Chamundai Curran

Owner, The Laughter Lawyer

Lawyer, mentor, coach

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Chamundai Curran is the owner of The Laughter Lawyer, a training organisation for wellness, personal effectiveness, relationship building, conflict resolution and coaching and mentoring programs, based on laughter yoga. 

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Chamundai coaches and mentors lawyers and professionals who are interested in spirituality, feel called to look more deeply into life, their purpose, and who seek to be of service to humanity using their unique gifts and talents.

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We talk about how laughter is a true healer, by lifting a person, placing problems in perspective, aiding emotional wellbeing, enhancing creativity and transmitting positive physiological hormones and other chemicals to the body. It's a boon for lawyers who tend to take ourselves too seriously!  

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Bio

Show notes

Links

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Bio:

Chamundai Curran is the owner of The Laughter Lawyer, a training organisation for wellness, personal effectiveness, relationship building, conflict resolution and coaching and mentoring programs. She was a lawyer for 25 years and always felt called to help others and to serve - and initially helped others as a family lawyer. After many years, Chamundai felt called to help in a different way - eventually being a traditional lawyer was no longer a "fit".

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She has spent more than 30 years immersed in Indian spiritual traditions (gaining the name Chamundai, given by her spiritual teacher, which means strength, courage and dispelling darkness).

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Chamundai now coaches and mentors lawyers and professionals who are interested in spirituality, feel called to look more deeply into life, their purpose, and who seek to be of service to humanity using their unique gifts and talents.

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Show notes:

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• [2:04] Chamundai's early legal career was traditional, as a family and litigation lawyer. She found that traditional law didn't fix her clients' problems. She began to delve into counselling as a Lifeline counsellor to help her clients.

• [6:01] Chamundai's spiritual quest started early, as a child she was curious about esoteric questions and as a teenager took up yoga in Sydney. She felt strongly pulled to the yogic tradition, meeting the guru Swami Satyananda.

• [8:54] I discuss with Chamundai the concept of reincarnation and 'past lives' influencing choices we make in our current life, which sometimes expresses itself as a strong attraction to a particular country or tradition.

• [12:24] Chamundai also began to awaken to an intuition in her work, guiding her to clients and leading her to discuss healing concepts with them.  

• [14:55] Chamundai became involved in Lifeline unintentionally, through a friend's invitation, who didn't tell her what it was about but invited her to a training session for counsellors.

• [17:47] From counselling - which taught her valuable compassionate communication skills - Chamundai trained in mediation and restorative justice.

• [20:18] Later, Chamundai became inspired to start a laughter club, based on a divine thought that came to her after feeling dispirited with the legal profession.

• [22:24] The idea of a laughter club led Chamundai to find laughter yoga, which tied back to her love for yoga and her  earlier spiritual training.

• [28:47] Growing out of her experiences with laughter yoga, Chamundai started The Laughter Lawyer which systematically lifts people to a higher place through laughter as therapy.

• [29:45] Through The Laughter Lawyer, Chamundai assists clients with wellbeing. She also sees it as vital to building community for like-minded lawyers.

• [33:20] Chamundai sees more lawyers gravitating towards integrative law and opening themselves up to spirituality. It might mean going down unexpected paths.

• [35:59] A good teacher will provide a person with options and open themselves up to inner wisdom instead of creating followers. 

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Links:

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The Laughter Lawyer website: laughterlawyer.com.au

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Lifeline, a national charity providing all Australians experiencing emotional distress with access to 24 hour crisis support and suicide prevention services.​

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Swami Satyananda Saraswati, founder of the Bihar School of Yoga.  

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Paramahansa Yogananda's classic spiritual work Autobiography of a Yogi. Paramahansa Yogananda is often referred to as the Father of Yoga in the West.

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An article from the Wholebeing Institute website about active listening written by Carl Rogers and Richard E Farson.

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The Laughter Yoga website, the official page of its founder Dr Madan Kataria.

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"I Love to Laugh", video of the Mary Poppins ceiling scene.

 

David Hawkins' book Power vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour.  From over 20 years of kinesiology research Hawkins created a calibration system for all aspects of human endeavour - a kind of vibratory scale or ladder of consciousness.

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The Integrative Law movement website.

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Kim Wright's book Lawyers as Peacemakers: Practising Holistic Problem-Solving Law.

 

My podcast episode with Kim Wright. 

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Sri Sakti Narayani Amma, Chamundai's teacher.

 

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