave more ease into daily life

Enjoy this The Art of Nervous System Care Summit replay.

Bio: Melissa Abell is an intrepid self-explorer, Melissa devoured her mother's Seth Material and Edgar Cayce books while learning to read at age six and never stopped leaning in to life's mysteries and the seeker's path. Schooled at England's Arthur Findlay Spiritualist College and long active in astrology, tarot, numerology, Reiki, angelic studies and spirit mediumship, she has been a teacher and student of myriad aspects of spirituality and metaphysics for decades.

Links:

Melissa Abell

Email: soulawakeningsession@gmail.com