PLAY A COPING SKILL FOR OUR LIVES
Germany in November Archan's Mom and I |
Martha Beck talks a lot about play, I am reading her book " Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want" and she says ".....the way to cope with the increasing complexity of the wild new world is to play more." Martha Beck also talks about "deep play" which involves mastering something difficult. She goes on "Real play is actually a wildly creative application of deep practice. It means picking something hard and doing it at a level that's almost too difficult."
Neuroscientists have found that this "edge of impossibilty" is where the brain produces its maximum doses of feel-good hormones like dopamine." Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it "flow", Ellen Langer calls it "mindfulness". I like how Martha Beck says we must learn to play like we mean it. I really enjoyed as a child the difficult challenge of taming a wild barn cat, a scared race horse, I would learn the sounds the animal made and watch intensely it's body language with my whole body and mind. I would succeed in befriending it and feel so good about it (feel-good hormones). I would feel connected with everything for a period of time.
I do want to play more, and bring this concept of play into my whole life not just brief periods of time. See what I am doing presently or something that is difficult I want to do as a time of deep play, I find that there is not an attachment to the outcome, pressure is not there, I like this human quality of 'play'. I hope you too will play more, love to all.
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