Online Journeys into Playfulness.
The 4 week journey into a more playfulife is here waiting for you!
This Online Journey is created to help you understand how to be more playful and have the fun you deserve and want in your life.
Not so much about doing more, but interacting differently from a lighter mindset and being more.
Please keep on reading below to find out more.
Cultivating Playfulness for a happier life.
If we only remembered to have fun, the whole world would become our playground.
When enough people raise play to the status it deserves in our lives, we will find the world a better place.
Playfulness has had a central part in my life in the last 20 years, as a clown and physical theatre actor, as a juggling teacher and in my work with yoga for children and adults.
Playfulness is an attitude towards life more than any particular activity. The good news is we can cultivate it!
Some of us might never have really played as children, and as adults we are nearly all play deprived.
As the Native American man Manitonquat at 88 years old told us: It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
Cultivating playfulness is one of the best things we can do to improve the quality of our lives and the world around us.
Playfulness is infectious.
At what point during the course of our adult life did we begin to need a reason to feel good?
When, along the way, did we swap the fearlessness and playful exuberance for rigid confines of expression?
At what point did we become so disconnected from the fluidity of life that once invigorated our imaginations?
The answers to those questions, of course, are not simple. There are both systematic and psychological factors that contribute to the erosion of playfulness into adulthood, but our inner potential and desire to play is always with us.
Each of us are born with an innate desire to deepen the connections to our surroundings through playful interaction. When we tune into the essence of play, we develop an openness anything that may happen. Our days begin to change for the better, and we develop healthy boundaries to choose whether we want to play, or not.
Contrary to popular belief we work better when it’s actually enjoyable and it’s not so determined by the job at hand. We learn better when things are fun and aren’t confined by seriousness. Bringing out our playful nature helps us connect to others, and that intersection of gifts is what makes playing feel so great. It’s a remedy to our sense of isolation.
Through playfulness, the people around us thrive in the positive attention they receive by simply connecting in a dynamic way.
So much of the day-to-day is boxed up in arbitrary and linear constructs, but if we look close enough, playfulness is, in fact, all around us. It is a way of expressing of the web of interconnectedness that binds us together.
Everybody loves the sporting oddball, who would rather lose than surrender their dramatic and artistic style, or the bus driver who never fails to crack a joke or two while out on the rounds. When we encounter playfulness in adults, we are reminded that buried within the psyche is a yearning to escape from the mundane, and a longing for belonging.
Whether it’s making light of a situation through laughter, rather than getting cross, or opting to smile at a passer-by instead of wearing a frown, playfulness is an attitude to life. Without it, can there really be lasting happiness?
How can we become more playful?
This four-week course has been created to help you reclaim your playfulness and deepen the connection to your surroundings. It will offer an exploration into your own playfulness and expedite simple practices to improve the quality of your daily life.
We are already on the path of transformation when we realise that we really don’t feel playful at all!
Through a mixture of recordings, group discussions and experimentation of ideas, this self-guided course will explore the dynamism of playfulness as an antidote to stress, depression and other ‘negative’ emotions.
The course is screen time light. There are some brief videos, short texts and some audios to listen to. There are 4 weekly appointments to really
make a huge change on how you see and interact with the world. The rest is for you to explore in your life!
Including conversations with some great exponents of Playfulness in the world, Mathias Poulsen from Counterplay, Gopala Amir Yaffe from Rainbow Yoga, Benny Faibish from Playwork, Stephan Marchant from move2create and Kirsten Anderson from Play Solutions.
There is also a FB group where you can share your experiences and help each other delve more into what exactly it means to be playful.
In keeping the spirit of play, this course will be offered as a gift. This will give you the opportunity to donate a tuition with an amount you feel reflects the value of the course and your individual circumstances.
Which could be equal to zero.
Decide regardlessly to fully commit to this course. The course has been structured to go from week one all the way to week 4, but of course you can go at your own pace!
Forever playfully,
Anthony
