The Spiritual Necessity of Play

In this conversation, Bert Nelson, Courtney Kaplan and Jessica Luke explore the essential role of play in our lives, emphasizing its necessity for functionality and its deep connection to spirituality. They unpack how engaging in play can lead to a flow state, where individuals feel completely present and connected to a higher spirit or the universe. They talk about what play can look like for different people and how you can become more playful and creative in your life.

Chapters

00:00 The Importance of Play in Adult Life
00:45 The Impact of Play on Mental Health

Bert Nelson is a spiritual counselor, Buddhist minister, and energy medicine practitioner. He works with individuals navigating change, grief, identity, and questions of meaning, supporting clients in reconnecting with themselves and living with greater clarity and intention.
On Substack @BrightRavenArts
https://www.brightravencounseling.com/ 

Jessica Luke is a Depth Counselor and Integrative Healing Practitioner, and founder of The Well Grounded Soul and the https://1440health.com/, an integrative healing center in Bethesda, Maryland. She works with individuals navigating transition and emotional complexity, supporting them in reconnecting with their bodies, intuition, and deeper sense of truth.
On IG @thewellgroundedsoul
https://thewellgroundedsoul.com/ 

Courtney Kaplan is a coach based in Oakland, CA. After years in the corporate world, she founded Iconic Leadership Coaching to help people navigate work complexities, leverage their strengths, and grow their authentic leadership style. She uses emotional, physical and spiritual tools to help clients find peace and power.
On Substack @courtneykaplan
https://www.iconicleadershipcoaching.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to Inner Threads, a podcast on healing, wholeness, growth, and connection. Join us for shared insights and wisdom as we weave together our common stories to help you along your own healing path. Inner Threads is hosted by Jessica Luke, Bert Nelson, and me, Courtney Kaplan. I'm a coach based in Oakland, California, and after years in the corporate world, I founded Iconic Leadership Coaching to help people create a good life, both personally and professionally. My transformative coaching work uses multiple modalities that include emotional, physical, and spiritual tools to help my clients find peace and power.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

I'm Bert Nelson. I'm a spiritual counselor and the executive director of a nonprofit conservation farm in Western North Carolina. I'm interested in how spirituality, science, and shamanism come together to help us heal and live more fully as ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

I'm Jessica Luke. I work as a spiritual counselor and I'm the founder of the Well-Grounded Soul and the 1440 Health Collective, a healing center in Bethesda, Maryland. I support people through times of change, helping them reconnect with their intuition, personal power, and the wisdom of the natural world.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I'm so excited to be here today with my friends, getting into another conversation about joy, lightheartedness, playfulness, and how that relates to our spiritual life.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Jessica? Hey, so great to be here. I'm just like overjoyed to talk about joy and play. It's been such an incredible shift in my life personally and loving being here talking to some of my favorite people about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So glad to be here. So happy to be here today to talk about play. It's one of my favorite topics, and I think it's one of the first things that gets left out when we're feeling stressed. I think it's one of the first things that society tells us is a luxury or or we don't need. And I think we're here to say something different today. So I'm glad to have that discussion.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Great. Thanks so much. Yeah, I think um I'd be kind of curious to hear from each of you kind of your relationship to play, maybe as a kid, and then now as an adult, and if that's changed. So maybe I'd love to hear, Jessica, your relationship to play as a kid.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah, that's really a great reflection to think back and to just kind of sit with how it's manifested uh today as an adult. But as a kid, I grew up in a household that was very structured. And then when my father, who was kind of the leader of the household, was ready to play, we all had to be on. So we had water balloon fights and crazy games of hide and go seek. And he was really creative with treasure hunts and that kind of thing. So there was a lot of play, and then there was a lot of solo play. I I loved horses, and so I had these briar horses in the basement, and I would create whole scenes on the like an imaginary farm in the basement with my briar horses, and I would play with them. And of course, I was playing with real horses in real life outside of that too. So a lot of my play revolved around horses and animals, but also fun games. And then I feel like you're right. I mean, we hit that point. I don't know if it's like early teen, where I don't know, you start judging yourself for playing, and maybe that's something we can all dive into through the talk. But at some point in the last few years, I refound a play practice. I recreated a play practice. I re-engaged with a play practice. And it really involved dance and just movement and being by myself, which was, you know, people get so judgy about do they dance correctly or what are people going to think about them. But when you're by yourself, who cares? And it was became such a freeing, fun thing to do. And I was seeing how creative I could be, like the ideas and thoughts and things I wanted to write about would come through that practice of dance. And also with art. And I know, Bert, you're a big art person, so I'd love to hear your take on play with art. But I have one of my dearest friends is an artist, and I remember saying to her, I want to paint, but I don't know what to do. She was like, You buy paint and you buy a canvas or whatever and you just play. And I was like, but I don't know what I'm doing. And it's so it's like kind of getting over that adult need to know, am I doing this right? Like all those little limiting beliefs. And I just start, I love using my hands and I'm a manual therapist. So I just started putting acrylic paint on a canvas and spreading around and finger painting like a kid. And it is so fun. And I found it to be like a really cool way that I can uh navigate difficult emotions or even positive, you know, just emotions. It's a way for me to get it out of my head and on to a more um body and few informed way of like, you know, just getting it out onto something. And it it's really been really fun. So those are kind of my personal takes on play. Um and it's been a really cool reintroduction and recreation of play as an adult.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

It's amazing. I want to hear more about that re-creation of play as an adult because I think it's such a it's a certainly a sticking point for me personally. So I'm looking forward to learning more from both of you today about introducing play in your life as an adult and how what that looks like and how people can do it. Bert, what about you?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah. You know, this is this is uh one of those questions that, you know, has, I think, a bigger answer than many of us think it's going to. And so as a kid, I remember being a really playful kid. I loved being outside, using my imagination, climbing trees, you know, playing in the lake, probably not very safely, but having fun doing it, being in nature, and there not really being an expectation of anything. Right. When when I was playing as a kid, at least I now as an adult, when I reflect back on that time, realized that there was no expectation of an outcome. There wasn't like a success or failure attached to the activity of play. It was just the sake of being present and following my curiosity. And whether that took me into the woods or into the water or into my journal or, you know, wherever it might have brought me, that that's kind of the role that play held in my life. And this is certainly by no means a judgment of my my parents or my upbringing. It's it's just context for, you know, my father was an older dad who was very militaristic. I mean, he he was in the military, he was an officer, and so he had a very much like grow up, deal with it, suck it up, be a man, you know, kind of attitude, and at the same time was a very loving man. And um my parents got divorced when I was 12, 13. And so there's that puberty shift that's happening. And then there's also now I am the caretaker of the home because my dad is working 24-7. And so all of a sudden there's no space for play. And as I moved into high school, I started skipping school a lot. I started lying about where I was. I w you know, and all of these things to like sneak play in, but it became this like shameful thing that had to be hidden. And I do think I took that into life and carried it with me. And it's not really until um, you know, a couple of years ago, five, six years ago, that that I remember playing a game on a brand new VR headset that I had never played before, used before. And I finished, I had such a sense of joy. And I turned to my husband and I said, Babe, I don't think I have fun very often. Relatable, relatable. And he's like, No, no, you don't, and then chuckled because like uh it was obvious to him that I didn't have a whole lot of fun or play in my life at the time. And that really was a big shift into wow, it is so important to be able to reconnect with that that part of ourselves and and express it. Uh, Jessica, your dancing, following you on Instagram just brings me so much joy to see you and your cats, you know, having fun and and it it inspires me, right, as an as an individual in the world. And so yeah, I think there is something really special about about how play brings us to the present moment and connects us to ourselves in a really deep way outside of the societal expectations or parental expectations or self-judgment or whatever else might be plaguing us as we move through our regular day-to-day.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Gosh, yeah. And Jessica, I just saw some um pictures you posted on Instagram of you and horses and ponies and all of the and boy, what it seems like animals too are such a um connection to playfulness that you don't have to, there's not the same expectations as with your when you're with another person, maybe. But I loved seeing those, those, I was like, man, I want to be there. That looks amazing to hang out with horses and and play all day. For me, I guess as a kid, I played a lot of imaginary games with my sister. I've got a sister that's like 18 months younger than me. So we were kind of playmates, like playmates at at home, which I think makes a big difference. You're not trying to coordinate if your friend is home, if your neighbor's home, if you like the neighborhood kids. My sister and I got along really well. And so we played a lot. So we played Barbies and we played, we had this dance school we would do, and we would do these big performances. And I just remember the crux of each of those things, Barbies or the dance performances or whatever we were up to. It was like very high drama, and the stakes were so high, and we were gonna lose the championships, and then we would have a moment of glory. And like it was very much about, you know, uh d averting disasters and all this stuff. And so I played as a kid and I remember playing Barbies. Like I know a lot of kids kind of put that aside, you know, when you're maybe 10, 11. And I played Barbies with her. I mean, we had an imaginary, a rich imaginary life until I was much older. And then somewhere along the way, you know, and I was uh I like to draw and I like to write stories and stuff like that. And somewhere along the way, I kind of caught a whiff of approval from the art that I was doing. Oh, you're a good artist. My God, is there ever a worse compliment to give a child? And then I was just like ready to produce art, like love me, love me, love me. Look at all the art, art, art, art, and really lost the connection there to any kind of creative expression, to something much more utilitarian, making things or making crafts or making something useful that was kind of okay in my mind. And then using my art and creativity for attention, which later became my career, which later became like that cycle kind of continued throughout my adult life. But certainly the shift from childhood playfulness to adult utility and creating and producing for a reason was pretty, was a pretty big, was a pretty shift. And then as an adult, now, you know, I've I'm a parent of um two kids, which brings in some amount of playfulness, but still, like given the choice of playing lightsabers with my son or focusing on making dinner, I often am dutiful and focus on making dinner or focus on getting another little laundry done. So there's kind of this always a tug towards being the responsible one or doing something that's um important to get done uh and not kind of going to that playful mode.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Do you find, Courtney, that that you have to like justify that play time or that when you make the decision to take the more responsible choice there, which make the dinner, finish the laundry, is there ever a is that a struggle for you? Is it even a conversation? I guess is what I'm asking.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Yeah, no, it's not a conversation. It's just kind of like on autopilot to do the tasks, check off more stuff off your check list, what have you. So one of my resolutions for the coming year is playfulness and joy. Just I think it's almost like a counteraction to the world we're living in right now, which seems sometimes some days very devoid of joy. Um, and very devoid of playfulness for sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah. And it's making me think like, how can we find play while doing those responsibility tasks? Like, can you put on some fun music while you're cooking? Or yeah, I think there's there's maybe a an invitation to finding ways to take a lot of things a little less seriously. And that's I think to your point, like what's happening in the world is it feels so serious. Everything just feels so big and heavy. And it's how do we carve out and make space for play? Yeah, as adults who do have it is, right? Like we have these responsibilities.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

I'm curious to hear from each of you. You know, how do we make space for play? How do we carve out space for play as adults? And I want to kind of push a little bit and say, like, for why, why would we want to do that?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Why would we want to do that, right? Why would we want to be less stressed and happier and more joyful with more energy and able to relate to our kids and family without the stress that's normally there? Why would we want any of that? Huh, I wonder is something, and I may have mentioned this before, something that my clients always ask me is like, how do I fit my spiritual practice into my busy life? And for me, there's not an easy answer here. Like, there's no icing, folks. Sorry. You know, it's it's you realize that you live within your spiritual life, that your material life is happening within your spiritual life. And so instead of trying to figure out how do I make time for it, how about I realize that it has to function for me to function? It's like saying, where do I find the 10 minutes today for my lungs to breathe or my heart to be? That doesn't make any sense. And I think play is essentially a spiritual function. It is, it is that flow state that whether you're dancing or in art or really engaged in that scientific paper that excites you. Like whatever your play is, whatever that looks like for you, it's that experience of being so completely present and and connected to spirit or universe or whatever you want to call it. And and for me, with art especially, it's as if I can bring spirit forward through my experience into the physical space to share with others. And it's because it's already a part of your life. I mean, we're already doing the dishes, we're already folding the laundry, we're already, you know, making dinner, and we can either be grumbly about it or we can reframe how we're relating to it and have fun with it. You know, how can dinner be fun? How can laundry be fun?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, I love all that. I mean, it's I wrote down presence too, because it's that's it. I mean, you think even back to what you were saying, Courtney, about animals. Like they, yeah, maybe they are our domesticated cats and dogs sleep a lot during the day, but then they, when they want to play, they just play, you know, they and they're just in the moment and they're having so much fun and they may get the zoomies and you're like, what's going on with them? But they're just in their moment, living their their their joy or their craziness or whatever, but just being really authentic. And I think that's it too, is that play is really our authentic side. And that's when we get in our too much of our head of like, oh, but I gotta do this, and oh, am I doing that right? You know, that's just not seeking us out of our authentic self. And I had this memory earlier in the year when being in a DC place here, there were a lot of people losing their jobs initially. So uh a couple of us therapists here started a just a free support group called Navigating Uncertainty. And we met at, I think, 5:30. And the there's a daycare in the building here. And so there's a playground somewhere on the side of the building. But essentially we were, we did our little talking. I was like, okay, let's start with a meditation, an opening meditation to kind of ground us here. So everybody got really quiet and they must have let the kids out to play right at that same time. And so there's just laughter and laughter and screaming and yelling, and you could just feel the energy of this circle of people shift. And ever I opened my eyes just to peek, and everybody was smiling. And it just brought everybody out of whatever we were thinking about, the politics and the losing jobs and the fear to just listen to those kids play. It was so sweet. And it's like that's the why. Because it just brings you right to that remembrance of who we innately are before we start judging ourselves and getting into these have to do's and I have to be a responsible adult, and there's no time for that. You know, it it was a really cool moment. So thanks for giving me the space to remember that.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

I love that. Fun. I love that. I also think it's um it's a little bit of an act of rebellion too, right? Because we have a culture that measures worth on your productivity, what you are able to produce. And so if you can push back on that trending, you know, that movement of how our culture orients us, that's a really great way to allow yourself to get some space from the dominant culture and kind of reconnect with, like you said, Jessica, like your childhood kind of your your human right to joy, you know.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Courtney, what do you see as a parent when you watch your kids, you know, like how have you seen their play evolve? Um, and and what is it like for you as a parent to have that perspective?

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah, it's interesting. I think my older son is a little bit like me. He has a younger brother and he would kind of play with his younger brother and a little bit direct his younger brother into what they were doing and how they were doing it. And then as he's gotten, he's a mountain biker, and as he's gotten into mountain biking, he started to take it seriously. And um he wants to get on a certain team and there's all this stuff. But you see this kind of transition, he's 15. You see this transition from playing with his brother and hanging out and being silly and wrestling and jumping on the beds and doing all that to becoming going into mountain biking, which is fun. And I think he has friends that do mountain biking too, but the silliness or the carefreeness has been stripped away. This is his course of action. We're not pressuring him at all, but this is really what he wants. And so that's been kind of hard to see something that gave him so much joy that he enjoys, which he still enjoys, but there's an element of, I don't know, seriousness, ranking, you know, I did it, I didn't do it, I succeeded, I failed. I have a, you know, I've a place on the podium, what number is next to my name? Those kinds of things, which kind of, to be honest, kind of snuck up and and and came to be. And then my younger son has been one that uh is perfectly happy playing by himself ever since he was a teeny tiny kid. He would just get his Legos or get his whatever he's got around just and just play and entertain himself. And even now as an older kid, he's in middle school, but he comes home from school and he's like, I have to go outside and play sticks. See you later. And he doesn't want anyone to watch him, and he doesn't want you to move his sticks, and he doesn't want you to be out there while he's out there, but he's, you know, fighting battalions of armies, and I don't know what the heck, but the sticks are swinging and he's running around and there's shouting and whispering and all of this activity going on. And that's, I mean, that is, he does that every day, every day, and not for 15 minutes, like hour, hour and a half. So he's so he's still one that can really step into his imagination and find that joy and playfulness and kind of entertain himself outside of the day-to-day homework, do your chores, exercise, whatever the heck. Yeah. And Jessica, I'm curious to hear at the beginning of the call, you talked a little bit about how you reconnected to play as an adult. Um, and I'm so curious to hear when did you when did you decide that something you wanted to do or needed to do? Was that a conscious moment? Or did it just did something happen like Bert's playing the video game, realizing like, wow, I don't have fun very often? Was it a moment or was it what tell me how you kind of re-established some play for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah, I mean, I think I can relate to Bert a little bit in that of I was in a of a relationship that was not healthy and it there was just a lot of seriousness. There was no fun in that relationship whatsoever. And it felt very heavy and constrictive. And I found my way out of the relationship. And when I did, it was like, oh, I have wait, I could all it was so apparent that like life had gotten very serious, and and I had gotten stuck in this rut and felt very confined. And it so dance was kind of this way to feel free. And it started with that, like just free movement. How can I move my body to feel like and really shake off the energy of this relationship? And I felt very tangled energetically in that relationship. So it was really just kind of almost a bit of a qi gong shaking kind of exercise that started it. And then, you know, I was I have a gym in my basement. I'm really athletic and I like to exercise and lift weights. And it was just kind of became like after I did my exercise, a little bit of a playtime. And I turned on, I had now have a dance playlist, and I would just find new music. And just move. And it became like part of the routine or fun way to kind of reward myself after doing a good workout. Or like, oh, I'm going to just dance like a crazy person. And then all these things started to kind of come into my mind, which then I thought, well, let me just make little Instagram posts about them. And so thank you, Bert, for saying that it brings you joy because sometimes I'm like, this is extremely vulnerable putting myself out there. But it was so like I it just felt right and it felt really fun to share. And I wanted to encourage people to not judge themselves for dancing because it it became such a cool way for me to be expressive and to find freedom in myself. And I had gone through a ton of healing work and started to find more freedom in my heart. And it just started to evolve and evolve. And I it became like a really spiritual practice for me. So it was fun to see. Thank you, Courtney, for kind of prompting that because I didn't, I wasn't fully aware of how that process got started. But it was really coming out of a crunchy time where I've noticed how stuck and serious I had become and really unhappy.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

I think it's that's an easy thing, an easy place to end up. There's we're busy, we have a lot to do, there's a lot of responsibility, you don't have extra time. Like I said, our culture kind of rewards people that are real doers that are getting a lot of stuff done. So it's easy to to to kind of fall into that, into that habit for sure. For sure. And Bert, I want to ask you. I noticed as a I'm well, I don't know when this was. It's a little while ago, and maybe it was on social media too. You posted something like, Oh, I'm making art today. And you showed like a pine cone, and then the next darn thing you showed was like a fully formed dinosaur out of this pine cone, and you're making these little creatures out of pine cones. And I was like, Oh my God, what this is amazing, Bert. How in the heck did you um make a dinosaur out of a pine cone? And I wonder, I know you have such an uh practice of making art and making things. How do you, how does that come to be?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah, um, great question. And I I don't really know that I know. What's interesting, Courtney, when you were talking earlier at the beginning about how art for you tends to need to be functional in some way. And I actually describe myself as a functional artist. Now, I think, well, I thought before this conversation today that for that for me the function is important. And I guess all of this is still true, but we live in a world that has a lot of stuff in it. And as a Western civilization, we are creating more and more stuff, and we're encouraged to throw away the stuff we have and buy new stuff. And that's a big problem that I'm not going to take us down the road of today, um, that I'm very passionate about. But I want to be really mindful that if I'm bringing something into the world and making it permanent and adding to the stuff that's around, that I really want it to be something special that's not just going to get thrown out, you know, in a day or in a week or or whenever it's it's done being used. And so functional art for me is a bit of a rebellion, Courtney, to this fast capitalist, merchandized experience of life to a to to a slowed down, you know, when I drink from a mug, a handmade mug, whether I made it or someone else made it, there is this recognition of someone else's hands shaped this mud and decorated it. And now I'm drinking tea out of it. And I want to honor that person's art and expression and connection, and we are all connected in that way and in so many ways. But I am certainly not as connected to my plastic Starbucks cup that the lid cracked on three weeks after owning and the seal is moldy under and and it sits on my kitchen counter because a friend gave it to me, right? And I don't want to throw it away for that reason, but it no longer functions. So I relate to art in that way. But now as you talk about it, I think you're right. There is a piece of it too that is I even feel with my own art that it has to justify its place in the world. It can't even just be art. It has to serve a function so that it can take up space in the world. And I realize, wow, if I apply that to my own way of being, where in my life do I feel like I have to be functional or useful in order to be able to take up space? So I know my next series of meditations and journeys that are coming out of this call. Thank you, Courtney.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

That's amazing because I'm kind of in the opposite of that. I need to be messy because I have this like construct that everything has to be neat and perfect and tidy. And so, like, I'm just putting paint everywhere. I mean, just like that permission to be messy again, to like go out and get dirty and just not have any functions. So it's interesting how we adapt.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Yeah, it sounds like, you know, it sounds like in order to have play in our lives, we need a couple things, right? We need permission, like this is okay to do the time. We need experimentation, like maybe dancing isn't for you, or maybe painting isn't for you, or it's okay, but you need to give yourself the space to kind of experiment. I also think you need like a little bit of a sense of silliness. Like, I don't know, Jessica, when you're talking about dogs that have the zoomies that run around, sometimes dogs are just so goofy, you know? And I think if you kind of allow yourself to be in that goofy, silly place, there's a lot more possibility than if you're taking it very seriously now that you have the art supplies and the time. And so I think even those three things for some people are pretty radical ways to step into their lives.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I was just working, doing some volunteer work, and I showed up and I was so excited and like ready to go. And and we were checking in and I mentioned that like I'm ready to play, I'm ready to have fun. And the person who was leading the circle was like, uh-uh, no, we're here to work. We're we're not here to have fun. It was like, and I realized in that moment, I mean, I kind of had that reaction too of like I just said the wrong thing, and that many people associate fun and play with not taking something seriously, right? And and that's like a hard thing to define here because the work was very important to me. And I was certainly showing up as my full self and my present self. And I wanted to say, do you would you prefer I didn't enjoy myself while volunteering, you know, and helping people? Or would you prefer it be miserable, right? While while I it would be a miserable experience while I do it. And so as you were asking that, Courtney, that's like a really recent experience that came up for me.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Love that. I feel like there is a lightheartedness we can bring to any activity that we're doing, right? Where it's not that you're not taking it seriously or it's not that you're trying to waste people's time or goof off, but you can have a light heart about it or a positive attitude that is lighthearted and not so much grind. That I think I do do quite often, if I'm not going into full playfulness mode. I do try and do a lot of work light with a light heart and lightheartedly.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah. I mean, I think it's easy to get caught in the the heavy, heaviness of things. And just like that invitation, Corey, like you said, just coming at things with a little lighter heart, or like you were saying, a volunteer, like, but do you not want me to have fun with this? You know, it's just you know, you're offering an invitation to people to say, hey, yeah, we might be doing something important or something serious, but we can still bring some lightness to it.

unknown 29:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

So if someone's listening to this conversation and they're like, okay, I'm with you, play, lightheartedness, I could use some of that in my life. I'd be curious to hear from each of you, and I can share myself too. Where could you advise that someone might start? Or where could you where where might you give someone a little some breadcrumbs to get started on more play in their lives?

SPEAKER_01 30:02

I think it kind of goes back to what you originally asked us, Courtney, is like, what did you like to do as a kid? You know, like that inner child, like get in touch with that inner five-year-old, the inner seven-year-old, the inner, you know, in a safe place. And, you know, maybe for some people that wasn't a safe place to go into those times and just give yourself that compassion and grace. But at some point in our lives, we had play and what were those things that we played with? And I think that's a good place to start, just to investigate compassionately with your little your little selves, like what did we like to do for fun and and really listen to that inner child to say, Oh, I really loved to make mud pies and play with tadpoles in the creek. And, you know, so does that relate to exactly one-to-one in it as an adult, or are there ways that you can like work with clay, or you can go out to a stream and, you know, find ways as an adult to bring those things that we love to do as kids into our adult lives?

SPEAKER_02 31:07

I think for some reason when you're sharing that, Jessica, it also takes me back to what you said earlier that you like to get messy, you know. And I imagine if you're an adult and as a kid you had a little stream behind your house and you were looking for tadpoles and stuff, and now you're like, well, yeah, I still love nature. I do my trail runs every weekend. It's like, yeah, okay, can you slow down? Can you interact with that? Can you step off the beaten path a bit? Can you give yourself a little more room to be messy? I think that that's such a piece of childhood that we kind of cut out and allow ourselves the appropriate pieces of what we enjoyed, but not the full mess of what was the most fun of what we enjoyed.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah, it's a good point. And I think we brought it up in a different talk about slowing down, right? So that point of yeah, you can go for a run in the woods, but what if you stopped and you decided to make a little impromptu piece of artwork with leaves and sticks or play lightsabers with a tree, you know? Yeah, but just slow down and stop for a minute and take that in. That's great advice, Courtney.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

What about you, Bert? If someone's like, Yeah, I I'm kind of stuck in the grind here. I probably could use some more play, but the news is so bad and everything's so heavy these days. How could I start?

SPEAKER_00 32:17

So you mean literally every human being I come into contact with in my personal life and professional life? That's right. Literally everyone. I I really like what Jessica was saying about, you know, finding that inner child. And I have a certain percentage of clients that that I say that kind of thing to, and they're like, what do you mean? I don't know what my inner child liked, right? We might use other language that says follow your bliss or follow your dreams or follow your heart. And a lot of people are like, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that is for me, you know. And so it if there's anyone out there that can't relate to your inner child or to what it means to play or to follow your heart, because the experience has been up until that point, living for someone else or living for the job or not being allowed to play for whatever reason, then I would say to the to the best of your ability, to every interaction or activity in your life, try to be as authentically engaged as possible. And that will show you, I really don't like this. This is really not my thing, or wow, that was actually fun. I just enjoyed doing that. I mean, it we talk about being present. When you go out to lunch with someone and you're asking them questions about their experience and their life and their joys and their dreams, and it's because you want to know the answers that they have, but there's play there in that authentic engagement, right? We find who we are, I think. And in that finding is is the play. It's letting go of these expectations of who we think we're supposed to be, or or what society says we're supposed to be, or what our boss or our spreadsheet says we're supposed to be. And I think a really easy way of starting that journey is by stopping and smelling the roses and playing in the mud and asking a friend what's what what's on your heart today. I think that goes a long way to bringing kind of that playful nature and that playful mindset into one's experience.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

One of the things that comes up for me is kind of looking for the invitation to play, not meaning not waiting for an invitation to a party. But like when you walk in from work and your dog is like bouncing all around, you know, so excited to see you, that's an invitation to play. When you order your coffee and someone says, you know, something kind of sassy to, you know, what's what what'll it be this morning? Tut? You know, like to respond with playfulness and lightheartedness or look for those, those invitations, you know, the bird that comes like flying around you or whatever and is like kind of saying, look at me, look at me, or whatever, to take that moment to accept the invitation, you know, or experiment with being the invitation to play. I know my kids, with kids, it's like my my kids, like I'll drive them home from school. There's like this ice cream store on the way home. We don't go very often, but every once in a while I'll be like driving them home and I'll just like make that left-hand turn and they go bananas, you know, they're like, oh my God, we're getting ice cream.

SPEAKER_03 35:24

It's like, do it, what, why not? Right? Like, do do that. Take the left hand turn.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

I love that, Courtney. You and I were just Courtney in a workshop, and Jessica, I believe you've taken it before, where there's a meditation that asks us to be present with our experience at the theoretical moment of our death. And coming out of that workshop, I always find myself like, how can I implement that idea, that concept into my life more often? Not necessarily about where is my where am I at with my death right now, but but are there like random bells that we can ring throughout our day that kind of stop us in our tracks and remind us, oh, now is a time to play. And it's my choice to do that. If I turn the alarm off and just keep barreling forward with what I'm doing, that's a choice. But this this helps give me that choice. And so I have a few moments through my day where I have alarms that go off on my phone that have different songs, and each song has is is selected specifically to help kind of bridge me into the next phase of my day and ask me to stop for just those few minutes and be present with that intention. Um, and I have one for play. So uh, you know, it's it's that's just a practical tip that someone might find helpful in their lives to, you know, when we're so busy, when we don't have the time when we're not thinking about it, especially when it's something new that we're trying to relate to. We have these tools that live in our pocket, you know, or or attach to us 24 most of us. And so why not use that tool in a way that serves our highest good and and helps us be a little more present? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

Yeah, it's true. I I I think it's interesting because it's interesting that you talked about the class that we took in contemplating the moment of your death kind of thing. Because I think bigger on a bigger level, when we talk about spirituality or being having a spiritual life or whatever, that is an area that we can quickly go to serious, right? I wanted to be spiritual. Well, how much meditation are you doing, or how much service are you doing, or how much yoga are you doing, or whatever? And that too seems like an area where there can be, I mean, in every wisdom tradition, there's playfulness, appreciation of the beauty around you, lightheartedness, being kind, you know, all of these openings to taking it lightly, not digging in and making it a making spirituality a chore necessarily.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Yeah. And I like, I like what you were saying, Bert, about like music is such a powerful creator of energy, you know, like you can turn on a song and it can make you cry. You can turn on a song and it will bring you a memory of, you know, prom. You can turn on a song and it will make you want to dance. Like to use music, which for most of us in our pocket on our phone. Curating things, I listen to a certain playlist when I'm driving into the office. So it gets me like in the mood to be like, okay, I gotta center or I gotta get excited or, you know, whatever it is that what I'm trying to bring into the day. But I'm also thinking about one of you brought up imagination, and maybe both of you did. And it I think that's such a great doorway into play and joy as well. Cause and even spirituality, I mean, there's so many things that like, well, I can't think of anything. Well, if you could imagine what that would be like, you know, like just start to get out of that conceptual ego mind. Like, just make something up. Just just imagine what that could be like. You know, I think using our imagination is something, Courtney reminds me of what your younger son does. Like he plays with the the gangs and the warriors and the stick game, right? He's just totally in his imagination 100% and creating play out of that space. I think imagination could be something that as adults could help be a nice gateway into that idea of play and creativity.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

To your point, Jessica, your imagination allows you to access that wherever you are, whenever you are. Period, full stop, right? Like, like you don't you don't have to live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere to hear a bird chirp or to to find a tree, right, that can reflect back that life. And that's just nature. And I know we've talked about that before, but literally everything around us has come from an imagination, from one's imagination, right? The paint color on the walls, the ceiling tiles, the industrial ceiling tiles and the roof, right? Even those started in someone's imagination, someone's concept. And so, yeah, the power of imagination, that's that's everything.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yeah, that's true. That's such a great point. Yeah, that's such a great point. This is awesome. Um, any last words about play and the role of play and how you would encourage, you know, parting words for someone who's like, okay, I'll give it a whirl. I'll try this play thing.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

Have fun with it.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Yeah, right. Like it's like just keep, just keep trying and finding what works and have fun. Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Yeah, get out of your head and be generous with yourself. We're pretty stingy with ourselves. If you're an adult, you know, you probably have a couple bucks to buy a few art supplies or a couple bucks to try out a you know, dance class at your gym or whatever the heck kind of calls to you, you know, like my husband says, put the crowbar in your wallet and open your wallet and, you know, spend some money on your own behalf. And because we can be so resistant. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like you said, Bert, some people are like, well, it's easy for you, Bert. You live in this amazing place and this doing this amazing life. But how often do we we're not on even on our own side when it comes to being playful? It's like we just won't allow it, even if there's opportunity, invitation, potential possibility, use your imagination, get into your body, get messy, da-da-da-da. And we're just like, yeah, no, not for me. I don't, I don't deserve that, or I can't have that. To be more generous with yourself in that, in that respect.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

I think into those people who say, Courtney, I don't have the money for those art supplies, I don't have the money for that$400 sewing machine or that, you know, whatever the the big piece of equipment is. To your point from earlier, I just want to reflect back. You can find a pine cone or a rock and use your imagination, right? So Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

And he's I do in closing, I just want to say, getting back to my son in the stick game, you can find a stick and go out in the yard and swing your stick around. He also has four lightsabers that we bought, right? Like, and yet those are in his room, and he goes outside and he has his pile of sticks. So it's it's a great reminder that it's not it's usually not the stuff that makes the difference, the materials all around us. Thank you so much for this conversation about play, lightheartedness, how that fits in our lives and how it benefits us physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and all the different capacities that that we live in. And thanks for sharing some of the ways that you've put playfulness into your life, even after times that weren't playful at all, to return to that sense of play and joy.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

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