How to Play
OR The Fast and Easy Way to Feel Better NOW
Adult life right now seems to leave us all tired, anxious around the edges (or more), and desiring most of all a quiet place to curl up and check out. Cue box sets, wine, lots of restless phone scrolling.
We absolutely need time to rest and retreat (and I love lighting the stove, finding a good box set and sinking into it). But, we are WIRED to need play. You can see this in any child you come across; their first instinct is to engage in what is around them through play - exploring, touching, moving, being silly, curious and spontaneous.
Often the only time we are playful these days is if we have to engage with kids and even then we can struggle sometimes to enter a playful mindset. To let go of our to-dos, our timescales, our need for tidiness/control/outcomes. To let ourselves surrender to the joy, freedom and unpredictability of play. And if we don’t encounter kids much in our lives then it can be hard to make the ‘excuse’ for play.
Except that we are all missing a massive trick with our lack of play.
Panksepp says about the joy in play that it
“lowers the neural threshold for perceiving life events as being positive and hopeful while raising those for perceiving events as negative and hopeless”
Which essentially means play makes it easier for us to feel good and harder for us to feel bad. That’s a massive resource in the dull and difficult days of winter and COVID. But there is more…
Play increases our resilience, creativity and problem solving abilities.
Play can trigger the release of endorphins, the body’s feel good chemicals.
Play helps us see things differently
Play can boost energy and vitality
Play can strengthen your immune system.
Playing with someone else gives you all of these benefits PLUS it strengthens attachment and social bonds.
So, what gets in the way of your play?
Maybe there are some internal messages that stop you being playful: it’s wasting time, I’ll look silly, I’ll feel awkward, I’m too tired etc. These messages can come from a place of fear, or may be messages we internalised from how our parents felt about play when we were young. We don’t always have big people in our lives growing up who encouraged play or modelled a sense of play.
If you are noticing some of these internal messages around, perhaps find some compassion for them and see if they would be willing to shift a little e.g. ‘Yes, I might feel self-conscious at the start, but it would be really nice to feel some joy today. Could we try for a few minutes?’.
Or maybe you don’t play because you don’t know how?
I’ve been experimenting with different ways of bringing more play into my life (you’ll see some of these on my instagram account over the next week). I think ‘experiment’ is a great way to frame these activities - assessing if you feel better after trying a play activity. Having an attitude of experimenting can make it easier to start and takes away some of the pressure.
Some easy ways to start are:
Putting on some music and dancing round your bedroom or kitchen (no one needs to see!).
Looking up funny YouTube videos and sending them to a friend or watching them with a partner.
Dressing a little more playfully, with a little more colour or unusual accessories.
Playing with a pet..
Finding some people to play with. Who are your playmates? Who is it that you can laugh, relax, explore and have banter with?
Arranging a play date with a child you know well and letting them be in charge of what you do.
Buying a small, silly gift for a friend.
Arranging a games night with some friends.
Telling a joke at the dinner table.
Going on your usual walk but with an attitude of curiosity and exploration.
Remembering the things you enjoyed playing with as a child and trying them again. Craft/art, board games, old computer consoles, Play-Doh/clay. (Did you know that David Beckham likes playing with lego?!)
Small practical jokes: a family member and I had a weeks-long game of hiding the same random playing card in each other’s stuff so it would be discovered when least expected. It turned up in bed, pockets of coats, lunches, shoes, books and always made us laugh at how sneaky and stealthy the other had been.
Silly, right? And that’s exactly the point. That completely pointless, nonsense activity made us giggle, helped us connect and brought a bit of life and laughter into our days.
After all the last 2 years have been surely there is an argument for self prescribed play? It certainly can’t hurt. (Other than the occasional scraped knee🙂).
Finally, a thought-provoking quote from George Bernard Shaw,
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing.”