Stories as imaginative play
September is the month of play! Scroll down to find your invitation to come and PLAY!!
Dear friends,
It is spring here in the southern hemisphere, and I’m tuning into the riotous, colourful explosions of life all around.
The vibrancy of new green leaves festooning the branches of oak trees that were still bare a few weeks ago. The joy of bird song and the delight of looking out the window to see young robins frolicking and splashing in the bird bath. The carpets of intense pink, purple, yellow and orange wildflowers springing up everywhere.
It seems that Mother Nature is giving full rein to her playfulness — splashing bright colours across the land and filling the trees and skies with the playful acrobatics and exuberant songs of birds. The world feels saturated in playful patterns and dazzling displays of colour, song, movement and dance!
Everywhere I look, I am reminded that it is in our deepest nature to play! The trees, the sky and the rolling waves in the turquoise sea are all inviting me: Put down the to-do-list!! Come and play!!!
And of course, because we humans are the storytelling animals, and play is in our nature — the ‘play signals’ I’m getting from Mother Nature have got me thinking about the relationship between playfulness and stories!
I’m thinking of stories filled with tricksters and fools, mischief makers and magical creatures. Stories filled with adventure and surprise, and with wild and wonderful happenings that make you giggle with delight, gasp in wonder or guffaw at the absurd.
I am also thinking about how engaging with the art of storytelling itself becomes a powerful form of imaginative play!
According to psychiatrist and play researcher Stuart Brown, we need play as much as we need proper sleep or nutrition. ‘Nothing lights up the brain like play,’ he says. Play is relaxing and transformative. It is joyful and fun. Play enables us to form human connections and build trust with each other and feel a sense of safety in groups or collectives. It keeps us mentally sharp and gives us zest for life. It enables us to learn, imagine, problem-solve and explore new possibilities. It gives us a sense of freedom and helps us lose track of time. (And all these things Brown says about play, you could also say about stories.)
As Brown observes in his TED Talk1, play is ‘a process of nature that’s within all of us.’
According to Brown, the foundation of human play is joyful connection between an infant and caregiver. It begins with an exchange of bright smiles, laughter and cooing, a twinkle in the eye. As baby and their loved one’s right brains attune and they respond to one another’s ‘play signals,’ they are swept up in a joyful flow of playful emergence. Because that’s the thing about play — you never know where it’s going. Like a player in an improv comedy troupe, you just have to keep saying yes to what happens next!
As Brown elaborates, different forms of play abound:
Through body play, we may dance wildly, splash in the surf, throw ourselves into a pile of leaves. Then there is object play — you might call it tinkering, making stuff, ‘practical problem-solving born out of curiosity and exploration.’ There is social play, and physical rough-and-tumble play that is so important for learning emotional regulation. There is spectator play, and ritual play.
Storytelling activates the world of imaginative play. Through telling and sharing stories with one another, between individuals or in a group, we immerse ourselves collectively in worlds of play brought to life in the storyteller’s imagination and enhanced by the quality of their attunement with their audience. Whether the story is being told around the dinner table or in a giant theatre, we go on an imaginative journey together. There may be flying carpets, talking mirrors, smiling horses — we are happy to escape the logics that keep most of us bound to ‘reality’ and sojourn for a while in a world where pretty much anything that can be conjured in the imagination is possible.
I believe that today more than ever, we need imaginative play — the kind of play evoked by the playful telling of playful stories — to go beyond the instrumentalist thinking that is so pervasive in modern culture. As Brown observes, most of us adults are starved for play. We have forgotten how to play, or won’t let ourselves do enough of it. Play is for children; adults are too busy doing serious, important, productive things.
As Ursula K LeGuin (sourced from the Marginalian) observes:
The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.
If we shut the world out, we diminish our capacities to experience its beauty and magic. We start to lose our aliveness, and can then all too easily project the dulled state of our inner world onto the outer world at large. Exuberant birdsong becomes reduced to a functional mating ritual. Nature becomes commodified. An inner world devoid of play goes hand in hand with the perception of an outer world devoid of imagination, flexibility, spontaneity, joy and wonder. In other words, through play, we cleanse the windows of our perception so that we are awake and alive to the world.
I am reminded of the versatile, shapeshifting Greek sea god Proteus — the god as changeable as the sea itself. It was said that Proteus would reveal the future to you, but only if you could catch him before he escaped by changing his form. So I like to wonder — am I quick enough, alive enough, to catch a magical glimpse of what Proteus might reveal? Am I awake enough to recognise and revel in the magical splendour and colour and song that animates the world?
Well, there is play. And then there is deep play. In an essay exploring the book Deep Play by science writer Diane Ackerman, Marginalian author Maria Popova considers those particular forms of play through which we transcend our ordinary lives and enter a rapturous state of ‘clarity, wild enthusiasm, saturation in the moment, and wonder…’
Describing a spontaneous and magical encounter that she herself had of swimming side by side with a majestic sea bird in the ocean, Popova wrote:
‘I found myself awash in awe amid the gentle waves, entranced in what could best be described as a transcendent experience… In this small act ablaze with absolute presence, I felt I had been granted access to something enormous and eternal.’
According to Ackerman, deep play runs deep across the human experience and has acted as a powerful driver of human consciousness and evolution. The Anglo-Saxon and Indo-European origins of the word play, plega or plegan, respectively, suggest risk, competition, fighting and danger, involving competition and tests of one’s ‘skills, cunning or courage.’ Deep play has this element of wildness and danger, and evokes this intense feeling of aliveness that so many of us seem to crave.
Ackerman writes:
Deep play is a fascinating hallmark of being human; it reveals our need to seek a special brand of transcendence, with a passion that makes thrill-seeking explicable, creativity possible, and religion inevitable. Perhaps religion seems an unlikely example of playing, but if you look at religious rites and festivals, you’ll see all the play elements, and also how deep that play can become. Religious rituals usually include dance, worship, music, and decoration. They swallow time. They are ecstatic, absorbing, rejuvenating. The word “prayer” derives from the Latin precarius, and contains the idea of uncertainty and risk. Will the entreaty be answered? Life or death may depend on the outcome.
And:
When one enters the realm of deep play, the sacred playground where only the present moment matters, one’s history and future vanish. One doesn’t remember one’s past, needs, expectations, worries, real or imaginary sins. The deep-play world is fresh, wholly absorbing, and full of its own unique wisdom and demands. Being able to temporarily step outside of normal life—while keeping one’s senses alert — is indeed like being reborn. To erase all memories and yearnings — to be vigorously alive without self-awareness — can provide a brief return to innocence.
Storytelling, too, can offer these moments of absorbing transcendence. Glimpsing the world through the eyes of a child, we are brought back to our own childlike innocence. Or we may become thrilled and enraptured by vivid imaginings of an eagle soaring in flight, or a hair-raising moment of fear. In our imaginations, we can play in this realm of uncertainty and danger, shivering with fear or delight, with all the thrills and chills of uncertainty and danger, without having to actually risk our lives.
Living out multiple scenarios in our imaginations, and seeing the world through the eyes of other people or story characters, we enlarge our world, play with imaginative possibilities we might otherwise not dare to dream, and build our capacities for empathy and connection, insight and understanding. Oh the beauty of stories as imaginative play!
This week, I am appreciating all the gifts that rich, juicy, transcendent play brings to my life. I am curious to explore new ways of playing, and to become a sharper of observer of what happens inside of me when I have a good bout of play. Having designated September the month of play, I’m excited to experience and discover more about the joys of play.
I hope you will join me!
With love,
Megan
Do you need more play in your life? Why not book a one-on-one session with me? We’ll explore how you can tap your own life stories of play and infuse more playfulness — and all the good things that come with that — into your life! I am offering three free calls this month for adventurous souls who want to get into their play groove! Email me at megan.lindow@gmail.com or simply reply to this message to sign up and give it a try!
You can also work one-on-one with me for a deeper exploration of your own stories, or for support on your own creative projects. Get in touch to find out more!
Thanks to Austin Kleon for this wonderful tip!