Play is inherently difficult to quantify, having fun is subjective. This makes it a difficult practice to make progressive. New Movement skills and physical capacity development are relatively easily measured. Helping someone have more fun is more subjective but we need to start the attempt. The lack of play in our modern lives is huge contributor to anxiety, depression, body image and health problems.
Small children know how to play inherently if given even a modicum of affection and freedom. But we have a tendency to forget as we age. A good exercise then to recover your play is to try and remember how you perceived the world as a child.
At times when I have lost my passion for my physical practice I have found simple forgetting my goals and taking a walk in the woods helped me recover immensely. That was my default play as child, I lived on amazing piece of property at end of a dirt road surrounded by woods and most days given a chance I simple wandered in the woods to climb trees, hike up creek beds, carve stones, kick down rotted snags, and pretend to fight orcs. Returning to that basic play personality always restores my passion for movement. You can see where I grew up here.
One game children almost universally play is pretending to be various animals this can be a wonderful entrance to movement practice as the presence of animal form movement practice all over the world attests.
My challenge for you today is to go out into nature, and try to remember what the 6 year old you would have wanted to do, try to imagine yourself as gibbon, a leopard, a wolf and move as that animal would through your environment.
For more inspiration check out Naim’s origins of parkour felines and and lemurs
