684 thoughts on “Learning to Play Again”

1. Being playful is celebrating life in how it is we live from moment to moment and task to task for the truth that it is knowing that it is expansion of how it used to be.

2. I have been noticing how easy it is for children to run around, do little weird things, ask questions and all sorts of things. Yet, adults are the complete opposite – we walk around like stiff robots trying to fit into the contracted society which we have created.

3. Surrendering to that quality of lightness that our bodies are so naturally aligned to restores our vitality and sense of connection to ourselves and each other. When we take ourselves seriously, life feels very heavy and pretty exhausting.

4. Work was quite intense yesterday, so I was taking a break and sitting outside for a moment. A colleague came up and we had quite a giggle about something and were being quite silly. It took me back into my body and I enjoyed the playfulness of the moment, and realised it had been missing in that intensity.

5. I know the lightness and sparkle I feel when I am playful, as well as I know the exhaustion of going through my days without this.

   1. It is so normal to remain in the latter and it doesn’t matter how old we are we can be serious nevertheless.

6. I can say that I often live my day in a far too serious manner – and so playfullness is a key way for me to bring in some spunk and sass into every moment! Thanks for the reminder Anne!

7. “playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk.” – Anne this is hilarious, though not so sure golfers would agree! 😉

8. Cleverness seems to overtake silliness somewhere along the line and we forget how to be playful. Games are mostly competitive and can become very serious, pitting one team against another or even one person against another. There is a lot of money invested in something like the Olympic Games, but actually have these not become very serious too, with people taking drugs and other forms of cheating going on ? And where is the joy in this?

9. What came to me when I re read this blog was, if we would allow children to play at school instead of trying to put them in a box all day long, would the teenager need to hang out, dance and act out in a way that doesn’t support them, still be there?

10. I love this blog Anne. What a wonderful thing to be reminded of – to keep things light and playful. So many intense situations can be diffused through keeping things light.

11. After reading this I feel being playfull is just keeping it light with/in our being, yes of course there will be moments when a seriousness is needed but in keeping it light playfulness can be in an instant in all that we do. I love being playfull.

12. Observing how innately playful children are is a great reminder to bring out the playfulness within me.

    1. Spot on Fiona! My son is a constant reminder for me to be more playful, to have more fun and to smile and enjoy life despite all the challenges we face! And so many other children out there are just like him – super light and with the openness to life that allows it to be filled with fun and laughter. After all, don’t they say that laughter is the best medicine!

13. Approaching life with a playfulness and lightness is far more enjoyable than being bogged down in a fog of seriousness.

14. Just yesterday some of my friends and I took a coworker out for an ‘appreciation lunch’ as he was leaving for another job. What I expressed to him was how much I loved how he had an uncanny ability to always keep things light and playful in the tool/parts room that he worked in, even amongst sometimes stressful situations trying to accommodate all the needs of the mechanics flooding in there at times. There were days that I was having a stressful and sometimes heavy time and his lightness of being inspired me to put things in a wider perspective and not get so caught up in a small issue. This is the power of playfulness, for sure.

    1. I work with people like this and I really appreciate how it keeps the situation light when we are under pressure to deliver within a certain time frame. I really appreciate the team I have around me and all their difference qualities.

15. From the few times I remember when play was fun when I was growing up is still a blur, but I recall we played with the most simple things. I haven’t had this experience since. It is different now, it doesn’t involve anything but it involves the key item, me….Without perfection my perception of play has changed and I love the discovery as it unfolds.

16. Being playful means being open and vulnerable with yourself. It means to be seen for all of your silliness and to not be ticking all the boxes that society has set for you. So, perhaps there is an element of trust involved in being playful, in knowing that you can be freely you and not be judged or rejected. But the reality is that judgement and rejection do come, no matter what we do or say. So the key is maybe to just trust yourself, to know that you are lovely and being playful is just a part of that expression.

17. With the support of others I’ve found being playful is a great antidote to perfectionism or self-criticism.

18. It is a beautiful feeling when the lightness and joy of playfulness returns to us through our body, and we can truly feel the difference in the way that we move.

19. As a child and a teenager I was always ‘playing’ and had a very light hearted approach to life. But as I got older I became much more serious and caught up in life by being very ‘sensible’ as one friend of mine put it. So to reconnect with the innate playfulness now that has always been within me invariably brings a lightness to even more challenging situations, and enables others to let go and see the lighter aspects of life and what it offers us.

20. It is a huge misconception, one that I certainly subscribed to, to think that we need to set aside time to be able to play and that it otherwise means that we are not taking work or life seriously. Yet everything that you have wisely shared makes sense, that our lightness of being is with us every where we are, and with this as is our playfulness, the natural movement and effervescence of the joy we are, born of our connection to our Divine Love.

21. I recognise how I am bringing playfullness back into my life and how much joy there is in this way of being.

22. I love this blog Anne, cause it highlights how we have separated life into bits of work, play, leisure etc. When we live one life, play can be a quality of the movement through our lives.

23. We make life all about ‘growing up’ but truly we would be better off calling it ‘getting small’ because we reduce down so greatly the way we live. How ironic that we pursue some intellectual nirvana when we had every joy we ever could know right at day one. Here’s to playing big everyday Anne – hooray!

24. How strange is that? We knew how to play as children and yet disconnected from that and then adopted new versions of play in the forms of sport, recreation and hobbies?

25. I love these two ways (that you have listed Anne) that the word ‘play’ is used: ‘the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move light and constantly changing movement.’ The word play in these contexts gives such a beautiful spacious, graceful and light feeling. With its use for a dramatic performance a whole different sense of charade comes out, leading to other shades of meaning such as to play with or ‘toy’ with someone or something for sport – and the origin of the word ‘sport’ (which can be related in certain ways to play) is also interesting: it is from disport “amusement”, a contraction from Middle English disporten from Old French desporter “to take away”, “to distract from the work”. That says it all in one – sport is a distraction away from the work!

26. Reading this what I can really appreciate is how my playfulness is back! When I was a child yes it was definitely there then growing up this got completely lost. Being ‘playful’ as a teenager was not cool! And as the years went on I become more serious … but now years later I have naturally got this back from re-connecting to the truth of who I am and I am loving it ✨

27. As the light of the Moon plays across the Earth as a reflection of the Sun so too can we allow our light to move and play with all we meet.

28. I also . . . “love the less common definitions of play
    – the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate.
    – light and constantly changing movement.”
    If we see ourselves as light we understand that life is but a play of light in space!

29. What a breath of fresh air to read this blog again. Play is such a crucial part of our daily lives. Play, goodwill, love, surrender. What can only result is true intelligence and a way to step forward in our evolution.

30. Re-discovering play in life is finding a long lost friend.

31. Yes, I agree Anne! Let’s bring the joy and playfulness back into life and let go of the drudge, the control and intensity that is causing so many meltdowns all over the place. This would lift all our relationships back into a lightness of being.

    1. Absolutely Kathleen. And when re-discovered everyone you meet also becomes a long list of long-lost friends.

32. Being playful is not everywhere appreciated and I think I do know why. It is because it reminds us of our natural origin, that is playful, innocent, full of love and in deep relationship with God. A way of being we all know so well but have left behind because we have chosen to create this life we all now have together and do not want to give up.

33. I like what you bring to the fore Susan, not only the rules that came in the games but also the right and wrong, the judgement and competition that came into it made me disliking to play any longer and made my playfulness slowly disappear.

    1. Yes I know that too, and I have played that game as well in order to fit in, but it never gave any satisfaction, only a temporary relief when the game was over and the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ where defined.

34. I can feel the truth of what you are here presenting Anne, there is definitively something going wrong in our upbringing as many or maybe all of the people I know, have lost that natural ability of going playfully through life and I face a lot of seriousness instead.

35. “Perhaps this is the key to living life in full and ageing grace-fully – learning to play again!” – I reckon so Anne!! The way we live definitely comes from the way we feel about ourselves and relate to others… if that quality is playfulness, life is also this too.

36. Thank you Anne what a great invitation to explore being more playful and letting go of the heavy seriousness that has infected so much of my adult life.

37. You only have to watch young children walk to school to see that they have a spring in their step and often skip everywhere. The lightness they have seems to say that they have more energy than an adult does – so, maybe we should take a leaf out of their book.

38. A timely reminder that as children “Life was play” as I can see that I haven’t been playing enough lately. It seems that the serious child that I was, is trying to sneak back into my life again. So I feel that it’s time to hang out with the young children in my life and watch them play; I am sure that they will inspire to drop the seriousness and embrace the joy!

39. The world is so serious that it is easy to think that is what we are and that we are wrong and taking things too lightly but what if playfulness is part of our natural way of being?

40. Why are work and play separated? Yes sometimes our work requires focus, and I’ve believed that focus=serious and heavy. But what if it isn’t?

41. I like to look and explore the quality of something, be it a word, movement, idea, we spend too much time thinking we know everything without checking in on the quality of what it is we are choosing. I love what you share and explore concerning the word ‘play’, it is light and flowing in quality when we we feel the truth of it, its movement is unimposing, this is how playful can be.

42. I watch my daughter find joy in taking a cleaning cloth and cleaning the floor or helping me hang up washing or pack away toys. It reflects to me that we seem to categorise things – to label them as fun or not fun and as soon as we do that, we start to associate things we used to find joy in with a chore. But perhaps all is needed is bringing the playfulness back – knowing that when we clean we are cleaning for everyone, we are clearing spaces and energy and even our heads.

43. I love how being playful is a series of movements and allows us to express with joy and love for who we are , taking the seriousness out of life and seeing that we can indeed be playful everyday if we so choose.

44. To not differentiate between one activity and another rather focus on the quality of connection or presence we have in life is another whole different ball game. It means that life is one life and a choice to live in joyous connection rather than separation from who we truly are.

45. A great re-read Anne as I can feel again the quality of playfulness I had when I was young and how it was uninhibited and free of pictures, just following one movement into the next, with ease and lightness. I will take this with me into my day today.

46. I can be so very playful when I don’t have to go to work, (an observation of my wife) but when I’m off to work I often loose this playfulness, as you say Anne I can’t really jump around at work too much or they might lock me up but there is still far more room to lighten up and be more playful because when we are it is infectious.

47. It is infectious being around people who see and enjoy the magic in life day in and day out. Why is it that something so strong in us as children becomes so absent as we grow older. I know for me there is a sense throughout my childhood of taking on more burdens and wanting situations to be a certain way – with this came a seriousness and the space to have a spontaneous giggle diminished.

    1. For me the seriousness feels like a brick wall that separates me from other people. Allowing myself to have a silly moment with a child just about to cry in the shop, suddenly the world doesn’t feel so enclosed or in my own bubble as before. Playfulness can connect us.

48. We were told we had to grow up and except the responsibilities of being an adult. What fun is that? We have no choice in growing older, but we can choose how we get there!

49. We have lost our playfulness due to leaving our body and going into the mind. The more you are in your body the more joy you feel and thus cannot help but play.

50. Thank you Anne, I have never read this before so it was a delight to find it. It’s given me an opportunity to appreciate the quality of playfulness I already have and consider bringing that into some more serious pockets of my life including work.

51. In fact I like to play and not to be serious, as I can sense this is my natural essence. But I have to admit that life has made me the opposite, serious and restricted in moving freely in my body, actually 180 degrees off from who I am naturally.

52. ‘So what would it look and feel like to learn to truly play again?’ To play is delicious and brings so much joy where ever I go and is in such a contrast with the dragging energy of to be serious.

53. Anne your entire blog is — ‘pleien’ !!! Love your leaping for joy!

54. Who said we had to get all serious just because we’re old enough to make money and drive cars? It’s crazy what we’ve left behind, for no real reason other than protect ourselves from others not taking us seriously. Bring the play back I say!!

55. How ‘playful’ we are has a huge impact on our attitude toward life. It’s hard to get bogged down in issues and dilemmas when you are feeling light hearted.

    1. Indeed Abby, it is the joy of life that brings the lightheartedness.

56. Play is an expression of who we are and allows our sweetness, joy and light shine in our every movement. It is not just something we do but a way of being, that ignites the true love of who we are to sing in every fine detail of our movements made.

57. We have made joy to be that which is laughter and excitement from children, and so we are entertaining them for them to perform! When in fact true joy is a movement that reflects the grace and playfulness within, no emotions simply a certain quality of movements that reflects the all that we are.

58. It is interesting to consider that what we as adults call play is mostly in a game like environment, conditioned with rules and justification while in truth we are still the same as that child we once were and naturally considered life as one big play garden? So where did we lose this natural way of being and at what cost?

59. “light and constantly changing movement” How beautiful to present the quality of play, a quality that we can re-introduce our selves to through the way we move, so that we can play all day long even through our working week.

60. Play is natural. I learned to play again when feeling an innate joy of connection with myself, this is on-going all the time and never stops no matter what my age is.

61. I have recently found that when I am simply myself there is a lightness and natural playfulness that is expressed all that I do.

62. Being playful to me is similar to being light hearted with an innocence and I love it when I express this way.

63. Yes being silly is all part of playfullness, and to bring this in spontaneously when there is a heaviness in the room just lightens everything up immediately.

64. Great Blog Anne, and I so relate as yesterday I found myself skipping around doing an anti-clock-wise-cycle on one foot, and my employer asked what are you doing? Could it be as you have shared Anne, “work and play can become a graceful, spherical whole” and when we feel the joy in our body we respond in some glorious way?

65. I loved reading this blog again Anne, reminding me to be in the moment and enjoy the freedom I have to just be me, and express my playfulness in all that I do.Life is lightness and in that lightness there is space.

66. An invitation to us all on how to bring more play into our adult lives.

67. ‘the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate’ . When I first read your blog I could not relate to this particular explanation in my first language which but recently I worked with an American colleague and he used it, explained to me what he meant and then I could feel the Dutch equivalent ‘speling’ and it is beautiful and related to play as this is ‘spel’ or ‘spelen’ in Dutch.

68. I spent much of my adult life being quite serious, even though I am a naturally playful person. What I am loving now, as a woman in her late fifties, is resdicovering this playfulness and having fun with it. Life is so much more enjoyable and it is such a lovely way to engage and connect with other people.

69. On reading this I would like more play in my life, and I can’t wait for anyone else to bring it. What is apparent is how much we love playfulness as adults, to feel others acting in this way feels light and fun and something we want to be around. So no reason not to be playful, and it actually feels a healthier more efficient way to work too as you get less bogged down in the seriousness and more enthusiastic about life.

70. It seems as though we have made the business of living oh so very serious and as the population increases and there are more rules and regulations to keep everyone nicely under control and keep the systems running smoothly we have lost the magic in our everyday encounters. Bringing this playful way of being back into our lives brings back the lightness and the joy to our days. That hard seriousness can sometimes take a while to crack because we have grown so used to it that we wear it like a tough outer layer smothering the childlike innocence and vital joy that we harbour within. Let’s not give up or give in to this cold separative mode of being.

71. Interesting definitions of play ‘the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate’ and ‘light and constantly changing movement.’ I love them. Reading your blog also gave me to the space to appreciate just how playful I still am particularly at work. A few years ago in one company they were doing a Winnie the Pooh competition for the whole team and at the end of it I got the Roo award for being the most playful … which surprised me but now I see many ways in which I am playful naturally so (as well as being serious when needed!)

72. No matter what age I am in, I will never give up playing because it feels to be the most natural relationship I have with myself and it would be a shame to hide this with everyone I meet.

73. There certainly was a lightness of being when we were children that did not change through the day through whatever we were doing. Whether we were eating, exploring, bathing or playing we were led by the quality of our being first. As we grow up we have been conditioned to compartmentalise ourselves into what is deemed to be acceptable behaviour for different aspects of our living day, measured all by what we do and how we do it. At work, with friends, with family, at home, in sport, in society etc., we are expected to be a certain way, a way that is considered ‘normal’ but is in fact a way that does not include being ourselves first. Yet the lightness of being that was once for us as natural as breathing, still is with us as it is in truth who we are. And so as you have wisely shared Anne – ‘We can restore the joy and wonder of just being in a body and living life, and work and play can become a graceful, spherical whole – which we used to just know as ‘life’ when we were young.’

74. There is this notion that if we grow up and have responsibility in our lives that we have to become serious. But that is just not the case, we can bring in the playfulness and joy alongside the responsibility for sure.

75. Reconnecting to our movements and the ease in which our bodies naturally want to move adds to our playful expression and we do begin to feel rejuvenated and joyful because we are returning to who we truly are.

76. Being able to play and bring joy to how one lives life, ends up being about how much we feel we can let go of control and let go of what life has to look like. We really don’t want to let go of the control a lot of the time, we just want to be serious. But as you point out, it is important to be open to learning to play again!

77. “Life was play – we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole.” I so agree with this observation on youngsters – and I love your comment “Perhaps this is the key to living life in full and ageing grace-fully – learning to play again!” So worth taking on board.

78. I know my day flows completely differently when I am feeling playful and light, and I am more open with others allowing them to feel this quality of joy that often we have left behind, but that is always present and available to us all if we make this simple choice.

79. A beautiful reminder to appreciate the play of light and movement throughout my day and to enjoy the quality of playfulness this brings to everyone.

80. Somewhere along the line we forgot how to walk our joy and instead enjoined with the hum drudgery of life that is entirely self-created and not a drop of it true to the essence of who we truly are.

81. True play is a constant series of movements and one that does not separate it is merely a consistent choice to feel our bodies, surrender to it’s joy and move from this expression.

82. Fascinating we use one word to describe so many different things – and I agree, the commonality here is the quality of lightness and spaciousness.

83. Interesting how in almost every word the sense of quality and absoluteness of its meaning has been lost with focus only on the doing nature of it. Play is an example of this and so is movement. We can play or move in distinctive qualities such as harshness and gentleness with very starkly different effects. We used to know this but no longer generally live it any more.

84. I love the word play and it is one of those words that simply brings inspiration to my life. We can choose to be playful everyday just from the way we move, how we express and the light and joyful quality of this energy offers a great reflection for others too. Seeing someone in a playful way always makes me smile and I feeling inspired by their quality of movements to bring my own playful expression out. Playfulness is infectious and its one movement that truly catches on quickly.

85. My granddaughter who is a toddler was up here recently and it was interesting to join in play with her. I like playing silly games with simple things such as words, singing, or an old saucepan and wooden spoon i.e. not needing complicated or expensive toys necessarily. This time we had a great deal of fun playing with singing. And I love playing with adults too! In fact I realise that I am pretty playful in general – I find the human race (including myself of course) hilarious (if not tragic).

86. Ah yes, but once we have reconnected to the truth of who we are, no matter how we move or seemingly do not move, we cannot stop our eyes from dancing and indeed it is this sparkle that reminds others that they are also of this immense and ageless love, wisdom and joy.

87. I love watching children play – there is so much purpose to their playfulness. This is how we are designed to be. As we all share a common purpose in life – to return to Soul – no matter where we live in the world, the colour of our skin or what our profession may be, we are the ‘children of God’ and we are here to relearn how to move in a way in all that we think, say and do, that this divinity is able to be in active expression. When we approach life from this understanding, life and especially work cannot be a chore because ‘all that we do’ is infused with ‘the all that we are’.

88. I love playing… I didn’t used to… I couldn’t really let go that much… but now, the connection with myself that I have nurtured, guided by the extraordinary wisdom presented by Universal Medicine, has opened up to me that inner doorway to be able to play again

89. I know I have had a good dose of the seriousness disease throughout my life, feeling life as a difficulty and a responsibility of the hard-work kind. I love the idea of bringing more play, or joy, into my every day. And no, I don’t feel this means jumping around like a loon either – I can feel it’s more about contacting the qualities within me that feel joyous and embodying them with every movement… expanding my joyousness out into the world.

90. ‘Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’ I know I don’t live this way! I have a belief that life is serious business, and serious in a solemn way to compensate for not bringing the joy that I know heals in its presence.

91. Thank you Anne, a beautiful reminder to keep it light and have some fun, not hold back that spontaneity and playfullness that is itching to be expressed.

92. Thank you Anne for a great article, I have found I have been slipping into being serious about life by going into the getting it right, no fun at all just a heaviness. our beings when we are being just who we are, are light and lightness with fun joy and spaciousness to be lived.

93. Being playful is an attitude that changes the perception of ourselves and everything around us. I can feel the lightness that it brings to me just by opening myself to it and how this lightens also what I do and how I relate with people. Then I experience that life is much simpler than I used to think it is

94. I use to love playing when I was a kid and the way you bring in the true meaning of play, makes me understand how I can apply it to my adult life, without looking crazy that is, haha. I think that we could all do with a dose of lightness has we get older, things can accidentally get more heavy.

95. I know this joy and sense of play you share Anne and it feels so nourishing in the body. It is a quality of being that lightens our way.

96. I cannot believe how having a truly joy-full laugh can really support so much in disarming the seriousness we run life with. Lightening up is so important to not taking it all on and just being yourself. And by being yourself you will be less drained and more vital!

97. Our play is our way. So whenever we have lost our playful side of things – we must restore ourselves back to the simplicity of playfulness again. All it requires is a choice!

98. Play is so needed in the world today- to remind us of the lightness and joy that we can be with life. Even children are lacking in play today, it has been replaced by checking out on screens which creates a heaviness in the body- it is not surprising to see the rate of mental health issues in young people as a result.

99. Oh my goodness Anne, true ‘play’ is absolutely “the key to living life in full” – at any age or stage of life in which we find ourselves.
    When we lose our sense of play, we have lost our connection with the amazingness that we are – a state of illness in its own right (that no doubt leads to many others).

100. The key to living a life of play is to explore and engage in movements that express our inner joy. That is true rhythm in motion and music to my ears, feet and body all rolled into one.

101. Thank you Anne for breaking down the constructs of what we have perceived ‘play’ to be and remind us of the true quality it actually is – the lightness and spaciousness within. From this place I feel deeply connected with God, which is beautiful to honour and embrace and not judge as wrong from the perceptions of Catholic constructs I have previously lived (and now choose to discard) that present suffering and a hard, sacrificing and serious approach to life attain us salvation of some kind and a place in God’s home.
     When I am connected to the simplicity of the spaciousness and lightness within me these Catholic constructs – just like the other false forms you present – drop away and I feel deeply held, loved and embraced with God, true playfullness only bringing us closer. Beautiful to feel this following the reading of your blog, thank you.

102. The world tells us not to be our amazing, playful and joyful selves. Have you not noticed how much we prefer it when another is not feeling so great because it confirms for us that it’s normal and doesn’t expose our irresponsibility in the catalogue of ill choices that we have made.

103. This blog is such a fabulous reminder to be light in our days, light in our touch, light with our movements and light withourselves. The moment I bring a little lightness to moments where I have slipped into hardness or self bashing, my whole perspective changes. It’s interesting how we create seriousness and dramas to keep us away from living the naturally light, playful and joyful selves that we are.

104. I love the spaciousness in your blog Anne, and I feel that is the key to being playful: giving ourselves space just to be ourselves, and as we let go of all impositions we become more free to express just that.

105. Really loving what this blog has brought out in people. There is so much play in peoples comments, bring on the joy..

106. This is beautiful Anne, it allows one to feel that playfulness is not just a word we have placed pictures and beliefs on, but a vibration one can choice to move in.

107. Reading this reminds me of what people said when I was 19 – they called me mature and grown up because, sure I had a wisdom but I was so serious! and this was mistaken as maturity. Now I am far more ‘grown up’ which to me means more responsible but with this much more playful and joyful than I ever was at 19 when I was actually so protected and hidden from the world that I didn’t share who I was or my beauty as children so playfully do.

108. Like many words that are familiar to us, playful is yet another that has been bastardised so that the true meaning of the word is hidden and almost forgotten. Talk to any adult about play and it is something that is separate from aspects of life such as work, we seem to have to put aside time to play and then what does that play mean? Whereas when we consider playfulness as the quality in which the way we move through space then we can be playful in any situation or circumstances.

109. “Life was play – we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole.” I completely agree when we were young life was play, it was simple and fun, we had all the space and lightness around play, but it all changed as we got older; more serious and we had to go to school, College, University and Work.

110. The open and loving playfulness we can have amongst our daily life should never be confused with the games that can be played- thus it is always important for us to constantly distinguish the quality at play.

111. You have revealed the key to anxiety and stress. It is in the quality of how we do what we do that should be placed before the action. If we do it the other way round we will be putting ourselves and our inner being less.

112. Being playful with our light nourishes us from the inside out.

113. A play of light… I like that definition too Anne, as much as I like the effect of light playing on the water or through leaves or on the wall or similar. This definition seems to literally reflect our multi-dimensional nature.

114. William great what you share here, it is beautiful and how with playfullness there is a quality of lightness.

115. Play is a joyful quality and one that we can all move, express and live if we choose to stop and connect to our bodies and move from there. The flow and playfulness found in our movements is also super fun and when I see someone moving with such joy it makes me feel light and playful too. Play is inspiring to others and when we see adults moving in this way it allows others to connect and surrender to the quality shared too. Play is an infectious movement and one that I would gladly prescribe too.

116. I have learnt that life is play it is all a game of energy. Sometimes i forget this and become too caught up in the game. When I take a step back i can see there is always the choice to go to love.

117. Being light and playful sounds like good medicine to me, Anne. This blog is a great reminder that there is joy to be had in any task, and that life does not need to be a struggle when we are connected to our own loveliness.

118. I’ve been really serious most of my life and got recognition for it too (being mature for my age when young, reliable etc.) It’s like there is an assumption that seriousness and playfulness are polar opposites. But reading this is really starting to break down my beliefs. Being serious doesn’t have to mean being heavy and doleful. It can be light and purposeful as can being playful. So I love the line that play incorporates the quality of ‘…light and constantly changing movement.’ Life can be joyful – I don’t have to seriously heavy to be committed or respectful of life’s grace.

119. When reading your words it feels like a mechanic is at work bringing all the parts in the right order again.

120. By making everything serious we make life a chore and therefore lose commitment to it. If we play we see life as an aventure and a learning and we commit to making it a life of love.

121. Being playful helps lighten the mood when seriousness comes in. I can feel there has been a cap on what is considered playful, that it has to be energetic and a motion like you described Anne. But sometimes the body doesn’t want to do that but that doesn’t mean we can’t be playful with tone or gestures or even our walk for example.

122. The re-connection to playfulness has been so important to me. Losing that sense of that deep inner joy and how to express it, meant I substituted that feeling with alcohol and drugs.

123. A cool reminder to keep it real and light! Cracking up at this line Anne, ‘playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk.’ How wonderful it is to know that being serious all the time is actually to our detriment – and having more fun with ourselves is like a super food – but better!

124. A lightness of heart is essential in life and assists us greatly in our willingness to deal with what life presents to us.

125. Recently I have been around quit a lot of children. The other day I watched two of them play, they made up an imaginary pool and played in it. There were no rules, and they all found it so easy to give their ideas of what they can do. There was an incredible synch between them. Just beautiful to watch. And what do we do as adults? The complete opposite! We create the rules that we don’t want to follow and are then scared to break….

126. Many have not connected to their natural essence of play and have forgotten the joy it produces within. But what helped me re-connect to this natural way of being, was the consistency and commitment to make space to connect with my body, whether that be with a light exercise routine or some morning stretches or even a walk around my neighbourhood. My body feels light and delicate and every movement thereafter can be just as joyful and reflect a quality of light and playfulness all in one single step.

127. Anne a brilliant observation about us as adults, we seem to have forgotten how to have that innocent fun and play and giggle as we did as children. I was told that there is going to be a play park near to where I live and my eyes lit up because I can go and play there. But there is an age barrier … What that’s not fair. Guess who will be sneaking in the early morning to play when it’s built… me. It is one of my greatest pleasures to play and have fun like I did as a child, it keeps me young at heart.

128. There is certainly room for us to be playful in life. I walk down the street and a lot of people avoid eye contact, are not open, are shut down and getting on with their own thing. But what if playful could be about opening up to others, seeing how people respond to this as you walk down the street, walking in joy and connected. What if this were the reflection when we walk down the street?

129. Play – it’s the only way to go. A beautiful friend offered to help me rebuild sections of my road/track after the floods. We chose a gorgeous sunny morning when both of us had time and we spent 4 hours of strenuous work, shovelling and carting buckets of rocks, pebbles, and soil, to the road and then repairing it. After a little while we started to admire all the beautiful rocks and pebbles thrown up onto the banks of the stream – white, tawny, veined, pink, terracotta – the most delicate and alive colours. And the sun shone through the clear waters of the stream with the leaves above making dappled sunlight play all around us. We just kept stopping and breathing in the beauty that was all around and we had such fun together. What could have been a dreary job was actually quite lovely!

130. To understand that play is a quality, a way of being and not a thing that we have to do, brings a whole other level to it that we just need to surrender into for it to be expressed.

131. Children are genius at turning everything into play. I love how when sometimes work starts feeling like a play. Underneath the seriousness and the heaviness and the complications often associated with work situations, we all want to be playing. I feel it is also to do with how we are with those around us. Are we open to them like they are our playmates, are they just strangers or people who happen to be spending 8 hours a day in the same building?

132. Lovely sharing, thank you Anne. It’s crazy that we need to learn how to play again and yet it is this playfulness in every day, in the little things we do which brings so much joy and lightness to our life, which as adults it is so precious to reconnect with.

133. ‘And if not, what has gotten in the way? We used to live like this when we were little – who said life had to be serious as we grew big?’ Isn’t that so interesting, nobody has ever said that life needs to be serious, or lacking joy. Our parents have always wished us to be ‘happy’ so where along the way have we adopted this belief that we need to be serious as we mature into adults? How is it that our natural joy and vitality that is innate in all of us as children get crushed and we conform to fit into a society where everyone else is making life look hard and arduous so we follow suit. What I have found is the quality of my Livingness has direct impact on whether my day is full of space and joy or whether I’ve made it hard work by focusing on trying and doing which tells me I am the one in control of my inner environment. It is me that determines whether I am joyful or not and not any external factors which we all so readily like to blame.

134. We seem to complicate play as we get older and view play as something we have to go to. Play is so much simpler and more accessible than that as you have beautifully shared Anne. And so much fun.

135. I took a group of 14 year old students on a trip recently. We went for a walk after lunch and found an adventure playground. It was lovely to see the students having such fun playing. Not a mobile phone in sight.

     1. I wish I was one of the students in your class Debra, they must have been so ready to focus again after the freedom they were given to express themselves.

136. Being playful is something that many of us lose when we take on the responsibility of being a parent or in the workforce where we feel we need to be serious. How much joy we would let into all areas of our lives as our natural state of being is joyful. I also find that I enjoy playing with my Grandchildren, they allow me to relive what I had lost.

137. The word origin tells us so much about the light – and spaciousness that play allows and brings to everyday life, to every moment if we but allow it.

138. When we choose to label some aspects of life as ‘play’ and other aspects as something different, we forget that life is all one. We stop asking how come we are living a life that is not joyful, loving, harmonious all of the time.

139. Thank you for sharing the joy Anne. Keeping life light and simple is key.

140. Playing is important for children, but playfullness is equally important for us as adults too! It is what keeps things light and feeds us back energy. When we get bogged down by the heaviness or feel burdened by life, then it is a sure sign we have stepped away from our natural way of being, which incidentally is being playful. I know I can use this as a gauge for how my day is and how much I am in line with or in tune with my essence/my Soul – it is the level of playfulness that shows me the level of lightheartedness and connection that I bring on a day to day basis. What a blessing to have this as a marker!

141. ‘Light and constantly changing movement’ I read this blog yesterday and felt to read it again today to bring more playfulness into my day as it is so true that when we live with the quality of lightness and stay with our movements playfulness comes naturally to what we do.

142. We can get so lost in seriousness of life when we strive, try and work at making things better. When we live connected to ourselves and bring a certain quality to all that we do, playfulness is naturally there.

143. Gorgeous to come back to this great reminder Anne, of the playfulness and lightness of being we can bring to our daily lives through our connection to our hearts, where our joy within is always ready to play.

144. I find that when I am feeling playful I am able to do things that I otherwise would not be able to do. For example I never used to be able to swim front crawl (freestyle), and being serious about it was not getting me anywhere and in fact filled me full of fear. One day I was just playing and giggling with a friend of mine in the pool with no intention of trying to swim, but then suddenly I was just doing it! Being playful had relaxed me and I had dropped the trying. I was able to take it lightly and it became fun. A huge lesson for life!

     1. When we are trying we become serious and we frustrate ourselves with not being able to do whatever it is that we are trying to do but children don’t try to be playful, they just are, it’s natural to them. Trying is exhausting and draining – no wonder children have an abundance of energy they do not waste it all on trying.

145. Is the opposite of play, work? Some cultures do not have a word for work. Why do we need a word for work? I was the major caregiver for my children and my mom would not accept that I was the “mom”. Was that because being the home person was not considered work, so it was not important? So only important things are considered work? Children do not differentiate between work and play. And what they do is incredibly important. Why do adults feel the need too have work different then play?
     I am 65 and have worked all my life, accomplished lots of good things. But at age 50 I was totally exhausted. What was going on? After years of rest I realized that the way I was working had worn my body out.
     I am “working” again and enjoying it more because I am relaxing and not pushing to get things done. The way a child is when it is playing or just being themselves.

146. Play can be in a look, a movement, a gesture; it can be so subtle and yet bring so much joy.

     1. Spot on Alison, playfulness does not have to mean pulling out the LEGOS (though that would be fun too!)…it can be as subtle as you have described with a look, or a movement or gesture that shows how we are light and bubbling on the inside – it is the twinkle in ones eye that we cannot hide, it is the skip in the step that cannot be toned down.

     2. Very true. There are many different ways of being playful. Walking on the balls of my foot in a bounce or pronouncing a word differently to the normal way can feel very light and fun. And this can be done even while working, no need to separate the two.

147. Play is a constantly changing movement that expresses our bodies light and joy all in one sweet package.

148. ‘Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’ Thanks Anne for this reminder in a very busy and at times intense time of my life. I know so well when seriousness kicks in I have lost the plot, so to speak and it is just a matter of choice to see and feel the joy and wonder that is in us and everything around us.

149. I love to play and leap and dance around, sometimes I make up songs in the car, sing when I’m walking through a carpark, run about in fresh snow like a child, or skip with joy – why hide this part of us as an adult, why not let people see this joy lived and personified – for how are they going to know who they really are.

150. Thank you Anne for a beautiful reminder to bring more play and playfulness into my every day! This comes with the way I choose to be with myself, the lightness that I can bring to anything I do, to all I can be with, including myself!

151. I agree Anne we are naturally playful beings who sometimes take themselves far too serious. Time to play and have fun with life as let’s face it if we cannot laugh at ourselves and see through this comedy tragedy but instead are all caught up in reaction to what is going on . . what are we really doing? Are we taking on unnecessary stress that we could easily observe and bring our understanding and our sense of fun to? And if we are stressing what are we getting out of it?

152. Is play another one of those words we have bastardised and changed the meaning of along the way? It feels very confirming and powerful to claim that by playing we are meaning truly being with ourselves and being in joy rather than playing by having “fun” solely by what we do.

153. it is definitely worth reminding ourselves that if we have lost the lightness, the playfulness in life then it is because we have lost connection to ourselves and what we are here to bring. The arduousness, struggle, burdens and misery are telling us that we have joined something that we are not truly part of and that are not truly part of us.

154. Playfulness is all around us! I was stopped as I sat on the edge of my bed and looked out my window – there was a tiny little green finch bouncing up and down on a very slim bendy branch. At first it looked as if he had landed on a branch without realising it was so bendy, but then he flitted to a really sturdy branch sat there for a couple of second and then leapt down again onto the bendy branch bouncing up and down. I suddenly realised that he was having fun, enjoying the movement of bouncing up and down. I just laughed and laughed to see it.

155. Just reading this first line “When we were young, we had no trouble playing. We did it all the time. We did not even have a word for it – that was just how we lived’ instantly reminds us of how easy it was to play as a child, and spend hours playing in nature. Maybe as adults this is why we love to watch children play so much as it reminds us of how we used to be connected to everything.

156. Thank you Anne for reminding me to bring the quality of playfulness into my everyday life.

157. Playfullness is reflected in nature so beautifully, the way a butterfly moves, how swallows dance and the way the wind tickles the branches and leaves of trees. God is the ultimate play fan, and he doesn’t let us forget that! So what are we waiting for? Permission? God is giving it to us constantly.

158. I have just spent a few days with my grand-daughter who is one year and 3 months old. The greatest fun and cheekiest play was her primary way of being – interspersed with moments of deep concentration as she put her new silver sandals on her chubby feet. All the fun we had was without any of the toys – the best one being her experimenting with walking backwards and falling into my arms. What a joy is play!!

159. I work in a field (palliative care) which many consider serious and heavy going in its application but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Though there may be gravity and seriousness to contend with, lightness and laughter and a playfullness may also often be the order of the day and this is because there is still life to be lived each and every day up until the moment of passing, so let’s not forget to live it, and in fullness rather than lack.

160. I love how you describe play as a quality rather than an activity alone Anne. I have had the propensity occasionally to get too serious about life when in fact what sustains and lightens life for me and everyone around me is when I allow through the quality of playfulness which is naturally ever-present within anyway. Connecting to it is key.

161. We move lightly and freely when we are truly playful. This is always a better option than moving with the weight of the world on our shoulders and shaking this off is simply a matter of recognising when we are weighed down and have a good laugh at ourselves as humour can to be found in even the most serious of matters.

162. I have no doubt you are on the money here Anne, the more serious and solumn with life I get, the harder I feel. Laughter and playfulness are definitely very good medicine for the body being lighter and healthier in my experience.

163. Re-learning how to play again as one of the lost arts of our adult lives seems to be a daily practice which involves commitment and dedication to self-love, because with this there is the simple joy of being.

164. Play is the perfect example of yet another word and term that has been taken so far away from the truth of it’s meaning and the way in which we know it is to be lived.

     1. So true Kylie – a saying that comes to mind is ‘childs play’, which feels quite demeaning and void of true representation of play.

165. I think so Anne, learning to play again is the way to true health.

166. The light of the moon plays on the surface of the water on a starlit night. You can’t touch it but you can feel the magic of God and the joy in your heart as the Universe shows us how to play lightly.

     1. What you have said Mary is so beautiful, not only in regards to playfulness but to our whole relationship with the universe – the delight and beauty of it is experienced within and not something we have to physically explore. I am ‘touched’ by your words.

167. ” I love the less common definitions of play –the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate -light and constantly changing movement.”
     I love this as I often have a mental picture of play being lots of laughter and activity, and I judge myself to be a bit boring, but this version frees the pictures and brings it back to allowing the body to enjoy each and every surrendered movement.

168. Yes please, I love playing and feel it is part and parcel of me. There are times for seriousness, but without play, those serious times can become all consuming.

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170. I love what you present here Anne about the possibility of true play being about the Quality in the way we do things and so it’s not confined to certain activities but a way of living or doing things that we can bring in to our day, at work and whilst doing the chores – not just in ‘off’ time.

171. Everyday building a new fresh relationship with myself, and everyday discovering all the wonders of the universe that are right here has definitely reignited my playful and inquisitive nature – that I remember feeling when I was younger. Our approach to life has a massive impact on how we feel day to day – and there is so much to be awestruck by.

172. Its interesting when at the end you make the observation that being playful can transform even intense physical activity that may be required… I know this feeling of a really beautiful demanding day and the difference when that is lacking and it can quickly turn into drudgery. It makes all the difference.

173. Love the way you have playfully played with the word ‘play’. To me it shares the way words can bring joy to our lives. A word can be so stuck in the mud, by the way a word has become so convoluted in its meaning.

174. Hi Anne, thank you for opening the subject of play. Life is such a serious business for many around me and I have also found that there has been a seriousness that makes the moments in my day quite heavy. We are so easily sucked into what the world imposes on us regarding ‘applying’ ourselves in life and work in order to be a ‘good’ citizen. I especially loved your less common definitions of play and how if we bring ourselves to each moment like we are ‘an object moving lightly through space allowing changing movement’ – this feels so loving and playful. Gorgeous blog, already my day feels lighter and full of play.

175. I love this study on the word ‘play’ Anne. It reminds me that life is a dance and taking ourselves lightly allows our dance to be playful and to flow and adjust to whatever presents as so we can move gracefully through our day.

176. For me, being playful starts with feeling the lightness of my being, who I am and enjoying that with myself. Then, when I share that with another, my expression is filled with the Joy of being me.

177. We can hide that which we know or actually open our hearts to those feeling inside us – a source of divinity we have possibly left behind.. But can absolutely claim back too!

178. Older people who remain playful definitely seem to look younger and more vibrant, that’s been my experience, it says a lot for how we define ourselves, if we make room to stay playful and interact with lightness even in the serious moments, then perhaps we put less strain on our bodies. Perhaps play is the most natural state for us to be in at any age.

179. I would say a definite yes to that last question. I’d say that play is definitely the way : )

180. Anne I love how you call side effects as ‘effects’ – this is very true and reading this I can appreciate that the world says we will have ‘side effects’ from drugs and alcohol and so forth but really they are as you say – direct effects on the body. If we misuse drug dosages it can be life threatening, drugs that don’t agree with our system can really do us harm, and alcohol – well you can lose track of time, lose control of your body, forget things, get addicted – these are all as you say – effects!

181. Taking life too seriously surely has to have a knock on effect with regards to our health. In our household it helps to have two people around who find being playful very easy, and it soon rubs off – otherwise things can get too serious.

182. I lost to live life in playfulness for a period of time in my life and instead came the seriousness, but I discovered that it is never to late to rekindle that inner fire I lived as a child that makes me playful and in appreciation of the life that is presented to me.

183. Play-fullness is such a natural part of who we are – and seeking play time really shows us how much more play-fully we could be living within our days, in the simplest of ways.

184. Such a timely blog to read right now, it is so easy to go into the whirlwind of life and forget what truly matters; how we feel and the quality that we are living in. So important to not take things seriously as you say Anne – we let this become a forgotten art and life becomes one big chore. It is always a choice.

185. Play disappears quite rapidly when we have to perform.. But what if we don’t have to perform? The most important thing is how we are in everything we do. It would be very different, to live this way brings the joy back to life, feeling the light shining from within.

186. I am not feeling very good today, in fact I feel like the kid in the playground that has her arms crossed and doesn’t want to play. After reading this blog I have to be honest, I am not magically feeling playful again, even though I am generally a pretty light person but what it has brought me is the awareness of opening up space in my cells, releasing my muscles and dropping my shoulders, I am sure the joy will follow once I bring more focus to each movement for the rest of the day.

     1. Sarah, I am totally inspired by your honesty and I can remember so many times when I was that kid too; how hard it was to remove myself from feeling the way I was feeling, separated from everyone and the world. And I love the way you were allowing yourself the space to slowly return to the joyful and playful woman you naturally are, with no need to push, no expectations, just the knowing to stay connected to your body and to every movement.

        1. Sometimes we must be patient, as when we lockdown and dig our heals in it can take a little time to feel fully joy-filled again. In truth it didn’t take long though, I had the bounce back in my step before the sunset that day!

        2. Love it Sarah, your openness to express as it is, is refreshingly play-full.

187. I love how play can be brought into any movement we make during our day. Playfulness from our movements is an exploration of moments and you can be playful even in the simple activities, like washing the dishes or making your bed. The expression of play is available anytime we choose.

188. Thank you Anne for a great sharing, as a child growing up responsibility was a big thing no idleness was allowed, work was upheld as good. Now I often say I am going to work in my garden, after reading your blog I now am saying I am going to play in my garden, and as I say this to myself I feel a lightness and joy in my body, I love these words “This describes more the quality of how we can be as we live our day – a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities. “

189. Years ago I took life very seriously and felt that I had to be this way because life was serious business. My Mother used to say to me “why don’t you go back to your painting?” But this sounded way too frivolous, if I did anything like this I might be considered selfish, you can’t do something just for fun.
     One day a friend asked me to join her in a new painting class and as I had become quite exhausted caring for my family and a little disillusioned with the way my life was headed, I said yes. The first thing the teacher said to the class was “just play” and we all looked at her and said “how do we do this?” It was a whole new experience for me which changed my life around, I discovered that by looking after me I was better equipped for looking after others. It lead me on a long, fun and interesting journey about how to use painting as a tool for reconnection and self expression, and discovered that the way you paint will, in a fun way, expose your old habits and beliefs.
     Today I witness painters coming into classes and even if they have been having difficult times they leave looking and feeling quite different and all because they gave themselves permission to play.

190. Wow, I never realised play could have so many meanings, but most importantly it is good to remember that play is a chance to make life lighter, that I can still achieve as much in playfulness as I can in serious mode, so letting the joy of play out has to be something worth reminding myself of.

191. Thank you Anne for the simple and beautiful reminder to bring the quality of play into everything we do.

192. I love working with children because they have that sense of playfulness in the way they approach life. It brings a freshness, lightness and different perspective to situations. It is a much needed quality for adults to retain.

193. It’s true, life can get far too serious at times and being lighthearted and playful allows space and a connection with others that can bring joy and inspiration.

194. I laughed at this “and playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk.” Having been useless at golf, and to be honest, found it a somewhat useless thing to be doing, I have to agree. I recently came across one golf ball after another to the total of four when I was walking along an isolated beach. (nowhere near a golf course). I have to say that by the time I picked up the fourth one I was laughing out loud and feeling very playful as it was such a peculiar and unexpected thing to find there. –

195. Playing is a movement based on joy. That’s why children do it so well and often ‘make us feel young again’ as we connect to something so natural from our past. When I’m being playful it’s not for a select individual group either, it’s for everyone.

196. Funnily enough I feel much more playful and joyful as I approach my 60s than I ever did as a child.

197. “Perhaps this is the key to living life in full and ageing grace-fully – learning to play again!” I would say most definitely, learning to play again is an important key to ageing gracefully. In fact re-learning to play and have fun is a vital ingredient at any stage of life.

198. Slowly, but ever so steadily I am returning to the fun, joy, lightness, playfulness and laughter I once was as a young child. There have been glimpses of this way of being throughout my life, alerting me to the fact that this is natural, God given and divine. A gorgeous timely reminder Anne; let the playfulness continue and expand.

199. I have found that children are the best teachers of play! Their natural enthusiasm and joy inspire us to connect back to our own childhood and let go the seriousness of Adult life!

200. I enjoyed your comments on playful, thanks Anne we all need to have fun.

201. This description stood out to me ‘activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, especially by children’. To me this shows that we have an attitude that play is for children and that life for adults should be more serious. It is like this expectation that life won’t be continuously joyful for adults.

202. We were born to play! and it is never too late to uncover our playful side, which is in fact our natural way to move, to live and to be. Thanks for writing such a great reminder for us all Anne.

203. Ageing gracefully with the lightness of playing which makes us vital and like you said Anne restores and revives us. It is a true inspiration to see elderly people who live in this quality and how ‘young’ they are.

204. Yes Anne , play is like when we were kids , had no hold or measure what or where to go with creativity and play. Playfulness was than each year played down and seen as not seeming the age anymore – this was coming from either parents, family, environment in school, kids in school etc. it is a shame that we have made life about measurements and so had limit the actual huge amount that playfullness is and resides within everyone in the absolute same amount and is equally able to be expressed by any gender, age, ethnicity, culture etc.etc. Playfullness should be brought back to its true origin and rightfull ways – as without we hold back who we are.

205. What is lovely is how we can be playfull without even ‘doing’ anything it is just a natural expression of our essence.

206. What a gem, I smiled at the prospect of jumping around a suit! I often feel that my more serious days call for a medicinal dose of swings and slide at the park.

207. Learning to play again, what a wonderful lesson for us all to learn. Your not so common definition of play Anne holds the key for us to learn and live this truely valuable lesson. I love what you have expressed here;
     “This describes more the quality of how we can be as we live our day – a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities”.

208. It does feel like we have lost the joie de vivre we naturally had as children, and we would get strange looks if we started to leap and dance as we walk around. ‘So what would it look and feel like to learn to truly play again?’ Is it simply a quality of being that we can bring to our day? ‘Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’

209. Gorgeous Anne! I can see from what you share that true play has nothing to do with what we do per se but has everything to do with how we are with what we do, the quality of our being we take to it. This is so often not considered when the definition of play is sought.

210. Maybe there is a constant striving for the next big thing, and so all the little things that make up the day get lost, when it is in fact in those tiny details that there lives the most fun.

211. I love this blog Anne! Bringing playfulness into the day is a delight we all deserve each and every day.

212. To me current society is collectively playing a play, and by doing so we keep ourselves away from that playfulness that we all know from being a child. What I currently observe that we tend to engage children into education at younger age than before, and even introduce intelligence tests, and with that the allowances of living playful is repressed even further, and at earlier age. Why are we playing this collective play or game while we all have innately in us that playfulness that would make life so much more lightheartedly and enjoyable?

213. Thank you for sharing this Anne. This is a lovely reminder of the lightness and playfulness that is still available to us all if we choose it.

214. A great reminder Anne, I can feel I get way too serious about life when this is in fact my natural expression to be very playful.

215. This is very joyful to read Anne, thank you. I can feel my particles loving it.

216. They use the term ‘play’ in computing to mean “give something a go and see if it works to suit the needs of our purpose”.. a term that to me meant a very innocent form of having fun with NO expectations or investments what so ever. Is this the key therefore to having true fun in play?

217. You pose some great questions Anne, and one I ask myself, ‘what would it look and feel like to learn to truly play again?’ Is it as simple as simply being instead of doing, or is there more, is it also to do with our quality, making sure there is ‘a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness’ ?

218. Life gets so serious when we get bogged down in the doing and what we think we should be doing. Reading this blog again, I wish I could be light and playful like that all the time. Bringing back the wonder that I held when I was younger. Perhaps it’s about surrendering rather than controlling.

219. What a playful blog post 😜 Ceasing to be playful is just one of the many things we do as we turn from baby to child to boy/girl. Competition often creeps in and playing all of a sudden becomes a game with a winner and loser. But playfulness is never about winning or losing – it’s a way of being. Whether we recognise it or not, we all love being playful – there is a sense of timelessness which it brings.

220. Yay! Let’s remember play!

221. In the middle of an assignment, this is a great reminder of how heavy life can be when you let life get in the way and condense the space that can be immediately lightened with the quality of playfulness.

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223. When we are able to be playful during our everyday activities it brings a lightness which can be infectious to all those around us, a much more joyful way to be living.

224. Playing has ‘a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities.’ And it is this what makes joy come back into our adult lives. The joy of living, joie de vivre.

225. At some point, and I’m sure I know I’m not the only one, I took on the belief that adult life was serious. I wouldn’t recommend taking it on. I’m re-learning now that life can be playful. When I’m playful at work it doesn’t mean I’m goofing off, it just means I’m living my joy. This applies to all aspects of life and life is way more fun with playfulness.

226. I adore this exploration of play and I can see how I can be playful simply by typing this comment. I have been under the impression that play is all about being boisterous, laughing and not doing work but I can see it is not that at all. We can be respectfully playful anywhere, anytime.

227. There is a saying that laughter is a great form of medicine and I would agree, when true playfulness is experienced it melts down the rigid hold of seriousness and I do feel blessed to have some non-serious people in my life as I can and have lived life very seriously. The seriousness is used as a mask to avoid feeling hurt but we only get hurt when we leave our natural lightness that doesn’t take on the heaviness of reactions and emotions from within ourselves and from others around us. When we burden ourselves we feel serious and this innately feels horrible, that in itself shows that we are naturally light and playful.

228. “Is it even about ‘doing’ anything, or is it more about a quality of ‘being’ that we can bring to our day?” I was triggered by this question today that asked me to ponder on this more deeply. I come from a way of living where the doing was always very important to me as this was what gave me recognition ad reward. I hardly ever experienced the same for just being me and at times when I was appreciated purely for who I was, I was not able to accept that as I did not appreciate myself for me just being me, because of my lack of self worth. I can now feel that behaving and thinking this way did not serve me and kept me locked in a well structured way of life where any playing was not possible. Returning back to Soul, the essence that equally lives in all of us, has brought back to me the playfulness that I know from being a child. This way of being brings me joy and fulfillment, just from within and no external recognition or reward is needed anymore.

229. Wow Anne, this would be wonderful to be able to live this way, ‘Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’

230. I agree, playfulness has a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness, and I am welcoming more of this quality of being into my life.

231. I love this definition Anne, “a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities.” as a definition of play. I know that I have a tendency to become serious a lot of the time, but in my essence, my true nature, I am very light and playful, but allow the seriousness to come in too often. So loved reading how easy it is and it is a choice to be that light and playful person more often.

232. It is true… Most of us indeed, one could fairly say all of us , by the time we are adults, have taken on such burdens that to be able to truly “ leap for joy” is not in our vocabulary at all.And it is this lightness of being that returns when we embrace those two seemingly heavy words…Responsibility and commitment, and marry them with the connection to our inner heart and this is what Universal Medicine is returning to the world.

233. We can get caught up in the motion of work, bills and family. However having fun and being joyful should be involved in every moment possible.

234. “We can restore the joy and wonder of just being in a body and living life, and work and play can become a graceful, spherical whole – which we used to just know as ‘life’ when we were young.” Beautiful to have this confirmed!

235. Play is a truly vital activity through which we keep connection to our true loving essence as it enables us to stay open, expansive and forever evolving.

236. One of the bastardized versions of “to play” is “not to be honest – to show a mask that is not true of you” or “to play with someone” means “to manipulate”. How far off!

237. Yes play is a quality we can live in which makes the most arduous tasks enjoyable and light. I have experiences of studying which I can find very intense and draining and I found this happens when I try to do it in a linear way part after part. Yet today I am feeling light and joyful with my study and it is because I do not make it more important than me, my environment, delicious husband and hydration and be playful with it, integrate parts of my study from other books and really be all over it.

238. I often see this playfulness in the eyes and in the movement of older adults and it is a joy to behold, that spark can be alight in us at any age and surely does determine the body we walk around with. The heaviness I sometimes feel relates to missing that playfulness, and when I reconnect to being playful and having fun it makes me wonder why I dropped it away. What do we let get in the way of being playful, nothing seems worth it when there is so much fun to be had.

239. ‘Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’ Yes we can Anne!

240. Playfulness is our natural way of being so it’s interesting how as we grow up we lose our connection with ourselves and our playful innocence.

241. Anne, re-reading your post again, it got me reflecting back on my childhood.. where as you say all life was play, and one…there were no stop/starts or differentiations, and what is so lovely to feel is the lightness that play truly is. That to be playful is to be light, spacious in the body, and spacious with people where people enjoy being with you because of this, and that as young kids this was indeed true, we were these spacious beings that people, our parents, parents friends, loved to be with or spend time in our company… often not doing anything at all. Play is a quality, and also a presence.

242. We can see and feel it inherently in children and even perhaps remember from our childhood how play was naturally there within us as a quality of being, from the joy of living. How can you possibly not ‘play out’ the consequences of being tense, under pressure and joyless, by playing hard? If we shut down our feeling, we need to be abrasive to feel anything. Taking this constructively, it means that we want to feel. Returning to the tenderness of a child and enjoying the subtleties of play is the harmonious way to choose feeling, as opposed to the over indulgence and extreme version we champion as adults. Our bodies do reflect this choice as Anne relates so well and perhaps it is as simple as admitting that there is much joy still inside to connect with and feel if we live honouring our bodies and allowing our natural sensitivity to be appreciated.

243. I can feel how I have often taken life and myself so seriously, calculating and measuring how to be. Being playful feels so liberating as there is a natural flow to how we interact with life and each other in this way.

244. I was enjoying a conversation with my daughter the other day, commenting on how she had brought purpose to her play (in organising a party for a friend and showing how to have a good time without the usual drinking or drugs that are so common for teenagers), and in the same day had been playful with her purpose (introducing games and creative ideas in a serious presentation she was giving to a school). It felt like she had retained this spherical sense of play beautifully.

245. It would be a superb thing if we could put down on our cv that we are very playful, as could you picture a world where playfulness would be a pre-requisite for all jobs from teachers to lawyers to heads of large corporations, the whole world could get just a bit silly.

     1. Ha ha Kev! Love it!

246. What a beautiful sharing Anne I love it, learning to play again really does change our lives at every age. The quality your describe ” a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities.” Now this is true play lived.

247. I love this blog Anne. I love the feeling of lightness and spaciousness that is associated with playfulness. It does make me question at what stage I lost my ability to be playful in every moment – now I am working on bringing back this playfulness and lightness as my everyday.

248. As a small child I used to play with wooden bricks, dolls, and with stones, and in each ‘game’ I would be living in a perfect fantasy world that I had created for myself. As a slightly older child, we would play card games and board games that were always about ‘winning’. I was creative too, my mother used to save cardboard cereal packets because I was always making things, so then play was about ‘doing’. As a young adult, I ‘played’ squash, a hard, physically demanding competitive ‘game’. Now, as an elder adult, I am truly discovering play – that is not about checking out into a fantasy, not about beating anybody else, not about ‘doing’ anything, but it is a way of being – being light and playful with work colleagues, appreciating the way my garden is bursting into bloom, pausing to watch in wonder as a bird hovers in the sky, simply feeling playful as I go about my every day life.

249. The headline is an invitation very needed in this world. There is so much earnesty, stress, heavyness, anger, sadness and frustration in this world. It starts in the schoolsystem. Introducing the art to play again and to make life, work and school about playfullness would change the energy and life could be lived in amore light way then.

250. I agree Anne, the key to life is learning to play again, ” a quality of lightness, of freedom and of spaciousness ” to be in the appreciation and celebration in our day is a joyful reflection for all.

251. It’s been a beautiful summer’s day and school’s out. As I walked past the local children playing I realised how I haven’t been living playfully. I felt a sense of wow, how can they just be, play outside all day and not worry about running out of ideas or games or things to say. I got to feel how I pressure myself in performing well, whatever it is I’m doing, working, projects, social events and how this started at such a young age. My protection to starting school and being scared of being left out, having no friends, not being liked was to be funny, needed, whatever those around me wanted. I didn’t value my unique essence or who I was. I feared long stretches of time with people because the facade of presenting a good show was exhausting as I may have missed a crack left open where what I really felt and who I really was would escape and be known.

     How lovely to have this article and those children reflecting the playfulness we naturally are; how lovely to understand appreciation of my essence returns me to simply being and responding to life rather than planning and living off nervous tension. How lovely to feel another layer I’ve held myself back through pleasing others so I can choose to let this go – together with realising I can trust myself and the universe even more deeply.

252. Being playful is like a bubbling up of appreciation…. When it’s not there I’ve gone into something and I know it’s time to lighten up and live in the connection with the Joy being God.

253. ‘Life was play…’ this is such a gorgeous quality to live. Nor does it diminish the seriousness of life either, that life and people matter.

254. I love your observation that side-effects are, in effect, effects! We may try to deny the unwanted but inevitable effects of our actions by trying to put them to the side out of our main aim but this is just an illusion. By calling them side-effects we’re trying to belittle their impact or occurrence. I know I’ve had hangovers that have lasted days, way longer than being drunk. It’s responsible to acknowledge all the effects of what we choose.

255. I work as a store manager in a store, where people can really take things very seriously – especially the customers – but what I’ve found is that people actually love it when you’re playful – it’s a quality and lightness of being that the world is crying out for more of.

256. Love the idea of play being a quality that we live in and through rather than a doing. Lived this way it is effortless and travels with us in everything we do. Lived as a doing and it becomes a task, a chore, an on-off switch.

257. Often there is a dismissiveness towards playfulness within society, I feel it exposes acutely a sadness of a loss, a loss of connection with God. Children are connected with a knowing of God. This is interesting for me to ponder, because I have always been naturally playful and yet I have not always felt connected with God. I do now, but still have not appreciated how deep, timelessly established and natural this relationship. This blog has brought more appreciation for this in my life, Thank you.

258. Lovely blog concerning the quality of play. I feel it in a way of lightness, I am naturally playful and enjoy the light side of life, when I get heavy and not playful, I know there is something to look at. Playfulness in life for me is a knowing that I am divine in essence and with the body of God, it is seeing and being the divine first and living this quality in our movement and expression.

259. Yes, Anne, a sense of spaciousness opens me up to be more playful, as I am not dominated and restricted by time. Stepping out from the temporal should dos and got tos, back into connection with me and everything around me, brings undeniable joy in feeling the grandness of what I am a part of.

260. Reading this blog has brought back to me how natural it was to be playful with no effort or trying to have fun just naturally being light-hearted and joyful, with the feeling of spaciousness within and all around me. Thank-you Anne for the reminder that we can keep bringing that playfulness and lightness in our movements into our everyday and it doesn’t need to stop as we grow older. It’s possible that by being light-hearted, and playful may also support us in being mentally healthy as well.

261. When we have “a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness” you are right, there is naturally more space for playfulness and in that space we have options. But when we don’t nurture that quality, life can seem quite restricted and that we don’t have many options and we can harden up and protect ourselves to get through what is presented to us. I know when I am being super serious about something, I feel like I have my blinkers on and I am not open to what else could happen. A sense of playfulness is a lovely quality to nurture as it brings so much.

262. Anne I love this line that looks to define play as… “light and constantly changing movement”. This is so true, I have never thought of it that way. Play is never static, and it is infinitely ‘lightening’ wherever it is at play!

263. The true joy of play is embedded in our souls and it is only when we become bogged down by our ideals and beliefs of how we think we should be and move as adults that we lose this natural quality. Allowing ourselves to return to the this natural way of being, brings such lightness and ease in our movements it really does bring so much colour to our lives.

264. Our playfulness comes from within and is not always a doing thing on the outside. I can feel playful at work and notice a lightness in my being- just delicious. The opposite is the heaviness I can take on which dulls me and there is no playfulness in sight! Thank you Anne for reminding me about the power of being playful in everything we do.

265. To remind ourselves every now and then that we can be light hearted and fun loving when the mood strikes us! Just to be silly with our children or grandchildren gives them another perspective to our relationship, and permission for them to be the same if they choose.

266. Yes in the void of what we miss (being playful) we create a life with all sorts of entertainment but it’s still done in the reaction of feeling this void in life and it surely doesn’t give up what we truly want which is to be silly, playful and enjoying being with other people.

267. Wow Anne it’s like in growing up we left behind the wisdom and skills we need the most and took on a whole heap of seriousness instead. Rightly, if you look at our way of being instead of our physical stature, what we currently do should really be called ‘growing small’. Beautiful to be reminded here that play and fun is the river from which true wisdom and evolution runs.

268. Thank you Anne -it certainly does seem as though we have lost the lightness and the joy in our days and made them about what needs to get done rather than the quality. As you share – it is possible to bring that joy and lightness back into our quality, which is absolutely felt in the body. To be serious and driven is exactly what is backfiring on us and impacting our state of health.

269. ‘As we have ‘grown up’, it feels like we have lost the childhood wonder of ‘leaping for joy and dancing’ and somehow learned that we had to substitute that with ‘exercise or brisk movement,’ which often feels like just more hard work!’
     I agree and what I pbserve it is not only our brisk and protected movements, it is also our thoughts, which result from the protected movements and which are capping us from being playful and joyful.

     1. How we move does make such a significant difference on how we feel, there is a natural flow, ease and gentleness in our movements that allows a lightness to be felt and expressed and this is a playfulness. Flowing with life rather than forcing and trying to control what occurs. Life is for learning, what is there to resist, but we do, and I have in the way I move my body. I am becoming more aware that how I move it, changes deeply how I feel in it. And so a lightness, grace is expressed.

270. Becoming playful again will for sure assist us in ageing grace-fully and in appreciation of the fact that life is to be lived in joy and not in the seriousness we have made of it in our nowadays societies.

271. Play and all the divine qualities that go with it are indeed our natural state. What a joy it is to reconnect with the lightness and fun of play. Thank you Anne for inviting us to rediscover and deepen our relationship with play.

272. Well said Anne. I have forgotten that we can be playful through the whole of our life, not accepting that life is a drudgery and know that there is a purpose and that there is a delight in re-discovering this meaning and purpose. It’s not taking life on but moving through it.

273. The normal ‘games we play’ are far from being joyful and full of fun, most of them are dishonest and we judge others for not conforming to our own games, yet there is time to play, time where there is no competition, there is no winner or loser, it is one where we can be more open and honest with ourselves – simple, joyful and fun.

274. Interesting that very often the things we classify as a play when we are adults are actually quite rough on the body, or take a lot of work to do! Play as children often has a spontaneity about it that adults tend not to have. Not to say that adults do not have fun, but our fun tends to be much more planned or deliberate. Often I have said or heard other adults saying something to the effect of, “I’m going to go and have fun now”. As if it needed to be a choice and play is allotted to a particular amount of time, which will end at a certain point which is when work will begin again.

275. I know i have drifted into being far too serious over the years, I love being playful, and feel it is a natural part of me, yet I have only been allowing my playfulness out to play at infrequent times. I welcome more play in my life.

276. To me playfulness is a freedom of movement in the body and a lightness of being. It is when you don’t take yourself or life too seriously. It is in the quality of how you are with things.

277. This should be a course at school or better still at university.. Learning to play or rather RE-Learn to play could be rephrased to say Re-Learning to Live Life Again. After all if we are not playfully enjoying life, are we truly living life in full?

278. Being playful is a natural way of being that can be expressed through the quality of our movements and it is felt and clocked by those around us offering them an opportunity to embrace their own joy within.

     1. Thank you Francisco for the reminder that our playfulness is expressed in our moments, so really it can so very simple.

279. It’s interesting to recognise that as children we are naturally playful and are very connected to our body, yet, as we age, we play less and generally are less connected to our body. So as adults learning to play again one would see that it is a great way to re-connected with the body and joy that playfulness brings.

280. Playfullness is a way of being, a lightness of energy that we can bring to everything – even the most serious moments.

281. Interesting how we lose the meaning of play as adults and re-interpret it as something that is entirely not supportive of that connection with a being-ness in us that we knew as children, but only very rarely stay in touch with as adults.

282. Play is our natural state of being, it is only when we try to manipulate and control our movements the joy of play is silenced.

283. I love watching kids play and the freedom of their movements- as we grow this seems to go however it doesn’t need too, it can be a spark that we can hold on to.

284. When you bring the quality of lightness and playfulness to the table, there is no room for the heaviness that often surrounds us. I know when a situation is getting hard and feels like you are wading through mud and someone brings in a lightness and a sense of play, the whole process changes and becomes much easier and a solution or way forward or simply the next step, is often shown.

285. In german we say ‘spielen’ (=play) and the word does also come from ‘dancing’. This makes so much sense to me. We in fact dance through life, it is all in a flow and we move together (or against each other) in the rhythm (or against rhythm) of the Universe.
     So, our purpose and responsibility in life on earth is to find our true movements again and so, have a hot dance with the Universe again. Not a bad job!

286. As someone who has in the past focussed on the doing without the quality of being, I can agree that there is no joy and only a constant nagging state of ‘what’s next?’. Adults can get caught up in living this way and we lose sight of the fact that being playful is not about abdicating responsibility and being childlike, but simply in creating space for our inner qualities and creativity to come out.

287. Having wandered away from play and all the magic it brings, all we have to do is simply admit this is what we have done and retrace our steps.

288. It is interesting how as we age, there can be a tendency to become more serious, and less playful – perhaps its the perceived weight of responsibility that makes us believe these two (responsibility and playfulness) cannot possibly go together. But they can easily go together when there is a connection felt within the body – thanks to Universal Medicine, who show the way of living energetic responsibility.

289. As adults we let seriousness take over. Life gets complicated and we stop trusting and surrendering, trying to control everything, so nothing goes wrong or a mistake isn’t made. I am glad for this blog which has helped me to register this in me, how I am in my thoughts and there is a constant trying rather than the ease of being.

290. I know someone that is so playful. She is a super busy woman and doesn’t have a lot of time for recreation but she is always cracking a joke and having fun. I feel this lets her keep doing what she is doing and work so hard without being exhausted.

291. It can be easy to let life slip into struggle, if we overwhelming ourselves with thoughts of what needs to be done, what we have not got done, what we have failed at – worrying, fretting and self-criticism don’t serve us and only guarantees we cannot live life connected to our essence. If instead we choose connection and confirm that with appreciation, life takes on a whole new dimension, and we’d likely get just as much done, if not more, and in a quality that is truly ourselves. If Life is a struggle it means we have lost ourselves – as Life can be rich, full of joy and full of love if we are open to this connection.

292. It can be challenging at times not to be absorbed into the seriousness of life or in truth not to absorb it into us. Being playful is a great way to feel our nature rather than that which we have created around us.

293. When you are joyful, you just play.

294. Reading this I know I have disconnected from my natural playfulness, embroiled in working hard at being hard! I’d mistaken playfulness as frivolous when it can be serious – serious as in everything matters, everything counts, everything requires observation and awareness.

295. Excellent sharing Anne.

296. I love how you share that play is actually a quality of being and not something that we necessarily do. It is something we can bring to every part of our life, even as adults – we can learn from the wisdom of children.

297. Anne, I love how you put ‘woman’ first in your appreciation of who you are, and I would add ‘philosoper’ to this list.

298. Learning to be light, playful and have fun have been things that I have had to relearn. As life happened, I become really serious, which is not part of my nature at all. It was only me healing a lot of my hurts and letting go of protections that i was able to get back in touch with the lighter, playful and fun parts of me, which never really left, they were just hidden, but no more.

299. I noticed when I am playful I get to really enjoy connecting with people, even if a person is grumpy or upset. It can be gorgeous just to know there is a beauty to them beyond their reaction and not take it personally. It seems like the antidote to being serious or controlling or putting the serious ‘professional’ mask. It also helps others to know their lightness and joy as well. To allow playfulness is very healing.

     I realised recently how serious I can be when a friend commented “you’re so funny tonight!”. It was a real surprise to her and I got to see how I don’t let myself be joyful, as there is often always an issue I am focussing on. But being playful can let the issues not seem so big and burdensome.

300. Being playful is not so commonplace for many people, including for many children. The increasing rates of mental health issues and suicide and self-harm is indicative that there is an absence of joy in many people’s lives. Yet being playful is our natural way of being. It is enlivening and reminds us of who we are well before any issues.

301. ‘Learning to play’ seems like a strange thing to have to do. Play is something that happens naturally. We can’t force it. We can’t pretend to play. So how come we have forgotten how to play? When we are so far away from being who we naturally are it’s no wonder we lose our ability to play naturally and have to learn it again.

302. I wonder what happened to me in my growing up. When I was young I lived a playful life as I remember it, a life that just lived without any expectation or need for any outcome or fulfilment. Just be. It feels now that I have to learn to play again as I have completely lost that way of being with life. Life to me is now with expectations, with a need for specific outcomes and fulfilment from what I am putting out in the world and that playful way of being I rarely experience anymore.

303. ‘So what would it look and feel like to learn to truly play again? Clearly, we cannot just walk around in our work clothes leaping about and dancing, because that would look crazy and no-one would take us seriously or come near us, but what can we do? – Not so sure about that! I have a work colleague in her 50’s who often breaks into a dance for no reason at all – I am totally inspired by her!!

304. Playing in our culture has become something only very young children are allowed to do.At a young age, school is no longer about playing but serious business to learn something. Although to play is the best way to learn. In how to deal with life we need this quality of playfulness.

305. It is so important to be playfull with ourselves and not take life too seriously. The moment I am being really serious I know I am in my head and become focused on one thing and missing the whole picture. Sure life is not all about joking around but it is also not about getting caught up in it either, after all we are not meant to be here so why take it so seriously and get wound up by things?! We in in Gods playground so lets enjoy it.

306. How beautiful to feel all you offer Anne the quality of play “– a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities. “Taking this into our everyday as a way of living again like we came into this world is a real gift to ourselves everyone we are around and the whole world by reflection for many of us have become far to sad heavy and serious in the intensity of life and lost our playfulness as we grow up. A return to true joy through life as a playground with responsibility, integrity and honesty with this as our consistency.

307. I love these definitions of play Anne, I can feel the particles celebrating..
     “light and constantly changing movement.”, “the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move.”

308. The body naturally loves to be playful, we simply have to let go of the control, and over ‘minding’ and let it be.

309. It is always great to be reminded we are naturally playful, joyful beings and not take ourselves or life to seriously. I love this… “and playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk.” 🙂

310. A great expose Anne on relearning fun and joyful play. Also a beautiful reminder to just be in our bodies and live a natural simple life.

311. The compartmentalising of our lives and having ‘play time’ when it is allocated and then serious focused time for the rest of life is a very common way of existing and letting life run you. When we put our foot down and squash our rigid, mundane ways of letting life pass us by we forget about the times when we do have fun. I love how this can be in everything that we do, the joy, the laughter, spontaneity and spaciousness that is available to every single one of us – its our choice to have this in our lives.

312. I feel play gets lost because we start to base things on function, outcomes and approval. When we realise there is more to life than this it is natural to be playful.

313. I relate joy to play and I feel this would be a natural expression of the soul

314. ‘Is play even about ‘doing’ anything, or is it more about a quality of ‘being’ that we can bring to our day?’ – Great question Anne. When we reach adulthood or even elderly age, do we give up on ‘playing’ because we are no longer interested or able to run around kicking a football? As you’ve shared this isn’t the case as we can ‘play’ in the way we move and talk – it is an expression of joy within ourselves or in conversation with others, and this is something always available to us and an opportunity on offer for our entire lives.

315. I know that when I have taken good care of myself I feel more playful in general. When I am feeling relaxed and loved (by myself) I have a light feeling inside me that I can take everywhere. This feels very different to the heaviness I feel when I have not taken good care of myself and I don’t feel loved. Playfulness is no-where in sight. We can be our own nannies or guardians. Just as children need boundaries and love so too do we. It makes such a difference to the way I feel in life if I treat myself with care.

316. I would have to agree most of the activities we take part in as adults do not bring vitality to our bodies or even give us a sense of true well-being, and as adult we often dismiss children but maybe we should be taking a closer look at the relationship they have with their bodies – we might just re-learn something.

317. “We can restore the joy and wonder of just being in a body and living life, and work and play can become a graceful, spherical whole . . .” I agree Anne we can simply restore the joy and wonder to our bodies and life by our awareness of our choices. Being willing and open is all it takes – it really is child’s play.

318. If all of life is but a play and we are players on its stage, then surely we should act with full commitment for our role, but also knowing it is not the be all and end all of who we are, that we are here to shine like a star and free ourselves and everybody from the seriousness disease. Your words here Anne remind me to be easy with me and others today, and like an actor know my lines are not ‘mine’ per se but are just fed to me by the soul – all I do is get to deliver them playfully 🙂 with all of my body.

319. “We did not even have a word for it – that was just how we lived. Life was play” So true, reading this I remember that every moment as a child was a moment full of wonderment and there were no less fun chores. This means that it is possible and actually natural to live this way – enjoying every moment because being with ourselves is enjoyable.

320. Living in connection, for me, has quite a playful feel. It’s not a feeling of wanting to mess around, but it feels like fireworks are going off inside my body. It just feels so playful to just walk… the ultimate ‘party on the inside’.

321. I’d say that it is because we do miss true play in our lives that we then often find our lives to be heavy, longing for that escape, or seeking that piece of excitement as semblance of play in a sports match, an alcohol binge or drunken night out… We long to escape from the seriousness we put ourselves in because it’s not natural to us.

322. My grandkids were asked to unstack the dishwasher so they did it together with the older one piggy-backing his brother who carried the dishes and placed them in the drawer. The job got done with lots of laughter, and it wasn’t a chore but something they could do together while having fun. Children so easily make a game out of anything and if we grownups can see the fun in it we can also enjoy the merriment even though the job may take a little longer. Otherwise we can so easily dampen the playful nature of children by our sense of ‘efficiency’ and our attachment to time and outcomes.

323. I agree that playfulness is simply a natural way of being when we let go of the rigidity of control and trying to be everything to everyone. I am so glad i am relearning this way of being.

324. Thank you, Anne. I am really up for ‘restoring joy and wonder’ and my commitment to embracing play (life) is extremely serious!

325. When I saw who the writer of the gorgeous blog is I thought of course — here is one woman who knows the true meaning of play: to bring in the wonder and innocence we had as children into our everyday lives. Thank you Anne for the joyful confirmation.

326. Another aspect of playfulness that I love is the playfulness of ‘co-incidence’. For example, I am leaving the beach and hear the beautiful crunching of pebbles under my tyres and when I get home to read a novel to prepare for a class the next day the first paragraph I begin to read has a sentence about the heroine loving the sound of pebbles crunching under the tyres. I can almost hear the Universe laughing!

327. There is something about play that goes beyond our normal perceptions of life – a lightness of heart that tells us ‘there is more’ and that ‘we are more’. Our cultural belief systems seem to have cut this awareness from our everyday beingness, making life more of a fight or a battle than a playground. How lovely to reconnect to this lightness once again and to bring playfulness back into our days.

328. Playing with how we move is something that this blog reminds me to keep bringing into life. So often as adults we learn a way of living and stick to it. Being open to moving in a different way breaks us out of that grove that can often feel very dull and heavy. The amount of fun one can have just walking on the balls of our feet at work with a bounce is huge as a recent experience taught me, something so simple yet hugley powerful.

329. Yes, Anne, I agree with you – the less common definitions of play bring an immediate sense of quality of movement with a sense of freedom in the physical body and the mind becomes less racy.
     “The space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate and light and constantly changing movement”.

330. Playing is something as children we just do as part of being ourselves. We never lose who we truly are, but just forget how to have fun. As someone here has replied, the way to find our way back and to put the fun back into our lives is to enjoy our playfulness without being childish.

331. Learning to play again….. applies to all of us on many different levels. Learning to play again is just about giving yourself permission to be you and express/share all that is there to be expressed.

332. After re-reading this blog it is so interesting to notice that it feels that we collectively have made the meaning of the word playing completely different to what it actually is. As how you described playing when we were young Anne, you describe a way of being, while later on in life we give the same word the meaning of playing game, not from our naturalness but from competition, comparison or getting recognised, and we have lost that natural way of being with ourselves and with all others equally.

333. I love the reminder in this piece Anne, which, incidentally, is playfully written from your own joy, that having joy within our lives is a choice. Every moment can be play-full if we choose for it to be, which still bringing the dedication and commitment to everything we do.

334. I had a moment a few days ago, when I was able to bring some light and playfulness to a family member who was having a hard time. In the past I would have got caught up in their drama and joined in by being equally serious. What was so different this time was that I was able to bring some laughter to the situation, from both us, and very quickly the energy changed so that we could have a sensible and responsible discussion about what had happened. It was a beautiful moment which lifted something that could potentially have ended up lasting much longer and possibly have turned into a migraine for the other person had they been left to dwell on their problem.

335. “And somewhere along the way, some of us forgot how to play. We learnt to do things we called play, like playing sport, which often hurt, playing up, which ended up with a hangover and all sorts of other bad side-effects (or as I like to call them, effects!) and playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk.” – so how is it that as adults we forget how to play and be playful? and how important is it to re-awaken this ability that lies within us all.

336. I love this reminder of being playful even as adults. I know that when I get stressed, or too serious I lose the lightness, freedom and spaciousness that I feel when I am playful. As an adult I have found that I can maintain my playfulness and the lightness and ease that comes with this without being childish.

337. We have twisted the meaning of so many things in life to the detriment of the quality of life we are now living. Our innocent and loving relationship with play which regardless of whether we were alone or with others, was an open, all inclusive and harmonious interaction with life, was soon replaced with the notions of having to defeat another, be better than others, a continual drive to beat our own record and striving to be seen as a ‘winner’. Our quest to return to playfulness in life is partly a journey to reclaim the true meaning of this world.

338. For a few years I kept asking where is the joy. People kept using the word but I didn’t know where it was for me. I have realised that for me it is connecting with people, all sorts, any sorts. I am deeply curious about what makes us tick, and joy for me is observing other people discover this themselves. This is also where i tend to be playful with the dynamics that can come up as this untangles.

339. I recently felt that joy is a movement something we would have marvelled in and felt with an absolute lightness as we learnt to walk. You only have to watch a toddler moving to know this as they delight in each and every step, something we learn to dismiss as the essence of our foundation as we allow life to take over us rather than making our life about that joy and playfulness in every move first.

340. I now see the value in playfulness- i never used to, i was overriding it completely.

341. For kids life is playtime pretty much always (unless they are throwing a tantrum). So when exactly does this change?

342. Anne, you are so right, there is no reason for us to stop being playful and we can make this a part of our everyday without needing to be eccentric and jump around. The way we express ourselves in every action can be playful and to bring that to how we exercise feels very fun and supportive to our health.

343. Learning to play again is truly a gift we can all give ourselves. But as you say Anne, it is about developing that connection with self, finding that joy within and taking that out to everything you do.

344. It’s interesting how the word ‘play’ can be understood to mean ‘perform on a musical instrument’. I spent many years ‘performing’ with the cello and I would say this is very different to ‘playing’ an instrument. ‘Performing’ comes with the weight of pressure and expectations which create a heaviness in the body. ‘Playing’ on the other hand is a very joyful experience that feels light and fun. After many years of ‘performing’ I have recently learnt how to ‘play’ the cello. The difference is profound.

345. Allowing ourselves to be playful certainly supports us to be on the lighter side of life…having important tasks, roles and deadlines doesn’t have to be a burden if we don’t make them to be.

346. They have this term in computing called “play” not an official term at all, but it is often used in reference to testing something out and “having a go”. It is a very very different play to what many often do when they first start learning computers which is just an innocent open exploration of the possibilities available. This play is serious and driven and it shows just how much we are capped by our very use of words as this crucial difference in “play” is therefore not seen or called to account.

347. “Is it even about ‘doing’ anything, or is it more about a quality of ‘being’ that we can bring to our day?” Play is a light and effortless way to be in our days. It is a quality we hold always and sometimes it is just not used so widely because we can become bogged down with tasks and lists of ‘doing,’ things we lose that real joy and quality of play. Allowing ourselves to be light and playful in whatever we do is a lovely way to be everyday.

348. I was struck with reading “somewhere along the way, some of us forgot how to play. We learnt to do things we called play”. Not only did I do that, but along the way I also took on the belief that during important moments you can have joy and playfulness. Commitment and responsibility became words synonymous with heavy serious and sombre. I am now finding it great as an adult to start reconnecting to my inner sense of play, and lighten up all aspects of our lives, including commitment and responsibility.

349. I feel you are right Anne that it is about having a playful way in life. Seeing and being amazed by the intricate details of our own bodies and movements and things around us. When I play I feel how nature plays with me.

350. It is very rare to see the delight of a child in an adults face. When we are in the ‘doing’ we are serious and focused on the outcome, rather than just enjoying the process. This is such as shame as it is not something we are incapable of or grow out of. The delight, curiosity and focus of a child playing is naturally within us.

351. School is one place where we learn to separate play from the more ‘important’ parts of life like learning and getting a job and stop playing as our normal way of being. This is also where we learn that play is time off or reward for the hard, boring bits of life.

352. “We did not even have a word for it – that was just how we lived”. As I read the title of this blog I was thinking just that. Play for me was purposeful and important work and was woven into every part of life, to explore, interact and engage. This way of being was natural and just how we did everything

353. Learning to play again would make our lifes much more joyful, open, interresting, loving. The miracle about a childs play is its concsious presence, its absolute focus even if it is just filling a buckett with sand.

354. A lovely blog Anne on “Learning to Play again”. I feel it is so important to not take ourselves too seriously as we become an Adult and grow older or life feels too restrictive and the joy of spontaneity is lost! I know we still have to be responsible, but the more we see ourselves as one we will lose the barriers we put between us all and allow that love and joy back in.

355. I love to take play out to the world and watch and feel the response, see faces light up and eyes sparkle.

     1. I do too, Ruth. There is a brotherhood in play.

356. ‘As we have ‘grown up’, it feels like we have lost the childhood wonder of ‘leaping for joy and dancing’ and somehow learned that we had to substitute that with ‘exercise or brisk movement,’ which often feels like just more hard work!’ – This is so true Anne, and I observe the latter and this change with friends and peers at College all the time. Going from A to B becomes a task and chore – something we have to do in the most effective manner, moving swiftly and briskly along the way, rather than an opportunity to enjoy the way we walk, who we’re with (or just ourselves) and the natural environment around us.

357. I realise how serious I can get sometimes and forget to connect to my natural playfulness and spontaneity. There is nothing lovelier than to express myself from with that both for me and for others.

358. At an early age I stopped truly playing and instead “learnt to do things we called play”. Reading this blog has really brought this realisation home to me and by bringing this to greater conscious awareness I feel inspired to play.

359. I too loved the less common used ways to describe play Anne, when I read them I could feel that these are closer to the meaning and very much how children play. There is a lightness and spaciousness in their play, they aren’t governed by time or need, everything to them is play. Their movements are alive, vital and spontaneous. When we lose the spaciousness and lightness of movement, which is felt in the body this is when we first start to lose the true meaning of play, everything there after is an imposter and a bastardisation of a word that was heaven sent..

360. Could your less common definitions of play be from what we have forgotten and we have lost in the real quality of playing in our everyday activities? As you have said Anne, it is time to learn to play again and put a little fun back into our lives.

361. True play is joy in action.

362. Being playful in life comes from feeling a joy within so that anything can feel enjoyable – and of course there are times when being serious is appropriate, that goes without saying. But if our bodies are in pain, feeling sluggish, tired and generally out of sorts then approaching life with a playful way isn’t going to be natural. And then, play becomes an activity that is done if and when one has time, and is a relief from the seeming hum drum of life.

363. Playfullness to me is spaciousness, so when I allow for a more spacious body, I have a natural playfullness that is simply me. There is so much joy in the world when I live in a way that develops space.

     1. Well said Matthew and the opposite is also true, it’s nigh on impossible to be playful when there is no space, which is why life for many is not only devoid of play but a very hard slog! I used to feel under the pump all of the time, I ran from one thing to the next, my life was crammed with stuff, my relationships chocker blocker with stuff and my body full to the brim with all manner of rubbish. What I considered to be play was my time in night clubs. Looking back now I can see that my clubbing time was mainly to numb myself from how I was choosing to live my life, although I felt at the time that it was a chance to play. Now that I have been sorting and clearing myself out, my life has become much more spacious and joy and play are two of the many qualities that have flowed in.

     2. Yes, just walking down the street or through an airport can be very playful.

364. Child’s play or perhaps a willy-wagtale playfully darting here and there brings us back to the simplicity of life. Life is a joy when we connect to God.

365. I am all for living a playful life. The spark need not lapse from our day as we get older, go to school or work if we stay connected to the abundance of Love.

366. Very early in childhood we learn to distinguish between playing and working. How cruel it is to make such a distinction in the first place!

367. I love reading this blog, Anne, as a daily reminder. I find that the more in my body I am, the more playful I feel, and I can be more creative and explore different forms of expression and movement. But the key to this has been continually looking at and addressing what there is in my life that still keeps me serious, makes me harden and shut down the natural arising joy I feel inside.

368. Anne what I started to call play in the “work hard, play hard” sense was the very opposite of what I would have called play when a child. In fact my play time was actually deeper forms of abuse time, from drinking, drugs, promiscuity, late nights and depleting my body. As we grow up I thought we got smarter yet how we treat ourselves is abusive and not something a child would ever dream of doing. It says much and the importance of learning to truly play again.

369. When facing our current issues, which as a U.K resident is quite interesting at present, it is vital to remember to be playful. This does not lessen the serious nature of the issues we need to take responsibility for, but does keep the energy in which we address them light and open, thereby affording us more opportunity to connect to our divine wisdom as opposed to our heavy emotional reactions that tend to drag us down even further.

370. It’s true that children need boundaries for playing within. Without the boundaries they do not have a safe place to be totally themselves and feel free.

371. When I think back to all the low times in my life, there was an absence of fun, and life was heavy. Could it be that fun requires movement? Fun has always been light, just as life was when we were young. We do have to age, but should never stop having fun.

372. We tend to think play is something that exists on its own, separate from work, housework, going to college etc, yet as you share Anne, play is about the quality in which we move. This means regardless of what we are doing, potentially we can be play-full all day long!

373. There is something very simple and innocent about your description of play Anne. It offered the feeling that it was coming spontaneously from the body as an expression of life, as opposed to something to relieve the drudgery or tensions of life. So it made sense to relate it back to how children play and the simplicity of being in connection with the body as a way back to playfully expressing who we are in the activity of play.

374. Thank you for this playful blog Anne. I have been really enjoying the lightness and freedom of bringing more playfulness into my life. This has highlighted to me that I have been a little too serious for far too long. Playfulness to me does not mean a lack of responsibility, but rather, having a lightness with the responsibilities I have and not letting this responsibility be a drag on me.

375. ’Life was play – we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole.’ – Beautifully said Anne, exactly how I remember it, not divided into compartments but a spherical whole.

376. I can still easily get stuck in seriousness so your article, Anne, is a great reminder. When I stay light and connected with myself my day is so different – open and free.

377. A little while ago I remember watching my daughter playing outside with the neighbourhood kids and saying to her afterwards to enjoy being a kid because the joy of playing doesn’t last into adulthood, I then remembered how playful I was in my twenties and even into my early thirties, it wasn’t till I was tied down with the responsibility of paying a mortgage and other adult responsibilities that I seemed to lose the playfulness. After reading this blog I realise you can’t let things like mortgages get in the way of a bit of playfulness.

     1. I agree, Kev. Not being playful is a self-imposed restriction.

378. When I read your two descriptions of ‘play’, it connects me with light playing on water. Essentially when we trace our physical body back to its core physical and energetic components (water, gas and energy), our physical form arises from light playing with water. How beautiful to be reminded of this delicate interplay as we move through our day, so that if we choose to we can connect to a perpetual interplay of light and water that gives us form.

379. I remember as a child feeling so much joy in my body that I really did leap about and dance. But that feels like such a long time ago, and I agree with you Anne that we can take life too seriously. I know I started to polarise in my mind to figure life out, and so the natural connection in the body and creative expression dwindled over the years. Thank you for giving us permission to bring out our playfulness again.

380. Playing is such a natural part of our expression. When we shut down this innateness and forget to play it shows just how far away we have come from our true nature. There is nothing more lovely than to return to it.

381. Anne I love coming back to your blog as I know my natural joy and playfulness and I love being silly and yet too often I let my quality get a little heavy or serious. A great reminder at the start of my day to be responsible and focussed and yet be lighthearted along the way.

382. Keeping life simple, is a way for me to be playful in life….

383. Thank you for sharing, when we begin to get affected by the stress and pressure life brings, we look for some form of relief, but in truth we have lost our ability to play lightheartedly. From connecting back to my inner-self, I have found a simplicity that brings its own playfulness that keeps the joy in all I do.

384. I had such a playfull day today it was a delight. It’s so beautiful that as we let go of the old there is so much more room for a fresh and joyfull way to be.

385. I loved the way you opened up this blog in totally playfulness by not holding back. I can feel how much we all miss it. Yes, we have responsibilities now and there is much of and to life that is serious however, there is always space to be playful. A great reminder!

386. I was always one to play around and have a joke. At a point this turned into a sharp tongue that would be sarcastic towards anything but now has found it’s groove back into seeing the lighter side of things. It’s not to see a positive light but more to really see what is going on and not let things spin out of control. For things to change from the sharp tongue to the lighter play I need to see how I was. Make a choice to feel what was going on for me in those ‘sharp’ moments and then take action to deal with it. It had nothing to do about waiting for the world to change but more making the change first within me and then it didn’t really matter what the world chose I knew what felt great to me and now it’s just a matter of consistently committing to that. This is a never ending commitment, to feel what is going on for me in any moment and then reading life from there. Not looking out and expecting, wanting, needing anything to be different but living the difference I have seen the world is needing and then repeating.

387. “When we were young, we had no trouble playing. We did it all the time. We did not even have a word for it – that was just how we lived.” Yes I remember my young days, each day was just full of play, form morning to night, whether at school or home, or visiting friends or family. The memories are beautiful, where have we lost this and did we allow this to happen, today’s children are truly missing out on the true meaning of play. Something we all need to work on.

388. I love playing Anne. When I am not play-full, it is something that is an indicator I need to slow down, take more time, create space.

389. I so enjoy re-visiting this blog Anne. As adults it is so easy to get stuck in seriousness with the never- ending-to-do-list to be accomplished or being critical and judgmental with ourselves and others for not living up to the perceived vision of ‘perfectionism’ we expect and demand. Returning to play-fulness is so gorgeous and lighthearted, whereas seriousness burdens our body down under the weight of the lie we live by not being honest and true in our daily living.

390. The wisdom that children bring for us to re-member and be more aware of who we are, is expressed powerfully and simply in this sentence –
     “Life was play – we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole”.

     1. I agree, Stephanie. As if it’s in the psyche that when you reach a certain point that’s it, time to stop fooling around and get on with it. It’s lovely to see how people melt around a little baby or child – truly little wise beings they are!

391. This blog is delightful, as I read a big smile comes to my face, yes the joy , the play and lightness, the true meaning resonates deep within.

392. “the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate”
     I feel what caps us from accessing the purity of play are the burdens that we take on as we grow into adults, which in turn appears as a seriousness. When we realise that we do not have to carry these burdens in our bodies, that yes there are greater responsibilities in life but if we pay heed to their importance for our growth and build them in our daily rhythm, and hence the space created by these choices can be enjoyed.

393. “light and constantly changing movement” – the play of light, this reminds me that we are the light and this is expressed, played through our every movement.

394. It is so important to know how to play. Kids and animals seem to know how to play, and they do a very good job of it! As we grow up and as adults, we tend to forget this or we put is aside as something not that ‘important’ – but in reality it is very important – for when we lose the fun in things then that’s when we lose the love for life and love for people. This is actually a great reminder for me – asking myself if I am having fun whenever I can. Of course there are more serious moments, but at any other time, the more we can be lighthearted then the more this actually ends up revitalising us.

395. “a graceful, spherical whole – which we used to just know as ‘life’ when we were young.” Indeed this is so true Anne for as we grow up play becomes compartmentalised, we have abandoned the possibility that we can be playful in every moment and stuck it into windows as if its a reward for our choice to live disconnected from it.

396. “playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk.” I like this Anne…..its like an avoidance of connection.

397. It feels to me like play is indeed a commitment to my being light and fun. Without play it feels like I am losing sight of myself into the world of hardness and “doing”. I remember not so long ago when I would actively seek out the drama in a situation to indulge in and actively make myself feel bad, heavy and depressed, in many ways that was a acting up, like a play. I also remember how unaware I was of the way I would perform in front of others again as if acting a play to engage people, to make them “feel” better (as I was just offering relief), and to prevent myself from living a real life. It was like my life was one constant play or movie set. But what you present here Anne is amazing because it has actually shown me that I have evolved past these behaviours and can not only see them for what they are, which is an incredible self-awareness, but also that I am aware of making my life about a true, light, playfulness that is indeed a true expression from me.

398. What a wonderful reminder to us all to keep thing light and uncomplicated in life and incorporate play- bringing joy and fun to our life, bringing more spaciousness in our bodies.

399. There is a line from a well known TV show when I was 12, that has always resonated with me; ‘the more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play’.

400. Learning to play again is such an important part of our life as we age and realise this often gets lost in the pressure and seriousness of life ,. The joy and simplicity of playfulness is something we should never loose and something to really treasure and all it allows in others to feel by reflection also.

401. Playfulness has such an ‘angelic’ quality, a quality of lightness, a quality of space, and of knowing we are held in love. There is joy and celebration of the exquisiteness of life itself.

402. It is truly important to become playful again Anne as we have made life so serious while we are playful by nature. In truth life is about learning and to return to that playful being that we all innately are and in that we are allowed to make mistakes as that is the basis of learning and the nature of our being.

403. Play is like the antidote to being hard on yourself. How can we self-bash or criticise ourselves when we are feeling the joy and wonder of play within..? It’s pretty impossible right? It feels like the power of active playfulness can actually change our perspective on others, and ourselves perhaps even minimising judgment we feel towards others and the hardness or expectations on ourselves. Away with Perfection and bring on Playfulness..!

404. Also, I feel like actively playing can really allow more presence in the body as it makes us aware of the quality we are in. It’s a great thing to experiment with and enjoy the changes not only in the body but also in thought. I know when I’m more present in my body, my thoughts can go from racy and absurd to more understanding and simple.

405. I love how you made it about movement Anne – Play is a wonderfully Joyful way to move and a quality that is not ‘hard work’ to express, because it’s fun! Even walking can be playful as we enjoy the movement of our legs and hips or the silkiness of our arms gliding along side us. Beauty is ever present in the movement of our bodies.

406. Play never starts nor stops; nor does it need to.

407. Life is play, work is play, as is every moment in between.
     Even the saying ‘work hard; play harder’ sets us up for this ideal that we cannot be playful in our work or in life and need moments of reward for the hard work which keeps us eternally seeking something else; and that we need to make work difficult and stressful to be taken seriously.

408. Since coming to the teachings of Universal Medicine and letting go of long standing ideals and beliefs of how I should be, I have come to learn play again. What I have discovered is that being playful comes naturally the more I simply be myself. There is no trying in it, it is a form of expressing that feels light and joy filled that I know is so natural.

409. The origin of a word is quite fascinating and can very a lot to our current day.
     The many definitions and uses of the word ‘play’ is a great example.
     This makes me realise when I use the word play another’s person interpretation could be quite different. While we think we might be talking the same language the truth of what is being said is in our energetic understanding so no wonder we can sometimes find it a little complicated to communicate because have complicated language to start with.

410. Beautiful aspect of the word playfulness “Middle Dutch ‘pleien’, meaning ‘leap for joy, dance’.” What is felt is the connection of being playfulness and joyful something we leave behind once we start to function and live in a way society wants us to be. This blog is a beautiful invitation to live in a way where we can work hard, commit to life in full but equally have a joyful and lighthearted way.

411. Play is important.. seriously.

412. ‘or is it more about a quality of ‘being’ that we can bring to our day?’ Recently I feel that I have let go of many deep rooted hurts and so am feeling much lighter and much more of me than I ever have in my adult life. What you describe in terms of childhood rings so true. In their connection children are naturally very playful because they are feeling so joyful and it is this connection to joy that we can bring though each day as adults. Joy is a state of being that feels very quiet but is very expansive and light. If there is joy in the body you can’t but help be spontaneous, light and playful too.

413. When I watch my children and see how they play even when they are tidying up (something I take very seriously!) I observe in wonder at the consciousness they live in. Quite often I am demanding that they do it in my time not theirs and don’t shilly shally with it and if I am honest this kills the spontaneity out of them in that moment …. something for me to ponder on…

414. As we have ‘grown up’, it feels like we have lost the childhood wonder of ‘leaping for joy and dancing’ and somehow learned that we had to substitute that with ‘exercise or brisk movement,’ which often feels like just more hard work! Absolutely – well articulated! When people generally said “grow up” to me when I was younger the implication was that you had to get serious and less spontaneous, the belief being that life was hard and you needed to get serious to tackle it! What you are presenting here breaks down through all of that and says the opposite – life can be spontaneous, joyful and full of play. It is simply a matter of changing our focus…

415. “Perhaps this is the key to living life in full and ageing grace-fully – learning to play again!” It is certainly true that older people who are lighthearted and keep their bodies moving with gentle activity appear to be healthier and more content with life in general than those with a heavier and less mobile disposition. Playfulness really does bring joy to one’s life, and to others, and it is a beautiful way to open up to people and to share experiences.

416. The art is to make whole life a play instead of looking for playful islands here and there, as during a holiday or a fleeting moment of happiness. Anne, your article inspires me to make it a new marker and stop whenever daily life doesn’t feel playful. Not needing to force playfulness, but to observe when and why I don’t feel it.

417. True playfulness is magical and who we truly are, this is a beautiful reminder for us all to keep life simple and playful and allow a flow of this with everything. A great sharing Anne thank you.

418. When we see a child being playful, there is a joy we can see in their movements and in the relationship they have with themselves. It is beautiful to see as it is a great reminder to us, (as the adult), of this connection to love and joy, The joy is still there, we simply have taken on burdens, or become too serious in life, that distance ourselves from being connected with this feeling.

419. When we play we feel. Hence there are more and more activities that are labeled ‘play’ that preclude us from feeling, like heavy exercise or competitive sport.

420. Thank for sharing this delightful blog Anne on “learning to play again”. What I feel after reading this is that we have an opportunity to see all of our life as a game, not that we trivialise everything we do, . but rather lighten our attitude and see the lighter side, therefore bringing joy into all we do. Through this way of being we wouldn’t see life as the often heavy burden that we make it.

421. Anne, that quality you highlight is so what play is about, not the thing, we observe children and it’s not what they do, but they are absolutely in what they do, with all of them with their quality, and there is no reason to stop this as we get older, it’s just a matter of again taking care of our quality, letting go and being open in all we do.

422. i love how simply you have shared we can bring play back into our daily lives. I love feeling that its all about our quality of movement and not a tricky set of rules to follow or more things to potentially fail to achieve.

423. There is something very engaging about observing the natural playfulness of animals that I instantly connect with, allowing me to feel the same quality in myself, more so than with people …. maybe this is exposing an element of comparison? Something for me to explore further.

424. Brilliant blog Anne Mallat! I love the way you have dissected the word ‘play’ (in itself so light and joyful to feel and say out loud) and brought it back for the reader to consider how our lightness of movement can mean we can play all day – again!

425. I’ve noticed that sometimes I can find it really irritating when adults are being playful, it is my reaction to a beautiful reflection of how I can also choose to be, I am sad that I am not choosing this beautiful lightness of being rather than the serious heaviness I’ve allowed to consume me.

426. When I am playful, I feel light and full of space. Mostly though, there is a seriousness and denseness. Thank you for this blog to bring this further to my awareness!

427. My children are so playful and I often find myself observing them, and saying, come on Gina, let it go – be playful. It feels like to give myself that permission is deeply connected to expressing who I truly am – and I can feel the brakes go on. I am not just holding back on being playful; I am actually holding back on fully being ‘me’. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

428. Great question to run through our bodies what ever we are doing: “Does it make us feel joyful, vital, and restore and revive us? And if not, how can we learn to truly play again?” Whether it cleaning, studying, working at anything or an activity that is supposed to bring us something what is the quality we are in, are our thoughts supporting the movement we are asking of our body?

429. Playfulness is being open and sharing my joy, the lightness and movement on the inside that sometimes just has to break out in a ‘move’ or two. I have only realised I often suppressed my joy because it reflects too much for others …. but that’s only stifling who I truly am. Given that up!🤗

430. When we bring quality to the fore in our life, as in the quality we are doing anything in, it breaks down walls where we may have compartmentalized different areas. And so true play doesn’t become something relegated to a ‘special’ time but something that can be inherent in all areas of our life.

431. As a child I would spend hours playing outside with friends in my neighbourhood both after school and at the weekends. This does not happen so much anymore. There is a fear of letting our children play out, and everything has become very structured and time spent in front of different screens has increased. Such a shame.

432. I love the Middle Dutch meaning of the word play – leap for joy. I know I can get very heavy and serious about life so bringing more playfulness in would be just great.

433. Funny how the lovely ‘play time’ of childhood transitions to the rough and competitive play of the sporting fields as adults. These days in the sporting arena, it is unusual to see any ‘playfulness’ in the sense of relaxing and light and fun and gentle activities – you may get playfulness from a sports person who may have a wonderful sense of humour, but that’s often where the delicate playfulness ends and the competition, drive and hardness takes over pushing any playfulness aside. However, watch kids who are content with themselves and the play is gentle, fun and allows your whole body to relax and enjoy the moment.

434. “who said life had to be serious as we grow big?” Strangely I’m not sure anyone actually said this or would say it. Yet we all align to it. So why is that? Why are we conforming to a way of being that we all absolutely know is not the truth. Why do we take it so seriously? I’m not sure that we actively do…I think it is just more the fact that we don’t seek, recognise, embrace and love the joy so therefore, by default, we become serious. By not choosing joy we are choosing seriousness.

435. “a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities”. Absolutely agree with you Anne, it is the quality with which we live our days that is key to how we can bring far more playfulness into our lives. We need to live with that spaciousness that let’s us feel the great wonders and beauty in the world that is around us, connect deeply with ourselves and feel the great beauty that we all have within, not be too serious, but live and walk lightly through our days.

436. “Life was play – we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole.” Yes, how true that is. When we watch how young children are so absorbed in their playing, it is so joy-full to watch how much they enjoy their days. Every little detail absorbed them, they are so entranced by things like birds and butterflies, even down to the snails in the garden. There is so much wonder and awe in them that we can feel as we watch them. It is such a shame that as they grow up a little, they become so changed by the pressures that we as grown ups, and society’s expectations put onto them, so many of them/us lose that sense of fun in life we/they had started off with. We turn to working hard at school, burying ourselves in books, or for many of us proving ourselves in sport. All to obtain recognition from the ‘grown ups’. It is so beautiful to come back to this simple enjoyment of life, to give ourselves time to ‘smell the roses’, bring back some of the awe that we felt regarding the universe. Let’s get back to our BEING in the world, rather than the DOING. Let us live more connected to the divine within that can guide us through our days with a steady flow instead of the stressful life that is so common now. Let us feel the natural playfulness that is actually within us all. A beautiful blog, Anne, thank you.

437. As a society we’ve allowed to have the word Play to be completely bastardised into all different kind of behaviours and activities. And if we have a close look, a lot of these behaviours and activities that we use the word Play for, actually require a ‘doing’ that actually takes us away from the being. As soon as we go into any kind of hardness or competitiveness we’re disconnected from our body and so we are not able to feel the True quality Play actually contains. I’ve actually never realised this, until reading this blog and let in what is being shared so beautifully by Anne Malett. Thank you.

438. This is a seriously good reminder to play all day long Anne, thank you. Keeping our quality of movement light and playful is the best way to transform a mood or clear your head of unwanted thoughts.

439. If we make life about goals, doing, getting to the next point, achieving, succes or even about needing to be happy we are focussed on everything outside of us. Play then becomes something outside of us as well as is so well described in this blog. But is it play or a mere distraction from the otherwise arduous way of being? True playfulness comes from within and is a state of being that comes from finding freedom from the temporal bounds and living from the soul instead.

440. “Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?” I love this and it is a great reminder for me as when we make life not about ourselves and are open to everything there is the playfulness will be there naturally.

441. It is lovely, as an adult, to again feel the lightness and ease of the quality of playfulness that you share in this blog Anne. It is all too easy for me to get caught up in the seriousness of life and work. Being playful brings joy to my day.

442. “Playtime” Even at nursery school the division is created, between the regular movements and interactions of our normal day and this ‘special time’. And so we grow up with this notion increasing and becoming ever more entrenched – that the every-day, every-moment can’t be playful. Well, since beginning to follow the teachings of the Way of the Livingness and listening to and observing Serge Benhayon, I have been correcting this falsehood and discovering the joy and play in the tiniest and most ‘mundane’ of things. I’ve a long way to go as I was a long way off course…but no matter, the journey back is playtime.

443. What I felt in your words today Anne is how free from attachment we can be. There is no control over what will come, or any kind of outcome, but just an enjoyment of the moment and the chemistry of life’s beauty. Seen this way, children are some of life’s greatest scientists.

444. I so get what you are saying here Anne. Thanks to the presentations of Universal Medicine I had quite a shocking realisation that I had totally forgotten to be joyful in what I did, choosing to get caught up in what I need to do and being all serious. Sometimes I feel that trying to slip in, but it is such a party pooper that I have become more and more aware of it, and saying no. When you connect to that beautiful quality within you start to realise that this is not worth compromising. Bring on the play I say!

445. .’..a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities. Try to be perfect with this quality, impossible.

446. What a gorgeous description of how as children we tend to live: “we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole.” And what is a great point is that although as adults we have so much drive and focus on trying to be happy and content in life, that joy and absolute oneness with life was once our natural state of being. This so wonderfully shows that it is not about striving to achieve something but to find out what we need to discard so that we can return to the natural way that we have discarded.

447. Space and grace go well together! That’s playing with words!!

448. We play with light when we keep it light and playful.

449. “Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?” I know it is possible because I know a man who lives and works in this way – his name is Serge Benhayon.

450. The distractions that fill our life are what get in the way of re-connecting to the beautiful, transparent and joyful play that is our natural way. Children are full of this. Their laughter and concentrated play reflect to us how we have all been, but forgotten. This is a simple blog and one that asks us to question our livingness and whether we are living all that is possible.

451. We start life enjoying ourselves and playing, then we get caught up in the intensities of the world we have created before learning how to let go and lightening up again.

452. The words ‘play’ and ‘sport’ don’t really fit for me. Play is a joyful expression, it is light, fun, joyful. Sport on the other hand is competitive, dog eat dog, out to win and is often hard work and can result in injuries. So to ‘play sport’ is really at odds with the true meaning of the word ‘play’.

453. I love this Anne, a lightness of being; a joy in motion; a confirmation of who we truly are!

454. “Life was play” – you only have to watch a child for a little while and you can see this, it is very precious and something we unfortunately lose as we grow up. I obviously can’t live like I did as a child, and wouldn’t want to, but I feel more playfulness would be a dose of good medicine.

455. When I was a kid I remember playing for hours entertaining myself with very little, may be just a doll and a few dolls clothes. Or outside in the back yard in my sand pit, climbing trees, running around the yard, jumping, skipping. Lots of simple playing. A lot of the young children today do not get to experience the joy of true play as they think play is iphones, video games, sexting, being on Facebook, etc. With all the electronic equipment available to day and encouraged by society no wonder the art of true play is lost.

456. I love your description of golf Anne, it is spot on, that is the best I have ever heard. Now that is being playful!

457. Playfulness is a quality that we all innately know and have expressed at one time in our lives, some are able to continue to express this throughout their lives but the majority of us seem to leave it behind getting caught up in the ‘seriousness’ of life. I agree Anne we need to remember how to play again in the true meaning of it.

458. A great reminder too that life doesn’t have to be serious, even when it is serious…

459. I love it Anne, you have broadened the meaning of the word play in a way that is very appealing… thank you!

460. I once joined a “play” group Anne, started by a friend who realised the lack of play in our lives, but it was so serious! Also it was so controlled, just more of the same, finding things to DO to play in or with. I lasted one session It was so uncomfortably stilted. We know when we have connected with that sense of fun and enjoyment, vitality and playfulness, for it arises spontaneously from deep within in any situation and need not be connected to anything, or can be expressed in everything.

461. ‘But then we went to school, to college, to university, to work… and somewhere along the way, some of us forgot how to play.’ – I would say the majority of us grow up anticipating that as adults we have to stop being silly, because what the adults reflect to us is that we need to be serious to be counted.

462. It is interesting how we use the term ‘playing games’ when we are lying and cheating, as if playing can’t be taken seriously – when we know that it can also be the complete opposite, ‘leaping for joy’.

463. One very disturbing interpretation of ‘adult’ play is the work hard, play hard ethos, which allows an ongoing abuse of our bodies under the belief that it is good for us and necessary to relieve work stress. Yet if we ask the body it is just another form of stress imposed on it. A young child would never choose this, except under the sporting consciousness with adults cheering them on. Therefore sport is the so called character building activity we introduce our children to, in order to encourage them to believe that sacrificing one’s body for the team or for the win is good, and that is how an adult should play.

464. Playfulness is an inner quality we bring to life. I was told that I was a serious child! But I don’t remember being lost in play, and today love being around children who are the same.

465. I have always been a playful person, but over time allowed this part of me to get buried and only let it out from time to time, when otherwise I would be quite serious. Now that I am reuniting with my playfulness, I am realising how heavy I felt before and how much of an impact this was having on other people. It is possible to be playful and light with everything we do, providing there is constant awareness of the situations we are in and adjusting ourselves accordingly.

466. What a great different understanding you bring for us to ponder Anne about playing. It’s an interesting thought because most people can remember a joyful episode of our lives when playing was simple and fun. When and why did it all change? It doesn’t cost much, it’s easy and gives so much back to us, we can feel the same feeling of connection to ourselves whether we’re at work to at home. Play can be everywhere in our lives.

467. It’s so true Anne, that as we grow older we sometimes lose this joy in movement (play) and instead engage with the belief that we have to be ‘serious’ or ‘practical’ throughout the day every day – particularly in the working environment. Although it’s important to be focussed and committed to what we do and offer support to others sometimes in quite serious situations, this does not mean that the quality of how we move or work can’t be playful and our conversations light-hearted and joyful, in actual fact often creating space and having this attitude allows us to better observe life and what is happening around us as we are not engaging with the intensity of situations that occur.

468. When we allow every moment to be a brand new moment uncluttered by anything from the past or present there is a playfullness and a joy in us so much more easily accessible.

469. I know that just because I know how to walk and talk, and have left school, doesn’t mean that I have stopped learning, and yet I approach life with the same playful attitude I did as a child; that falling down is just as much a part of walking as the standing up, that the mistakes were a part of the learning, and embraced and used to move on from, rather than as some huge and disastrous thing.

470. It seems that as we grow life becomes too serious and we lose that care free way of being children have, and it is seen as not important or inconvenient, but in actual fact it is a way back to ourselves and comes with a true sense of who we are.

471. This is a beautiful description of playfulness, Anne, “a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities.” There is a lightness of being that we can all remember, so to put aside our struggles and connect back to that is very freeing and naturally joyful. Thank you for bringing this back into our awareness.

472. It feels to me that once we step into the rigidity of anything, be it school or work, that’s the beginning of us conforming and overriding what we are feeling to do in each moment, and yet we do have a temporal life that is to be lived and a responsibility that goes with that, and as you say Anne, that’s where we have the choice to do what we do with a lightness of being that brings the joy back.

473. We can be playful with everything – even work. It turns heavy moments into ones that are light and joyful. Nothing is less serious but just simply taken lightly.

474. Learning not to take things on in the day opens up the space to be more playful light and joyful. I know when I take things on, playfulness disappears and an intensity and heaviness takes over that stops the playfulness from coming out.

475. Anne thank you for your playful blog. Most of my younger life my playfulness was rejected, people said to me that I was not serious enough or that I had to be more serious. What I always felt was that life has to be hard and complicated, and after I while I started to believe it and I nearly gave up on my playfulness. Now I have fully embraced my playfulness again and not holding back with it – people are still reacting but this time I don’t care about it. For me playfulness is a new “must have”.

476. “Perhaps this is the key to living life in full and ageing grace-fully – learning to play again!” Gorgeous Anne…this is something as adults we most definitely need to connect with again.

477. This is interesting, specially in the last weeks I have been remembering so much from my childhood days, playgrounds, playing in the fields and woods, with water, flower meadows and joy of being in nature and with other kids. Such an innocence time… I will give it a go and bring the joy of discovery into my day today. The innocent view, the inquisitiveness, the dedication. Lets play.

478. When are you going to grow up! When are you going to stop playing around? These are two phrases that have been asked of me most of my life. I have always replied; I may grow older but why should I grow up and stop having fun? Why should we ever stop playing? Life is too short and to use your example of the quality of our day with lightness, freedom and spaciousness in everything we do affects everyone we meet, we become the source of the ripple in the pond. I also still enjoy skipping stones on the water!

479. “….. a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities.” This is a truly glorious quality with which to approach and live life no matter what we do or how intense life is. The more we can support children to maintain this innate quality they/we all have, what a glorious future they will bring.

480. It just goes to show how life is set up for us to lose our lightness and playfulness. Schools these days seem to suck the life out of children even more than in my day with pressure put on them earlier and earlier, and then the lovelessness of University, or the work place that is set up only for profit at the expense of the worker.

481. ‘Is it even about ‘doing’ anything, or is it more about a quality of ‘being’ that we can bring to our day?’
     I remember as a child I was able to sit patiently and watch intensly the move of a butterfly or the structure of grass. i just loved to be in my presence.

482. I feel the constant barrage of outside influences on our young (such as aggressive and abusive video games and music, pressure to achieve at all costs and be in as many activities as possible, homework galore and not being seen for who they but only seeing their behaviour) equates to anxious and serious kids instead of playfulness and joy.

483. “Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?” Great questions Anne and my answer is yes we can. We can do this by the quality of our presence in everything we do, this being, as you have pointed out, by living in a quality of lightness, freedom and spaciousness.

484. I also wanted to add that you delicate description of your connection to the meaning of playful really touched me, the lightness in your words felt as if they danced on the page.

485. Playfulness is not something that we can claim to live unless others feel it around us, it’s an activity that all are blessed by and the blessing is expressed by a look on a faces when you walk in the room.

486. This is such a great blog and so needed. I’ve had many beautiful moments when everything is flowing, light, and truly joyful, even in the midst of turmoil and stress at work and in the community. The questions you raise, Anne – ‘Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’ – are so profound and inspiring. Yes, it’s great to have ‘moments’ of true joy and playfulness, and why stop there? Don’t we all owe it to each other to make this way be our everyday and every moment?

487. You introduce a deeper meaning of ‘play’ here, one that transcends childhood and the already acknowledged benefits of play. Definitely worth introducing back into our lives, that spacious- and vastness is unparalleled.

488. Give a child a shovel and a pile of sand and he will make play. Give the same to a man and he will make work of it.

489. Thank you Anne for a such wonderful piece…….to me you have always been someone I could enjoy a laugh with and celebrate the lighter sides of life. Play is such a true expression of who we truly are , I am sure the spirit got a hold of ‘ serious’ as a way to make itself feel important while it reinvented the wheel. The other day I was saying to a friend how much I enjoy watching children play in the park and I commented that when you ask them the name of their new friend ……they look at you strange with a ” I don’t know , we just played” . As you say , we tend to compartmentalise as adults but our child self doesn’t , it absolutely knows that life flows from one thing to the next because we are all connected and all one.

490. It is a choice, to have a playful approach, or let yourself be bogged down with the things. Whatever approach we take there is a distinct difference in quality and response that we have in our body, which in turn, would it not influence the way we go about our daily activities, interact, our relationships and our health?

491. How on earth did we allow this definition of play to become uncommon? “This describes more the quality of how we can be as we live our day – a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities.”

492. As parents we have the living sons of God come into our lives in the form of our children and like a blacksmith with an anvil and mallet we systematically bludgeon the truth out of them.

493. I have never before realised how our childhoods hold the key to our future. If we were able to appreciate this in full then we would never parent the way that we do.

494. Anne this line is hugely revealing in itself ‘Life was play – we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole’, because it highlights how we, as adults, have compartmentalized everything. We have chopped everything up and portioned it off and so live in reaction to each small segment of life that we perceive that we are currently in relationship with, as opposed to how we were as kids which was in constant relationship with the whole.

495. One of the most crushing things about life is the unnecessary seriousness. There is actually lots to enjoy of which we are all a part – the stars in the sky, the clouds, nature, other humans beings and the animals we can interact with, etc. I find playfulness comes with an openness and connection to the all, and seriousness is part of isolating myself, and rigid or worry-full inward focus. Just being myself is a great way to be playful.

496. ‘Life was play – we enjoyed every moment of it and we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole’, Anne I feel that in our describing our past you have also outlined our future.

497. Such great wisdom shared here Anne, thank you. Play is not confined to specific activities; we can have joy as a constant throughout our life and also take things seriously.

     1. Thank you Fiona, this brings a truth and lightness to the word seriously which I realise I allow to carry weight uneccessarily.

498. ‘the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate’ …. I love this definition, just allowing ourselves the space and freedom to be who we truly are.

499. “who said life had to be serious as we grew big?” ha ha, true, i reckon it’s because when we’re young we don’t take on (as) much, and therefore keep hold of the lightness or freeness in the body, and move with that… which is the playfulness quality you share Anne, and that when we get older all those conditions of life kick in and we become jammed into constriction and seriousness to lose the sense of play or light-heartedness. We can still be at play when we do ‘serious’ things like a job, get a mortgage, raise a family etc. or rather – ‘being playful’ doesn’t mean not doing anything or not taking responsibility…it’s about quality to which we have a responsibility towards.

500. What a great blog, thank you, Anne ….. what struck me reading all the definitions of ‘play’ is how constraining they are …. ‘engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation, rather than a serious or practical purpose’ …. in truth, to bring a light heartedness to a ‘serious’ situation can be an enormous gift as it cuts through the heaviness. That’s not to encourage irreverence or irresponsibility, rather a quality of joy and lightness that others feel and may choose to connect to encouraging a different energy, an allowing of all that there is to feel in that moment, rather than being restricted.

501. Life is meant to be full of joy… seriousness is a big trick to take us away from the joy we naturally are.

502. How you describe “play” being a quality over a specific doing, makes sense to me Anne, your words: “a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness” … because i know when i’m feeling the opposite of this i’m grumpy, blue and take myself and life seriously – the opposite of seriousness being playfulness.

503. I don’t remember playing or having much fun as child but certainly these days I live playfullness in pretty much everything I do. If feels more like a quality than an action and is very connected to joy.

     1. I also find nature very joyful and playful in all the messages it constantly gives us.

        1. Yes, Nicola, that is so true! The other day I was watching a squirrel dig a hole in the ground to bury a nut and it was the funniest thing. Playful indeed!

504. Beautiful reminder Anne for me, playfulness is ‘a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities.’ Reading your blog again I realise how much of this I am still holding back from allowing myself to freely express my natural playfulness. This is expressed through my body and not just through words but my entire body’s movements.

505. Another way we use the word play these days that I didn’t see on your list is the “play” button or playback button which we press to hear an audio or watch a video.

506. Beautiful Anne. I know that as I “grew up” I lost the ability to play somewhere along the way. I am now trying to bring the quality of play that you describe into my everyday activities, including work. When I bring this playfulness my days are light and joyful, such a difference to when I lose myself in the seriousness of what I need to do.

507. The spherical quality of play feels like a natural reflection of who we are at heart and in essence. I have a sense we are the only beings in the universe that have created a scenario where we experience existence as difficult. This feels to be a measure of our separation, our deviation, from our true and natural selves.

508. In thinking that we have become more responsible as adults from the ideals of what ‘responsibility’ is, we have in fact become irresponsible as we are living in separation to our Soul and exist in a waywardness that is far from the our natural way, that being impulsed from our truth within, as we lived as young children.

509. ‘Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’

     Great question, and one to which the answer must be ‘Yes, we can’. If we work to dismantle that which we labour under – expectations, pressures, ideals and belief – and free ourselves to approach life with humour, lightness and grace, then it is surely be-able. As one who has often tended to get bogged down in seriousness, despite being naturally playful, I appreciate this is not always easy. But it is wonderful to hold it as a very distinct possibility – and one that is possibly only a breath away!

     1. Victoria working in a way that is playful, what that instantly brings up is how many different versions of “playful” people have. However in the true sense, that of joy, wonder etc.. then even the question helps us see how far from our natural playfulness most of us live. At the same time I completely agree it is only a breath away and it’s down to the choice we have in how we approach all that life brings for us to learn and evolve with.

510. There is such a freedom in being playful, and when we go to school that natural flow and rhythm of movement is confined/controlled to sitting in rows facing the front. Even writing this I can feel the unnaturalness, the containment of our bodies, when they are never meant to be contained but openly and freely expressing all of the time.

511. ‘…we did not differentiate between one activity and another: it was just one joyful, spherical whole…’
     Yes, that is it exactly! It seems only later we develop a tendency to compartmentalise our lives into ‘to do’ lists and identify with struggle instead of joy. It would be interesting to explore what might come in to make this happen – presumably an array of received ideas, ideals and beliefs.

512. I love how you have clarified the meaning of ‘play’ and ‘playfulness’ for as a society we have taken on the term to mean that we are being less, not paying attention, or not being respectful yet in truth, as is the wisdom you have shared, true playfulness is the exact opposite. It is an extension of the quality of our connection to who we are in essence that is then reflected through the awareness, commitment and responsibility of our movements. A joyful expression of the Love we are.

513. The difference between school up to the beginning of high school and from high school on for me was very marked. I went from enjoying school – the way we worked and played felt relatively seamless – to actively disliking the pressure to perform academically. It felt like all the fun and joy was sucked out of it and it became serious and onerous. What a way to spoil learning and ‘prepare’ for adult life.

514. Beautiful Anne – it totally shows us that we know how to play – and that it is never gone just a connection to come back to , like when we were a child! That is so true !! Everything used to be so playfull when we were children and it was so normal and universal. Everything was considered; friends, family, nature, and being in the present was so normal too. Beautiful to come back to this feeling and knowing that it can be lived again – AND it does not matter how silly it looks – no matter what – we have to bring playfullness back! Thank you Anne!

515. Absolutely Anne, learning to play again is what I am re-discovering allows me to connect to the quality of joy of being in my body and as have beautifully said – ‘We can restore the joy and wonder of just being in a body and living life, and work and play can become a graceful, spherical whole’. As it frees us from the limitations of the ideals and beliefs that come from our minds and allows us to express freely from the heart of who we are in essence.

516. We are all naturally full of joy and so being playful brings a feeling of connection with all others – because we recognise the joy we see as being in us also.

517. Mastering the art of play is the way to master challenges in life, as there are no issues in play, only exploration to come back to lightness, joy and presence. Play is the untanglement of complication back to spaciousness.

518. The definition of play feels true when there is total presence which is deeply joyful, nothing is lacking we are simply fulfilled. There is freedom and movement and space, which can be literally expressed but more importantly first conceived and expressed in quality. In play there is nothing flippant or heavy, nothing complicated or difficult. When we know how to deeply play, we also know how to be serious, in a responsible way.

519. There us a strong belief in society that life should be serious. Playfulness is often frowned upon with comments like “Can’t you take things seriously?” But who says that is so? We all know how much we love playfulness, we all know how the body lights up with joy – why do we resist?

520. Being around children can either be inspiring or confronting because of the playfulness they live in. In the past I have squashed my son (metaphorically, not literally!) when he was being joyful and if I was in seriousness and drive. More and more so I take what he is offering. For example, my morning walk can be quite serious on my own where I do my best to focus on placing my feet on the ground and so on. When I walk with my son, he skips, sings, dances down the street shaking leaves above his head…the joy is quite contagious.

521. I love the definition of play that you have given Anne – a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness – that we can take with us, wherever we go, into all of our daily activities. I was brought up with life had to be serious and play was for kids, not so anymore.

522. The joy of freedom and space allows life to unfold naturally and in rhythm.

523. Play is definitely a movement and it has a lightness of being to it. When we are depressed there is a heaviness in the body and the movement is different. To live in playfulness requires a lightness of being.

524. “Can we live and work in a way that is playful all the time? Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?” Yes, we can. When we simplify our lives, get rid of the complications, connect deeply with our innermost and let our lives flow smoothly and with consistency with the jobs that need to be done, then we can turn around the old seriousness that we held our lives in for so long. It is great to spend a little time with nature when we can, this helps us re-develop that old joy and wonder about all of God’s creation, including ourselves. How amazing we are.

525. Hi Anne, I loved the less common definitions, as they didn’t narrow or influence as greatly the feeling in the body that holds all that we are. Getting caught up in the seriousness or bringing seriousness to life is something I get can do and this makes it ‘work’ rather than just ‘being’ in what is happening and not absorbing it. I have just realised that joy is greatly influenced by our choice to observe and this observation allows for play to unfold. Thank you.

526. When I walk with my daughter I often get irritated that she doesn’t just walk, she jumps she twists she turns she skips she hops she wiggles until I accepted that she was expressing her joy rather than my get to school walk. I often wonder what it would’ve like if we weren’t quite so socialised out of our natural expression what would adulthood Look like.

527. I like the idea of aging being an opportunity to reconnect to playing again!

528. “As we have ‘grown up’, it feels like we have lost the childhood wonder of ‘leaping for joy and dancing’ and somehow learned that we had to substitute that with ‘exercise or brisk movement,’ which often feels like just more hard work!” How true that is Anne, most of my life has tended to be serious, responsibility hung so heavily over me, and I admit there were times that I hankered to feel more of a playfulness in my life. But since I met Serge Benhayon and attended Universal Medicine presentations, I have begun to bring the more playful side of myself into my life, I have my moments of wanting to be quite silly, like a young child. It is a beautiful way to feel myself, a letting out of the great joy that I am now feeling as I become more and more connected to my true self. It feels great to be letting out that joyful, beautiful child that I really am deep within.

529. I still skip and leap a little on the street sometimes when the movement calls for this expression as I just cannot hold back joy and freedom! In expressing truly how I feel, it is this movement that impulses me to simply open myself towards people, and most of the time, they just smile with me when they see and feel joy, and when people feel what is openness, they also simply respond and connect back. It is true that there is nothing we need to do, we just simply express the way that feels true to us.

530. Play is natural. Being in deep play moving through life is one of the most beautiful things to observe, it is when someone is in deep presence of what they are doing, it is a very beautiful relationship with ourselves and the world connected, much like a child being alone and in deep engagement with themselves playing with whatever they are playing.

531. I’m learning to be (!!) more playful everyday. Children around me support me a lot. I could never have imagined myself playing with blocks, painting, drawing, etc. And I’m starting to love it once again. And I am actually astonished about the results and how they keep evolving. And as a result, much of the seriousness is gone. Even though it’s also still work in progress. But I love it! And I’m much better companionship to hang out with:-). A True bonus…

532. Watching a young child is a wonderful way to remember play. They are so natural in being in the moment . It does not matter what they are doing, because they are just being themselves.

533. It really is amazing how we go from life being one huge learning and play, to life being something a drudgery and struggle. We never stop learning in life and we don’t have to stop approaching life with playfulness

534. ‘Can we see the joy and wonder in everyday life, so that every day is play again?’ I know this is much needed for me and my quality of life. I can be a very playful person and quite light when I want to be, but in those times I allow the seriousness to creep in, it usually does a number on me and I find it hard to see the fun in the day, and this has a huge impact on my health.

535. I love this blog Anne – it feels so gorgeous to read the reminder of bringing playfulness to our day. There is an instant sense of my body lifting and lightening up as I read this and any pockets of seriousness feeling very unnecessary to hold onto.

536. How important is it to be reminded that we are all young at heart! I absolutely agree with you Anne. There is way too much focus on being right and doing things the right way. We can all be so stiff and boring! I’m all for shaking it off and being a little freer…It will no doubt bring much light to my days!

537. When there is space (both metaphorically and physically), you feel you want to move and play and maybe even dance! When we are bogged down by stuff (again both metaphorically and physically) there is less desire to move, place and dancing is pretty much off the agenda. So for me being playful, is not getting so bogged down in stuff and creating more space which involves letting go (and quite often of control!)

538. Hello Anne and we have put play under the microscope. I loved this ‘less common’ meaning of play, “light and constantly changing movement.” As you say Anne it comes back to a quality of movement in any moment and it’s not just something that should be left for the kids or a sporting event.

539. Being playful and being serious is often seen as opposite qualities, but they go perfectly together. We have this image of how we have to be in whatever moment and also what this quality looks like. Our expression has been so bastardized that often even being playful we are just playing a role and not being truly playful.

540. We play so many roles in life and have learned to constantly play instead of being ourselves. The true playfulness you introduce Anne is a quality of life that is lived when we are who we truly are and not playing games and roles anymore.

541. With wonderment we view the world with fresh eyes, like it is the first time we have seen something. We feel the magic of God all around and that there is a depth to the world we live in that reaches far beyond the three dimensions that our eyes initially see.

542. Gorgeous Anne – thanks for offering such a lovely appreciation of playing and how we can choose to have the lightness of movement in us as we move about our day. Play isn’t a separateness from our every day living, it is a preculiar aspect of growing big that we drop the fun stuff and install the serious.

543. With child’s play there is a sense of timelessness. There is so much to learn by watching children play and I find that they can be one of our best teachers, reminding us of the innate qualities that we all have inside, yet we have perhaps lost connection with.

544. Your blog feels like it reveals why we are all so serious and not truly enjoying life as we know we could. Could it be that all we need to do is be totally honest and truthful about what is really going on for us and what the quality of our lives is really like?

545. Seriousness makes things complicated and makes us feel apart from each other. Whereas being playful unites and makes us feel together with everybody.

546. Joy can only be there when there is God’s truth, without truth no true joy.

547. I didn’t know we had that many definitions of playing and play. I love the space in my body being playful, light and silly gives.

548. I’m all for learning to play again, life at the moment, through one reason and another has become far to serious, everyones walking around with frowns on their faces or just trying to make light of a bad situation, so I feel we all could learn a lot from this blog.

549. This blog is a great reminder of the lightness and ease playfulness can bring to our day. Just being myself, with no self doubt or worry, and present in the moment, as small children are, is when I have experienced this feeling of playfulness. Thank you Anne 🙂

550. We can think that being playfull is not being ‘grown up’, or that it is even a kind of deceit or abdication of responsibility, where we play at being a character. Yet what you show, and beautifully so Anne, is it is our role and duty to be light and joy full in everything we do. The seriousness we have come to live, is just a big trick and way of being that is foreign to me and you. We are here to have fun.

551. Thanks for blog Anne. It caused me to reflect on my own childhood and I can recall my behaviour changing from light and fun to being more serious in order to meet societies ‘expectations’ of the role I was in at the time. I love how you bought the meaning of play back to a quality of being that “…we can take with us, wherever we go, into all our daily activities.” Bringing fun and lightness into our everyday livingness – very inspiring.

552. I agree we make playing a task/another thing to do instead of allowing us to enjoy every moment in full, what I feel children are doing. Children do not spoil there play/being by overthinking things or thinking what is next, they feel and enjoy themselves in the flow of nature, basically in all there is, and by virtue of that there is an ease and playfulness in there being-ness.

553. I love the quality that doesn’t differentiate between different activities. Living in this quality stress doesn’t exist.

554. I know I lose the quality of play when I feel there is too much to do at home or work. Then life seems like a chore even though I usually love whatever I do. Realising today how I return to this playful quality by dropping the pressure to fit things in a tight timeline and trusting all that needs to be completed will be so (so much is my need to control); and noticing every movement I make that is designed just to secure some kind of security for me. This can be quite subtle and seemingly self loving but the energy I take a break for me isn’t.

555. So play is really just about our movements – moving in way that is light and free. I love this idea as it makes it part of everything we do rather than going outside of ourselves to do it.

556. What is actually going wrong when we are indeed playful from our very beginning and lose it while we grow up and experience education? Something obviously cannot be right. Probably we learn to take life seriously, learn to do all the important serious things, become important ourselves by doing them, start to carry the weight of life´s burdens that we confuse with true responsibility (actually a very en-lightening thing) etc etc. We become who we are not more and more. Playfulness is a beautiful quality to restore ourselves back to who we are and develop a relationship with life that is not arduous but fresh and curious and deep and interesting …

557. As seriousness is a killer of our innate nature, playfulness is a crucial ingredient to restore and sustain a sense of lightness to not being overwhelmed or absorbed by life but stay observing and discerning.

558. It makes perfect sense to expand or even shift our understanding of ‘playing’ to an inner quality being expressed in life instead of reducing it to an activity. The contrast of playing and not playing otherwise creates unnecessary divide in our lives.

559. Playing the game of life can feel like I am involved in a game of strategy to survive and this is completely different to being playful. I have also seen environments where people feel they are being playful but it is at someone else’s expense – the phrase it was just a joke lighten up is usually thrown in. There are so many moments to be playful, and it can often accelerate and diffuse the situation and bring us back to observing ourselves and the dynamic when it is getting too heavy or stuck in seriousness.

560. Playfulness is a quality that can be in everything we do, if we choose to be with the spaciousness that being the true us gives.

561. I will always remember the beginnings of when I started working. I was delighted to be welcomed into the adult world, to be offered a position of trust and responsibility, to have an interplay with which I could connect to and relate to lots of people (customers) and on top of it I got paid too! I looked forward to and figuratively skipped to work. And I recall the adults around me not able to understand and try to burst what they considered a naïve bubble and bring me back to reality as they saw it. I have regained that relationship since I came across Universal Medicine and yet I realise it is not consistent, dipping and rising at various periods. The main factor I can feel is the expectations I put on myself and on what I think I ought to be getting back which brings in a lot of trying to control and frustration – very very different to those moments when I am open, playful, appreciative and ready to flow with and respond to what the moment brings. When I am open like that I feel as playful as a child once more in my heart and in my whole being.

562. There was something special about going over to someone’s house to play. There was a timelessness and ease about the day as nothing was necessarily planned but unfolded in an exploration that was as limited as your imagination and energy level. It would be lovely to bring that same timelessness to adult house visits!

563. It always amazes me how children can turn pretty much everything they do into a game of sorts, making everything playful. Thinking away about something other than the activity I’m engaged in and I forget the joy and playfulness that can be felt from my body in all I do.

564. Life and a responsible life can be seriously playful – when we let go of all the pictures of how we should be in life, and simply be ourselves.

565. ‘We did not even have a word for it – that was just how we lived.’ I love this Anne. Spot on. When life is play we have no need for so called ‘playtime’ or rewards. Every moment is gorgeously satisfying as it is.

566. A great reminder Anne, thank you, that play can be in everything, that’s what it was like as a child. So it isn’t about stopping and having time to play, but making everything we do fun (even if this is just in our way and we are smiling to ourselves on the inside).

567. Today at work, my colleague and I were working on something together and it felt heavy and flat…we realised that we had become very serious and had lost our playful way with it. Just calling this out meant we easily returned to a playful way with each other and with what we were working on.

568. Its so true, life is play for children, and they have ample amounts of energy… makes you wonder if holding all our play and tenderness back sucks us dry and results in a lack of energy ? 😉

569. “and playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk.” – this was hilarious to read Anne. I love the way you have written this. It’s interesting to note where the word play originated from – and how maybe it has lost its meaning along the way?

570. Love this Anne. Not loosing the zest of life is the same as being playful to me as well. As children, everything is marvellous and full of wonder. Who said we have to lose this as we grow older? 🙂

571. When we bring the quality of playfullness into our day, there is an ease and a sense of flow – rather than the tension and jarring brought in by seriousness and complication.

572. I remember being quite young and seeing adults in bad moods or worrying.. and I used to think why don’t they just choose to not worry, and enjoy themselves? It really is that simple and such is the wisdom children can connect to so easily.

573. Recently I saw how I hold back from myself the things that I really enjoy or laugh with or feel great joy in. It’s like I learnt to punish myself and not let myself engage in the things that truly make me feel a celebration and a joy within and in life. This includes withholding play from myself. I’ve contemplated why I do this and it’s like growing up I felt like a bad person or not worthy so I was not allowed to have fun, or enjoy life and experience the magic and love around me. I may have taken the self punishment on from a number of situations, like being a good girl at school, a good daughter or just trying to please others by dulling myself. Any how, now that I’ve see all of this it’s time to bring back the play and cut through the withholding.

574. ahhh yes! Playfullness is definitely moving with a lightness and spaciousness throughout the day – for when you have that spaciousness, you don’t get bogged down in the seriousness or potential complications of situations.

575. Thank you Anne, your blog had me recalling all the times I have seen light play on a wall or on the water on a sunny day. There is such a quality of lightness and fun when I observe this, the light of the sun always knows how to play, all while it is doing a very important job (none of us would survive without it).

576. I certainly do recall the play time of childhood – there was this feeling of contentment no matter what we did and some of the best times came from playing by myself or with others. Outdoor play was the best, in nature, building and constructing out of sticks and stones, or exploring the creeks and fields or boulders. Anne, what you say is so true – many of us as adults forget the true fun from play…but really thankfully it is only forgotten and not something we ever lose. For it can be remembered and then revived! Just like you have with this blog reminded us of.

577. I love how you have highlighted that when we were young life was play. It was our natural way.

578. I’m sure we could all do with a good dose of playfulness – but are we too wedded to struggle, seriousness and complications to let that happen, I wonder?

579. Such a lovely inspiration and invitation to bring our play to life. Thank you Anne.

580. Brilliant, Anne. Learning to Play Again – this title is such a giveaway. Learning – isn’t this something we usually associate with school and study? Like, the exact opposite to play? And we have to learn to do it? Such is the state of humanity, we have completely lost a true sense of ourselves that cannot help be Joy-full and have no need to seek to play – as that can be already felt in every movement it makes, and knows the ‘play-full-ness’ of creation which merely is spirits playing out their desire.

581. Anne I love this exploration of what it means to play. Why do we leave play behind as we embark on the ‘serious stuff’ of life, why not bring that same quality of playfulness to everything we do … I know that when I approach my day lightly and even wide-eyed and open to what happens next it is seldom predictable and a lot more fun.

582. Reading your blog Anne I was reminded about how serious I can get sometimes and how this does not serve me or anyone else at all. Seriousness brings in heaviness, whereas playfulness opens the space up for so much more to occur with a lot more ease and grace.

583. Life as a child is so full of wonder and lightness and play, I love that you are introducing that this is simply a quality, and one we may mute, but never fully lose, so it’s always possible to reignite.

584. What came to me as I was reading this was how I have been limited by my definition of play – the one I subconsciously have in my head. I have thought that I could only be being playful if I was being silly or cheeky, funny in some way. Reading all the myriad of definitions here I have been able, thanks to you Anne, to clear away this false image of what being playful is and can now connect to the truth that being playful is simply about being light in our day. If I am living lightly then I am being playful, for the moment any seriousness comes in, the light is pushed down by a heaviness. It also has helped me to understand and now accept that I am (as we all are) naturally playful – that this is the way my being naturally expresses, and that it is the heavy seriousness which is the imposter here.

585. Hi Anne, your blog caused me to wonder deeply and I wondered also at all the comments referring to memories of when “we were little, when we were children” etc. and I sat with my ponderings endeavouring to recall ‘playing joyfully’ as a child and I am sure there must have been times even though in these moments I tend to return to a time when my own children were little and yes, this is where I can connect with the feelings of playing joyfully – such precious memories of being naturally play-full and full of the fun of being alive, and over the years I am still growing this sense of playfullness, and as has been mentioned being ‘light-hearted’ and feeling the bubbles of fun rising to be freed and to be expressed from a love of life. It feels great to bring awareness once again to the playfullness and joy that we truly are in our ‘natural’ state – thank you.

586. Thanks Anne for your lovely and playful article. It is certainly clear that as we grew up and got older we, too a certain degree, lost our sense of play. I can really feel that light and playful energy every time I now think on the word ‘play’.

587. I hadn’t before known what the origins of the word ‘play’ were. ‘The word comes from the Old English ‘plegian’ meaning ‘to exercise’, or ‘plega’ ‘brisk movement’ and or from the Middle Dutch ‘pleien’, meaning ‘leap for joy, dance’.’ And so I find it very interesting that all these root words all include the movement of the body as a key part of play – you could say then that play arises from true movement.

588. ‘I love the less common definitions of play – the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move – scope or freedom to act or operate light and constantly changing movement.’ Yes I love these definitions too Anne – it is beautiful to stop and ponder on them and feel their flexible and space-full quality – a sense of using the available space freely and wisely and lightly.

589. It’s so true that we learn to segment our lives into different pieces and delegate a certain way of being to each different thing.. but this is precisely not how life is, it is all one.

590. Amazing Anne. Restoring play to our day, takes the dread out of some things. Love how you have provided these meanings of play, as when there is play during the day even during a serious task like work, it feels as though work is not serious and there is a different movement to it.

591. A gorgeous blog, I just remembered years ago at a place I was working in (a bank) and we had a Winnie the Pooh theme week. At the the end of the week I got the Roo certificate for being the most playfull .. I was surprised and well chuffed : ) We do know what playfullness is, just like true sexyiness it is just currently we do not see enough of this in the world to be reflected out to us and one remember and two give ourselves permission to be this. With all the tv, devices and social media it is sad to see how children and young people are loosing touch with play and their innate playfullness too.

592. Thank you Anne. Very timely for me to read this this morning. Life can be intense but we can stay light and playful in our bodies.

593. This is a great question Anne: “who said life had to be serious as we grew big?”. Well it seems like someone, somewhere, sometime decided that it had to be, so it began to be taken on as a belief, and in the process of growing up we began to get serious, dampening down the natural joy that we all innately have; a joy that just does not go away. So yes, it is definitely time for serious to take a back seat while we access the joy of our childhood, and began to bring play, fun, dancing, and even a bit of “leaping around”, back into our lives.

594. For me being playful is also about not taking life too seriously, nor myself. It is about being open, surprised, curious and innocent. It feels like meeting every moment with new fresh eyes and an open heart.

     1. And the word that comes to mind for me is lighthearted spontaneity!

595. Children learn by playing to understand the world and find their way in it – sounds like a good way to do so.

596. To become aware and responsible about our divine power and be playful with this is so sexy.

597. So playfulness brings a special type of movement (like a leap of joy, dance). And true joy is felt when we confirm truth, not our self created reality. A confirmation of divinity is joy and a movement of joy (confirmation) is playful. That makes totally sense to me. And when I see how we move I see the lack of confirmation and the lack of play in our movements. Our bodies mostly can’t move freely anymore because of physical limitation. To free our body again so we are able to move playful again is key. Now I’ve got a deeper understanding of the meaning of the Universal Medicine Healing Therapies and what they bring to us: true movements. And with that the possibility of a true relationship with God again. … WOW!

598. I just have to look at nature and see the playfulness of God. This playfulness does not make anything less than divine – but confirms it. Now, how to transform this into human life? What about start with not taking ourselves too seriously. Come on! ‘Self’ is an creation from our separated spirit – it is not true. So lets have a fun with it while connecting back to our soul and unite again. To play on the way is necessary to not get hocked into the flow of the idea of control. We can not control anything but the choice to which energy we align to. So how could we make ourselves too important? Yes the choice is fundamental for the outcome, but also the outcome is written already – we will return to God and union, just our timing is in ‘our hands’. And anyway, time does not really exist, so… Let’s be playful. It is a step towards our truth.

599. Yes, indeed Anne. This blog exposes how serious we can make life, full of struggle and deadlines. What you open us up to is the possibility of a different way of being, in relation to ourselves and the world. By creating space we can breathe, feel, look around and enjoy life a lot more. Then the joyful simplicity that we remember as a child can return.

600. I love this! Absolutely gorgeous, Anne. Thank you.

601. This is so gorgeous Anne, thank you. I too love the more uncommon meanings of the word ‘play’ and will take this into my day, so that no matter what I am doing, I can allow myself to play through the day.

602. Being with people who live their natural playfulness feels deeply healing, it offers you to relax and let your shoulders down.

603. Allowing the quality of playfulness to infuse our day feels like a lovely way to go about our days, and the lightness that comes from this allows for more productivity and increased connection with others as we let go of trying to control outcomes and focus on being present and joyful.

604. So true Anne, we all have the innate ability to be playful. It is interesting as we grow older it seems to be a common thing that we interpret ‘growing up’ as ‘being serious’.

605. It is so telling that when we are young life is play and play is life it is only when we ‘grow up’ that we compartmentalise our lives into different sections. With that so often comes a seriousness that extinguishes the joy of appreciating being in our bodies and flowing with what life presents and meeting it with open curiosity. The more I discard all the things that are not me the more I am rediscovering the joy of playfulness.

606. “We used to live like this when we were little – who said life had to be serious as we grew big?” My grand children are a great reminder to me to not be so serious. Playing is natural to them and they can laugh at the simplest of things.

607. This is lovely, the fact that we can be playful just by being who we are.

608. Anne I so agree – there is such a quality of lightness, spaciousness and freedom when we play, that reading your blog I am left pondering on why I don’t choose to play more often. You have inspired me.

609. Beautiful Anne. Being playful is something that I have been reconnecting with over the last couple of years. I have commonly said that it isn’t in my nature to be playful, but what I am discovering is that the more I deepen my connection with me, let people in and let love out, there is a natural and innate playfulness, a cheekiness that wants to express. So I have realised that to think that I’m not naturally playful was not true at all. The more I allow myself to simply be me, out comes the playfulness and I feel the joy of a little girl that is bursting to have fun.

610. What would childhood be like if we all had playful parents and how would this change the kind of adults that we grew up being if our parents had never stopped being joyous ?

611. How complex and complicated we have made this simple word? Play can be an integral part of the whole day when we live life with a quality of play-fullness and what you have written Anne is a great reminder to live life with a lightness and joy.

612. To be able to play is to be able to be joyful. When you are joyful, playing is very easy and natural.

613. Well said Anne, so often we can get way too serious and rigid about life and how we want it to be when we grow up. As children we see things as they are. There is such a lightness and ease when we allow ourselves to be playful, suddenly the tension seems to drop and the laughs and smiles come out. It is amazing the difference when we allow ourselves to be playful.

     1. …and it’s so much fun, isn’t it? It can be contagious and bring the best out of people. It’s free, doesn’t require anything to ‘make’ it and best of all, it’s within us all.

614. I love this description of play: “….a quality of lightness, of freedom, of spaciousness….”.
     These are beautiful qualities to bring to your body and into your life, even hard work or a difficult task approached like this is enjoyable.

615. Interesting how many concepts we have about play time and the separation that is cast between work and play, it is almost like work cannot be play and obviously play cannot be work. A lot is gained when we are able to join these two together again and bring play back into work.

616. Anne – I welcome playfulness with open arms. We are so lacking this type of lightness in the world and when we do bring in playfulness, it is very beautiful to observe and be part of. I love how you suggest this is in how we are not what we do – that we don’t have to run around like kids but it is more a relationship we have with everything that can be light and spacious.

617. Being serious and being bogged down with life brings a heaviness to the body and a feeling of dragging yourself through your day, whereas with children we can feel that isn’t there and that there is a lightness. Could being playful actually contribute to our sense of well-being and improve our health – I suspect so.

618. Playfulness is naturally there when I live from my body and not from my head. It’s when I get caught up in my head going round and around on a problem that I can lose myself and playfulness seems to be a distant friend.

619. There is less flow and ease in life when we are not playful and allow life to get too serious. I’ve been noticing recently how much more playfulness I can bring to my life if I stop focusing on the so called problems and see the bigger picture.

620. Anne you leave us with some great examples here of what play actually is when you share the fact that it is a “light and constantly changing movement.” We’ve certainly lost our way not only with play but I am amazed at how we’ve called play something that is not truly play. Being playful therefore is something that I feel inspired to deepen my understanding of and bring this throughout my day.

621. Anne, I love this article, I have a 5 year old son and everything is play for him. Sometimes I say ‘do you want to go and play’ but realise that this sounds strange to him because everything he does is play; helping put the rubbish out; walking to school; brushing his teeth, nothing is done seriously, it is all done playfully, he simply is playful and joyful.

622. Being playful is given yourself permission to be all that you are, have fun not stepping on the cracks on the pavements, skipping, playing hide and seek, being lighthearted and joking, and not thinking to much or analysing how to be playful. Playfulness can be, and is, part of everything, dancing when you get dressed, a little skip of joy through your house, being playful in how you write or dance, with a bit of cheekiness and sass.

623. “Clearly, we cannot just walk around in our work clothes leaping about and dancing, because that would look crazy and no-one would take us seriously or come near us, but what can we do?” – who says you can’t dance at work, yes there’s not being over the top, but maybe a little bit of lightness and fun is needed there, you never know what effect this will have on everyone else, you might just be allowing someone to be themselves.

624. You can’t learn to be playful or try to be playful; you are playful, it’s a natural fact.

625. ‘As we have ‘grown up’, it feels like we have lost the childhood wonder of ‘leaping for joy and dancing’’ I’ve not, I still dance down the corridors at work.

626. I love how you break down a word and go back to its roots. It makes me realise how often I use words without considering their true meaning and how limiting that can be. Thank you Anne.

627. I totally agree Anne we have forgotten how to play and enjoy life. Watching children they naturally enjoy what is present before them, there is a spontaneity that is honest and real, if they feel like jumping in the air they do regardless of what people might think. As we get older we feel the judgement of others and tone down this natural exuberance for life.

628. There is something really lovely about being playful as an adult, and I know that children love it when adults are playful, you can see the joy this creates in them, as children are little bundles of fun and know how to make life playful, and I know I can do that as well as an adult and still get my work done and live a prosperous life, in fact I would say that playfulness and productivity go very well together. Thanks for your writing Anne, it a very interesting topic and one it is good for me to visit to ensure life does not become too serious.

629. Could it be that we went from our spherical world of our youth and we allowed the world to put our round peg into a square hole? What if we see the world for what it is, a just bigger box that doesn’t change us, and we are free to ‘play thru’ that just makes that expensive walk shorter.

630. Play for me, when I feel back to my body as a young girl felt gorgeous, light and a freedom to explore all the feelings that were there and appreciating what nature was showing around me. Now I struggle with letting go and connecting to the playfulness from inside. Now when I hear the unreserved genuine laughter and playful voices of children a smile spreads across my face and it’s like music to my ears. There are so many reflections around us reminding or confirming our joy and playfulness.

631. It can be so easy to get caught up in the drama and seriousness that we think is actually part of life. When we start to move in lightness and playfully it’s quite a realisation to feel that it doesn’t have to be like this: that what’s going on around us doesn’t have to be what we feel inside, and that we are naturally light, joyful and playful.

     1. Totally. Letting go allows of all of our stuff, our baggage leaves us feeling lighter and more open to express and be playful.

632. Thank you Anne for sharing this, the playfulness in your words is a form of healing. So many times I have been broken down out of ‘Serious Sally’ mode by another who comes with a natural playfulness and vice verse. When life gets too serious we become miserable and hardened in ourselves and towards life, learning to lighten up, have fun and be silly at times (which comes with learning when to be playful and when to be serious without being hard or harsh) is something that as adults we could all do with more of in our lives.

633. When you play with a young child it reminds you of the simple enjoyment of just being together and observing that all the while they are exploring dexterity of movement, colours, shapes, communication and expression.

     1. I noticed this recently, Mary, with a friend’s four-year old. The joy she had from playing with what I would have thought to be something rather boring was amazing – and it didn’t go unnoticed by me. As you say, it did remind me of the simple enjoyment.

634. Interesting to read the different definitions of play and indeed we have made play in our adult, and also teenage, life to mean something that has to offset the pressures and stress we otherwise experience . This type of play though is often an abuse to the body and does not connect us back to a quality that will support us to truly deal with the challenges of life, that will therefor remain challenges.

     1. Indeed, Caroline – the definition has turned into something so far from the original Dutch meaning. It’s as if there is a definition for a baby (like play dates, playtime, etc) and then everyone else.

635. Thank you Anne for this great reminder of our natural way of being. I know for one that taking on all the seriousness of life and what I should and should not be has taken me away form my innate joy and playfulness. Yet this is a great quality to be in life with as it supports us in knowing that nothing we have created is bigger then the love of God we hold inside.

636. And thanks by the way – it feels like you reminded me of something that I haven’t practised for a while. Just sat down at the piano and felt how joyful and at ease it can be for me anyways to just allow myself the natural space to be and from that space things just naturally flows.

     1. This is awesome Matts.

637. The mere thought of play in the original sense gives a different order to my movements. It seems my body instantly recognizes and remembers how to coordinate itself in the space given.

638. I could feel myself asking the question… ‘ can we live everyday with playfulness, how would that be at work etc’. And that of course highlights exactly what the blog is getting at. Why am I even contemplating this question when I know in the cells of my body that it is possible because I have lived this. Indeed there are days when it happens quite naturally. So the answer that comes back to me is that it is simple a choice.

639. This is a great reminder Anne, that we are never too old to be playful. I had a beautiful reflection a few days ago from a little boy that I know. I was with my daughter, and as we were sharing something this little guy saw us and his face lit up. We had a little chat with him and then asked him if he would like to have his photograph taken with us both. His answer was, “Yes but I’ve just got to go and play with my freinds for 5 minutes and then I’ll be back” It was such a beautiful moment of absolute innocence and pure joy, and a great reminder that we too can choose to make anything we do play – full, in other words bring a lightness and joy to it what ever it is we are doing.

640. I agree Anne – We tend to make life way too serious and with that I feel we disconnect to the natural flow that life actually offers.

641. So true Anne what you say “we used to live like this when we were little – who said life had to be serious as we grew big?” What is happening to us when growing up and why do we choose to let go of that natural playful way of being that we where born with. To me it feels that when I was young I lived without a picture of how life should be or how I should behave myself, but instead I was only wondered of what life brought to me and in that I can feel playfulness resides.

642. To be playful doesn’t mean to be any less productive or responsible but rather bringing a light and connecting quality wherever we are.

643. There is a rigidity about life that we seem to accept as a part of being an adult but it does not have to be this way. Perhaps it comes hand in hand with trying to control things so as we let control go and accept that there may be a lighter more inspiring way to live, we can bring in this sense of play, lightness, joy and dancing with life. It does not have to be silly and can be grace personified.

644. We seem as a society to have accepted that life as an adult is a hard slog. We drag ourselves through life resigned to the fact that this is how life is, once you have grown up. As you share Anne, some adults make valiant attempts at having fun but many of these attempts involve either drugs, alcohol or all manner of other activities many of which bring harm to the body. It is not possible for the body to feel joy when it is being harmed but we often take the surge of adrenaline as a poor imposter of true joy. When the body is released of it’s impositions then it naturally returns to a joyous state.

645. Anne having now read your whole article I feel that what you have shared is of enormous value. Up until fairly recently I held the belief that the way we felt as kids is not biologically possible for us as adults. I was not totally sure what mechanisms in the body precluded our ability to be the way we were as kids but I believed it was impossible. What I now understand from my own lived experience is that there are many things that prevent us from feeling the joy we did as kids but that none of it is inherently biological and it is all removable. By addressing the things in our life that have caused us to bury pain in the body, by examining and discarding our protective ways, by scrutinizing our beliefs, we gradually diminish the barriers to childhood joy and voila there comes a time when we realise that we’re feeling the same lightness and having the same fun that we did when we were 7 years old!

646. I love words and exploring them too Anne and love that word ‘quality,’ just the sound of it feels light. Bringing it together with play as you have, makes that activity feel so much more spacious and free, more enjoyable and permissible. It is a quality not to be lost.

647. Anne I have stopped reading right at this point to say that I thought this description of golf was hilarious ‘playing golf, which in some opinions, is just an expensive way to spoil a good walk’.

648. Thank you Anne for reminding me to be playful, fun and allow myself to be joyful throughout my day. I often tend to get too serious, especially at home with my family and I know this is just a choice. So I am definitely learning to play again, it feels weird as I am writing this because being playful is actually very natural to me but I have suppressed it for so long with control it no longer feels natural. Letting go of control and allowing more playfulness is what I am going to practice more of from today onwards. A very inspiring blog Anne.

649. Yes Anne the joy of living life playfully today when we leave our younger years seems to fizzle as we allow the busyness and stress of life take hold. But when we choose to live with presence and connections life can take on a whole new feel. I love the lightness and wonderment of living life playfully and it feels amazing to interact with others in this way too. Thank you.

650. How do we PLAY the game of life? Are we actual participants, observers or fully committed to living a full and true life connected to the purpose of life – evolution to go back to where we once were?

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