"Play can be a doorway to a new self, one much more in tune with the world." -Stuart Brown, MD in Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.
As a child I loved to play. I fondly remember playing outside in my "kitchen," making all sorts of delicacies with mud, clay, ash, flowers, and anything else I could find in the yard. As I look back, it's no wonder I love to cook now!
Back in 1996/97, I would bring my sister and two neighbor friends into our living room and I'd choreograph dances to the songs of our Disney's Greatest Hits CD. We had a ball! I didn't know my early exposure to choreography would help me in my coaching as I choreographed my skaters' programs.
This past week I finished reading the book, Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown, MD. Reading this helped open my mind to the importance and necessity of play, for children and adults alike.
The book is full of stories and examples of the importance of play in our professional lives, for our health, and our sanity, as well as just being plain fun, but the example of a polar bear playing with sled dogs, instead of devouring them, is such a classic example of the importance of play. Play has the ability to tear down boundaries, eliminate differences, and teach humans as well as dogs and polar bears how to interact with each other.
Play is so important that some studies suggest that people who play games and engage in mentally challenging work well into their later years are less likely to get heart disease, dementia, and other issues that may or may not have anything to do with the brain (p. 71). Whether or not this is actually true, it does make sense. If we stop playing, we stop growing, we stop learning, and we stop being able to experience the world on an intimate level.
Last week as I was at work, we had just returned home from a walk and the cute little three-year-old I nanny ran outside to play. Although it was nap time, I let him be since he was happy, and from what I had learned in this book, I didn't want to take away precious play time from him. A while later I heard him come through the door and this is what I saw:
Pure happiness. Mud-covered, sopping wet, but in utter joy. I just smiled and told him to "pause" so that we could get a picture. Soon we were in the tub washing up, but I know he had a blast outside.
"Imagination is perhaps the most powerful human ability" (p.86)
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| Enjoying the springtime weather on 21 March 2015 |
What are your favorite ways to play?
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