I’m talking about play.

It’s an innocent, childlike, often overlooked magic weapon.

When you’re continually stressed out, your body is producing a lot of hormones and neurotransmitters associated with the fight or flight response.  Lots of things happen as a result – you get muscle tension, increased heart rate and blood pressure, shallow breathing, less blood flow throughout your body, digestion slows to a crawl, your body stores fat more easily, your metabolism slows down, and many of the biochemical processes in your body are in breakdown mode.  No healing happens, no recovery happens, and you begin to feel muscle fatigue and pain, overall exhaustion, and your immune function plummets.

When you are playing, it is quite the opposite.  A playful energy energizes and relaxes your body, allowing it to shift into the rest and digest response, fight or flight’s fraternal twin.  In rest and digest, your body is deluged with healing processes and everything takes time to repair, regenerate, and recover.  Your metabolism speeds up, your digestion speeds up, everything becomes more efficient, and you feel better.

Emotional work, thought work, mind-body work, and all those other things I talk about are all vital to your health.  But play deserves its own spot, front and center, as one of the most critical elements of healing.

Sometimes we have to do a lot of emotion and thought work to get to a play space, but once we’re there, it’s time to play like kids.  Literally.  Find a kid and study their play patterns.  Notice how they abandon themselves entirely to play.  Watch how they could care less about outcomes – it’s the actual process of play that brings them to life.  Delight in their vibrant good health as they play.

Then, bring play back into your life.  It’s much more valuable than we realize, so I’m banking on the experience, the feeling, the life energy flowing through you as you play to convince you that it is just as important (in fact, more so) than work.

This week, just ask yourself the following question to begin moving toward more play:

What feels or sounds like play to me?

Keep adding to this list all week long until you’ve got a page full, at least.  Then challenge yourself to come up with two more.  I’m serious about play!