Play

Why is play healing? Play generates joy and makes you feel good again. It powers up aliveness, inspiration, connection, and capacity. Play helps you end something that is ready to be done, and move on to the next thing in your epic.

Not wanting to play, fearing play, and losing our ability to play are all part of play. Play isn’t always about being in a mood of lightness (think of children’s instincts to hold somber funerals for the bodies of birds, for example), but it is always life-affirming.

Play makes things seem like not such a big deal, eventually, after helping us feel what a big deal they are. Play releases emotional charge so you don’t have to hold it in your body anymore. It restores your sense of humor, wakes you up, relaxes you, and synchs you to yourself and others.

Play creates unity while delighting in diversity. Play surprises and delights. When you really embrace your instinct to play, you remember who you are by nature. You discover your eternal spring of spontaneous genius, your compassion, and ultimately your unity with everyone and everything.

My invitation to you: Journal about a time (probably in childhood but maybe not) when you can recall being completely absorbed in play. Write down as much as you can about the experience, the sensations, who was there, what you were doing, who you took yourself to be, and so on. What can you learn about your relationship to play from your recollections?

~~

Thumbnail image lovingly appropriated from Many: the Diversity of Life on Earth by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Emily Sutton