Meditation and Mirth: Christina Vidovitch's Tips for Turning Grim into Grins

Deb, Well, hey there, lifter uppers, I'm Deb creer, the co host of cancer and comedy, where our mission is to heal cancer impacted people through hope and humor, something we like to call turning the grim into a grin. Well, today on cancer and comedy, we are going to have a live discussion. We love it when we do these with my friend Christina vitovic from the women's health, wealth and happiness podcast. Christina is an expert on mindfulness and addressing anxiety with meditation. What's more, she is an entertainer. We're going to ask her about that, who brings a lot of fun and energy as she inspires women in particular to have a fulfilled life. Who knows what her alter ego? Sylvia Torsten, I did not say that right. Might even pay us a visit. So now here is the host of the cancer and colony podcast, Dr Brad Miller.

Hey, thank you, Deb. It's an honor and a privilege to be with you. I'm excited about today. We've got wonderful Christina with us. She and I met at pod fest event a few months ago, and I even met her buddy, Sylvia, as well. And it's we're gonna have a lot of fun here together, because she deals with some of the areas that you and I like to talk about a lot, which is has to do with how people handle stress and anxiety in their life. Sometimes it's caused by cancer, sometimes it's caused by some other stressors in life. Might be a mental health thing, a job related thing, divorce, relationship issues, workplace kind of things. A lot of times we talk about health related things, but off it almost always revolves around some sort of stress or anxiety and and Christina is going to be help us share a little bit about how she has some approaches in meditation and some other things like that that can be helpful to this. Help to calm us down. We love to do that because we like to take all kinds of innovative and different approaches to helping people deal with that which eats them up alive. You know, cancer, you know, by definition, is kind of the multiplication of cells which eats us up alive physically. But you and I believed, you know it can happen all kinds of ways as well, but we do know that one of the best ways of dealing with that is to be replace it, or to respond to it with a positive attitude, something we like to call coping with hope. And we like to develop our our community here around this area, and we hope that people will always go to cancer and comedy.com/follow, and follow us and you and I and the other people, and check out a lot of the other guests we've had here in cancer and and comedy, as we'd like to say, turn the grim of whatever you're going through into the grin of celebrating life. And so that's what we're here here to do. But one of the things we like to do Deb is to have dumb dad jokes. And so let's have a couple. Are you ready for some dumb jokes?

I wait all week. I know the dumb.

You're just on the edge of your seat. You're just ready. Everybody, everybody is. It's most it's so popular. What do Why do skeletons never get angry? I don't know. Well, nothing gets under their skin.

Cute, cute.

What? One more here. Just one more. Why? What did the Dalmatian say after lunch?

I don't know

Now, that really hit the spot.

Cute. I love these. Like I said, I wait all week for these. I don't know what that says about my life, but

Well, who's our who's our guest today? Tell us a bit more about her, and let's bring her and let's bring her on here.

Well, you know, I met Christina through being a guest on her podcast. And look, there she is, you know. And she is such a wonderful, delightful, funny, caring woman, you know, I mentioned that she has her alter Eagle, Sylvia Torstein, and we'll hear a little bit from Sylvia. But Christina has dealt with anxiety, and one of the things that she wants to help us, and in particular, women do, is deal with that anxiety, and so she's developed several different ways for us to be able to cope. And so please join us in welcoming Christina to the program. Hello, my darling. How are you? Hey.

Thank you. Thank you. Deb, thank you, Brad. I am so excited to be here. You two are so delightful. And when I think about skeletons in the closet, I think it's because, well, they never come out.

No we forget that they don't have skin to get under. I love it well, you know, you do have such a great background, so just tell us a little bit about your background, and then we'll kind of jump into it, because that's what leads us here.

Absolutely. Wow, that's that's a long story, but here's the shortened version. Yeah. Yeah, so my schooling actually was in psychology. I went and I was interested in developmental psychology. I love working with children, as well as autism gender studies, those were my focuses. But as an empath, it's very difficult to take on those emotions and working with people. So I ended up in the entertainment, into ballroom dancing, and another life as Sylvia came along there too, with traveling. So with all of those things, you know, you just never know what life is going to bring along to you. And we're talking about anxiety. I realized younger on in my 20s as I started my business, and I'm away from my family now in a different state, you're doing all those things, and you're depending on yourself, and you're going through these emotions and you don't know and what's the biggest thing that we forget to do? Stop and ask for help, right? It doesn't matter if it's a psychologist, a best friend, your parents, if they're around someone that you can talk to about those things and then finding that strength within ourselves. I ended up starting my business after going through a loss with my father. The first part was him having a stroke. My father had a stroke, and I was told, after visiting him in the hospital, you don't need to be there. You have clients, right? This is my father.

Nothing is more important.

Nothing, because he followed up with another stroke two weeks later, followed by another one, which happened on Father's Day. Oh no. When, when he went into septic shock, we found out he had scabies from a nurse who hadn't been washing her hands or wearing gloves going from patient to patient, which caused his problems. And so I looked at my mother, who's a pediatrician, and saw her crying, and I said, oh, something's wrong my mother has dealt with.

Yeah. She is a person, yes.

And so to see that moment that was my life changer, and how and what am I going to do? Because I need to be there for my father. So I began working on the next piece of my life and saying, I'm going to open my own business. And with that, not only will you have your spring break and your winter break, you will have all the family time that you need, because there's nothing more important than being there and supportive of your family, right? And you know from both of your experiences that your support system is integral to the healing process, right, right? So when mom says you need to come home now.

You're there.

Right? And so that was such a life changer for me and how I've dealt with life and embracing it. First of all, because it's been 21 years since I lost my father, but not a day goes by that he's not with me in some way, some form. And with that being the beginning of my business, the end of my business had to close due to the closures, and right.

Yeah, it couldn't, couldn't ballroom dance when we couldn't be in the same room with people.

So the anxiety riddled within me to the point where I was scratching myself and what's interesting is I learned later that that's something that runs in our family, anxiety my uncle. I don't know if I should tell this story, but I'll tell it anyway, because he won't see this when he was dating somebody that made him nervous, he everywhere he she touched him holding hands. He suddenly had itchy hands, and he goes, I can't do this anymore. He's like, I love you, but you're you're right.

Well, and so many people forget that anxiety is not just, Oh gee, I'm a little upset. Anxiety can be absolutely debilitating.

Yes, absolutely. And that is where I was finding myself with sleepless nights and with this rash that was showing up now on my face, I'm like, Oh, this isn't good this. I need to figure this out. So I actually started by doing little one minute. Videos called one minute calm, and I would film the flowers, and for that moment, take that moment to enjoy my life and the beauty that's around me, to look up in the clouds, film the clouds and say, Wow, there is no greater gift than the nature that's around me. And little by little, I watched my anxiety dissipate just by being conscious of my moment.

Right? Yeah, you were actually practicing mindfulness.

Yes, so, like, you kind of were almost literally doing the stop and smell the roses type of thing. Is that kind of part of this, you know.

Absolutely, and that is when I went into my meditation mindfulness podcast, the first one, where I really took 10 minutes out of my day, and it was self healing. 10 minutes every morning I wake up, I look at one of my videos and look at what was the phrase that I put for anybody who was watching that day, here's a mountain. Are you ready to climb that mountain today? Take a moment and take a breath, because you don't have to climb it just today. Take it step by step and smell the roses. Look at the path, because nothing's greater than when you're gonna be at the top of that mountain. And our life is a journey, right.

Right, right, you know, and you recorded all of these. And so I love that, because if people are struggling to do that on their own, it's, you know, easy to at least start with what you've got. And one of the things that you said really struck me, the the videos are a minute, you know, I think sometimes we always think, oh, you know, we have to sit and we have to spend an hour cogitating our navels, right? And the, you know, a minute really can make a huge difference. And I think that's especially important to somebody who might be going through cancer treatments, because sometimes all we have is a minute, you know, before we're taken in, or we're sitting in the doctor's office waiting for somebody to come talk to us, just sitting and spending a minute thinking about the roses, the pattern on the wall, but whatever it might be to calm ourselves down.

Exactly, and it's those minutes, and that's all it is, sometimes a minute, and that's one of the things I mentioned when I would do your My mindfulness exercises, they were 10 minutes long. I'm like, take 10 minutes for yourself. 24 hours in a day, we can take 10 minutes.

10 minutes is not a lot.

Yeah, breathe and say, wow. What am I thankful for? If you want to make that phone call today, take 10 minutes ago. I only have 10 minutes, but I want to say, Hello, I love you.

Right?

Christine, I want to just ask you there, if you had any piano who's responded to you about, you know, the the meditations that you've done, the the one minute, or the the calming meditations, has anyone kind of responded to you saying, you know, Christina, thank you for sharing this. How's this help? This has helped me? Or some, some, a result of that, you have any stories along that line?

I do a good friend of mine, a long time friend of mine, who we just rekindled our relationship in the last two to three years, started listening to them and went from a very angered, triggered person to a very calm person. She said, I have learned to stop and take a breath before I utter words that might or hurt somebody's feelings, and just go, take a beat, go regain my, my conscious thought, and not just go from my gut feeling.

Right, you know, and, and that's, I think, you know, as we're dealing with cancer, that's one of the things that I think People, many people, experience, is the anger, the why me? You know, the feeling of being out of control. And you know, just taking a minute, 10 minutes, you know, whatever it is that you've got, and thinking, I've got this, I am in control. You know, that brings us back down. And of course, then when that happens, our blood pressure drops, right? Because they don't let you leave the doctor's office if your blood pressure is too high, you know, and and all of these things. But it's it, is it just it? It helps us calm. And then when we're calm, everybody around us tends to calm.

Agreed, and recently, I've taken care of my aunt through two knee replacements and a hip replacement. So being a caregiver when someone's in pain and just taking that minute to go, this is not you. They're having a. Moment where they need to be listened to, right? And they need to go through that moment So smile, just take that breath, let them feel so that now we can both accomplish whatever it is that they need to accomplish, right?

You know, and I love that you mentioned caregivers, because I always tell people there are our superheroes, right? You mentioned we couldn't get through this without them, but they're under an unbelievable amount of stress, because not only are they doing what they're normally doing, they're taking care of whiny, Cranky people with icky things going on, right? You know? And so your techniques, your videos are just as important for them as they are for the person who's experiencing whatever it is.

Exactly. And I'm just gonna toot you as a guest on my podcast, because that's the reason that I started the women's health, wealth and happiness, because it's about our shared experiences. When we have the opportunity to listen to somebody else, when we're not ready to talk ourselves about what we're going through, it's an opportunity to go, oh, wow, I'm not alone. And so I can listen to Deb's story and how brave she's been. And here it is, almost 10 years later, going through this journey, and there is nothing more wonderful to me than to be able to share those pieces, and those who are ready to talk about come in just like you are.

I love them well, and thank you, yeah, but we are the cancer comedy podcast, so let's switch to the other side now, because you know it. We need both, right? We need to calm ourselves, but as we know, we also need to laugh at ourselves, at the situation, all of those things. So tell us, introduce us to Sylvia Torstein, and explain to us a little bit about your alter ego.

Well, Sylvia can come in just a moment, but yes, Sylvia was developed simply for the joy of laughter. That is absolutely she loves life. She grabs it by the horns. She says things that never know what's going to come out of her mouth all any time. But that is wonderful of who she is. She loves traveling. She loves to imbibe a bit, cruising and karaoke.

And I think it's kind of cool. You, somehow you've integrated your you, you have a psycho psychology background. You have this meditation aspect and ballroom dancing and so on, and entertainment, they're all integrated here. And somehow the mix from from my eye, it seems to work. So that's awesome. And that's kind of where we like to live, Deb and I do kind of then intersection that, that space between, kind of the tragedy and the triumph there, then sometimes that's the comedic thing. So awesome, right?

Absolutely, well, and, and we we joke, we laugh, you know, all of those things. But why did you decide that you needed an alter ego and that, you know, you you weren't just expressing what Sylvia expresses?

That's a very good question.

Good little girl there, right, who behaves.

Now when, when Sylvia comes out, you know, it's me, but it is an opportunity for me to say the things that I can't say as Christina, and when you're in Ballroom in particular where it's all about the posing and the smile.

Everybody's very serious.

And yeah, Dancing with the star is my favorite show, right? Yes, there are no words that come out of your mouth. You're just smiling and holding your trophy. But then when you get to hear this speaking, you go, Oh, I didn't even know that exists. So Sylvia comes out, and she's gonna have fun with you.

So where did Sylvia first appear?

On a cruise ship she came she actually was inspired by somebody that I was on a cruise ship with, with a group of ballroom dancers, and I was, for lack of a better term, in love with this woman and the absurdity of her speech to strangers that she didn't know. And whatever was in here came out here. And so Sylvia was born that night. I don't know her last name, the woman whose name was Sylvia and I adopted her and then blossomed into this new character. Now, some people want to liken it to another character that used to be on Saturday Night Live, and that's okay. So. But Sylvia is your own version of ridiculousness, because if we don't laugh in life, we'll cry.

Right? Yeah, yeah, you know. And I have a small alter ego, you know, it's and I have no idea where it came from at all. You know when you when you go in, you know they What's your name and date of birth. Now, you know, I when I have to be serious. Obviously I am, because I don't want to freak anybody out, but I'm Anastasia beaver housing, and she's very proper and very but she's, you know, she's, you know, I mean, with and somebody said a character on Will and Grace was named Anastasia beaver housing, so maybe that's where it came from. But, you know? And it's funny, because in the infusion room, in the treatment room, they've decided that she is Princess Anastasia beaverhausen, and so of course, we must do the Queen wave, and she comes out when I'm needing a little bit of support, right? You know. And, and she kind of takes charge and runs everything. And so I love that, that we kind of do that, you know, and, and so, but I think it's time, I, you know, Brad, don't you think it's time that we meet Sylvia?

Well, I think Sylvia kind of scares me, I got to say so. I think Sylvia before, but I'll tell you what. Here's my little my little background on Sylvia. She can ride me in as much as Sylvia's has a little bit of dance instructor, and I am scared the death of dance instructors. Hey, here's my little story on that. 10 years ago, my daughter got married, and I'm a pastor. I did the, you know, I did the vows and did all that stuff. That was fine. But the scariest part about the whole wedding experience was the dance with my daughter, the dad daughter dance and my daughter put put us, signed us up for a dance. I'm not, you know, I am your basically, I'll get up there and Boogie a little bit, but I'm not a dancer by any means, you know. But my biggest fear of my whole wedding experience with my daughter was, you know, tripping over her or falling down. So she put us in dance lessons for like 12 weeks, something like that. And our dance instructor was like an Eastern European woman. I called her. I called her Helga, and she seems like but she was demanding, you know? She said, Mr. Miller, you will learn these steps. You will learn them by next week. You will ruin, you will ruin your daughter's wedding, and so on so forth. So I was scared of this. So I'm kind of scared of of Sylvia, and because it reminds me a little bit of Helga here, but I don't should I be scared of Sylvia?

No, but if you give me 30 seconds, Sylvia will come into the room.

All right, we got to do a little preparation for Sylvia, yo, and and what I love is that we find ways to laugh at the situation, at ourselves. You know, whatever it is, we find those ways to do that, you know, I and I and I just love that, that, you know, sometimes we have these alter egos who can do things that we can't always and, you know, I think some of that probably came from when we were children, right? And we had invisible friends, the invisible friends would do and say things that couldn't do, but, but, yeah, you know, it's, I love this. And you, of course, have seen, you've seen Sylvia in person, correct?

Oh, yeah, it she's something else. I'll tell you that much so we'll see that, and then remind me, like this Helga character, I have fun with it now, but at the time, oh my goodness.

Sylvia is there? In person.

People, it is so nice to meet you. Sylvia. How are you doing today?

It's nice to meet me too. I'm fabulous. I'm fabulous. I'm fabulous. Zeb, you know, I'm a hair person in the red looks gorgeous on you. Thank you. Thank you, man, it's your color bread. I love what you're doing with the earphones.

Yeah, you like that. Look. Look official here. Wow, I'm just doing it. I'm just doing it for you. Sylvia, just trying to impress you.

Yeah, you're making me blush, Brad.

I know, I knew. So Sylvia, tell us a little bit about your life, you know, we asked, and we asked. Christina mounthurst, tell us a little bit about your life.

Well, let's see. I was on Broadway. I was a dancer on Broadway, you know. And so look my lights. My lights are just showing Look at that. It looked like an alien. You know, those lights are so, so big, and so, you know, the Broadway lighting, yes, yes. So, yes. So I was on Broadway. Was Broadway for many a years. And then I used to do the local cable TV, hmm, they loved me there. And. I said, You know what? It's time, it's time to start traveling. So then I started the Travel Channel, not the Travel Channel, the touring channel. Oh, don't get those zoom mix on the other one. Yes, yes, the touring channel, because my name is Sylvia Torstein. And then I started to go around the world and meet all kinds of gorgeous people, some nice, cool boys, some other friends, you know, somebody on you, because you can't get burnt when you're out there, beautiful skin. Oh no, then you get the skin cancer.

My goodness.

We had that. We had that here, you know. And I was like, ew, ew.

So that's what I've been doing recently, and now the little bit of the touring comedy I've been doing as well showing myself, Oh, in the karaoke, we're bringing back the karaoke.

All right.

Yes, Sylvia is going to start showing up live every Friday night on the YouTubes. Oh, goodness. So are there any what's what's genre? Do you like? You don't feel like Western or rap. So what is your genre?

What's your go to thing on YouTube? Oh, no, karaoke, yeah.

Oh, my goodness. Mama, Mia, Mama. How could I resist you.

Oh yes, oh yes, floating, floating, here.

You, you give me that. 70s, 80s, I'm in love. I'm going to sing to you all night long. Abba, all night.

Abba, all the time.

Money, money, money. Oh no, no, I should, oh yeah.

And, and, and it's funny, because you know when, when we were talking with your friend Christina about ballroom dancing? Of course, I grew up in the 70s and in the 80s with disco, right? So that's what I learned to do.

That, believe it or not, I used to be a 70s disco disc jockey playing, that's what I did back in the day.

Yeah, I'm seeing a road trip.

I'm to do some type of road trip. Go get your platform shoes and let's go.

Oh, I had those. I had the belt. I had the bell bottoms of the big flower flowery shirt, and still got him in the closet, silver and of course, the light The light blue leisure suit. You got to have that too, dear guy.

Yeah, you're in my hot brad.

I'm not sure I can pull off a mini skirt now.

Well, you look fabulous. Job. You look fabulous. Well, thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, James for that. That's awesome. Well, what an awesome to have Sylvia come and visit with us. And that is an awesome thing, and I love is this whole integration, as it were, of some of the stuff that that Christina was talking to us about meditation so on, and Sylvia entertaining, and have a lot of fun. Because, you know, life is too short to have to be a have a bummer, right? Life is just too short to preach to, to not take advantage of it. And we really like to to teach here on cancer and comedy is that you're not done yet. You know, whatever your situation is, whether it's losing, you know, I know that Christina lost a business to the COVID crisis. Other people have lost their health and things like that. But wherever you're at in life, that's where you're at. And keep going. Keep at it. Have some fun if you need to. But you know, if you need to go, go, go, we need to boogie. If you need to karaoke, Abba, do it awesome.

Boogie night. Sorry.

Donald summer, a little, you know, a little dancing queen, oh yeah, I got to boogie, yeah. And of course, we had to make the words up because we had no idea what they were saying, right?

The question is, this, was it because you were drinking too much, or was it just too loud as a youngster, right?

Right? And, you know, but how many of us, you know, our proms were, you know, Bee Gees theme, right? Oh yeah, we had several of those, and, and, you know, just all of those and, and, you know, of course, we we swoon to talk about swoon John Travolta. Oh my gosh, right, right. But, but, yeah, you know it, it shows all this, what we've been through, what we've learned from and the resilience that we all have because of it.

Well, I'd be curious, you know, Sylvia about what kind of advice would you give if you and Christina kind of teamed up together, to someone who was kind of, you know, stuck in their former. Life, maybe not maybe, if they're stuck in the 70s in the sense of being just stuck in a bad place, but if they're stuck there, what kind of advice would Sylvia, maybe you and Christina together give to somebody to get them unstuck and to live life to the fullest and have some fun? What kind of advice would you give them?

Do the thing, do whatever it is you've been thinking about, if you want to get on that cruise ship. You get on the cruise ship. If you want to go have a beautiful dinner at the five star restaurant and dress as fancy as you like, quit waiting. Don't wait for the special occasion. Do the thing. Today's the day.

Do the thing. What do you think, Deb?

Song in there, I'm thinking. Do the thing.

I think that's awesome, that that's awesome. Well, I think that's kind of the theme we and many it, which Sylvia just did, is summed up a lot of what we, you and I work on here in the cancer comedy podcast, right? Deb, you know, live, live life. Have some fun with it. You know, stuff happens, right, whether it's cancer or other things, bad things happen and you need to go bad with it, or you can leverage it to something, something better in your life. We could, you know, we like to call it, among other things, turning the grim into a grin. But, you know, a healing with hope and humor, things of that, of that nature. But we love to be inspired. And so what we have here is a person, Chris Christina, who is healing, you know, has this hope, this whole podcast about health and wealth and happiness. They all are integrated together, and Sylvia comes into play here. Do the thing? I love it. What? What do you think? Deb, do you think it's something we can share with our cancer and comedy lift her uppers as a way to lift them up.

It is, you know, and, and, I mean, just imagine the next time you go into your doctor's office channel a little Sylvia, you know, and, and, you know, to talk to your doctor. And, you know, Sylvia is there to help you.

Or maybe even, oh gosh, step your alter ego is, what

Anastasia, beaver housing Anastasia.

I've only heard that a dozen times, but the idea is to try to do whatever you need to do, do the thing, to make it work for you in stressful situations. And it kind of goes back. Sometimes it's the meditative thing, stop and smell the roses. Sometimes it's singing karaoke. Sometimes it's being an alter ego. Sometimes it's, you know, just dancing, or whatever it would, it would be. And so I just want to say thank you, Sylvia, for being with us. And thank you to Christine, to yes Tom Christina, thank you. And I'll let you know she's fabulous. There you go. And so what we do want to share here, Deb before, we say goodbye here in a few minutes, is we do want to tell people that they put in our show notes, how people can get a hold and find out more about about Sylvia and, of course, about Christina and about the women's health, wealth and happiness podcast.

Happy to teach your horn. My love.

Yeah. Well, Deb, anything else you want to share.

No, you know, I think this is has been great, because more than anything, we brought a little levity today, you know. And no matter what your situation is, find a way to laugh at it. And when it gets really serious, have those moments of calm and then move on and just do it well.

I want to thank Sylvia and Christina for being with us. Sylvia, we're going to give you one of the last words here. What do you have to share with our cancer and company audience here, anything that you just want to lay it on us here.

Happy touring wherever you go. Find your happiness in life.

Well, lifter uppers. This brings us to the close of the cancer and comedy podcast. We could do this all day. It brings us to the close of this episode of the cancer and comedy podcast with Dr Brad Miller. Cancer and comedy is all about telling uplifting stories of people like you who are kicking cancer's butt with healing through hope and humor, you can join those of us who are turning the grim into a grin by telling us your uplifting story. Just go to cancer and comedy.com/voice, message and let us know your story. Well, that's it for now. Please join us next time on cancer and comedy, and if you like what you hear, please pass this podcast on to someone in your life who needs to turn their grim into a grin for Dr Brad Miller, I'm Deb Krier, reminding you that a cheerful heart is good medicine.