Adults don’t play freely. Why is that?
My yoga teacher is back from 6 weeks in India and she’s sharing stories from her trip. Today was about play — one of my all-time favorite things to talk about.
In India she led a group of US yoga students on a two-week trip of yoga, service, and spiritual sightseeing. One afternoon the group went to Gokul, a small village revered in the Bhakti tradition of yoga as the birthplace and childhood home of Krishna.
Dusty boy
One story has Krishna rolling in the dust as a toddler. Another tells of Krishna actually eating the dust! His mother — like any mother of any small child — demands that he come and show her what was in his mouth. And like any recalcitrant toddler, Krishna refuses her, clamping his mouth shut tight. Again she demands to see. He finally obeys, coming over and opening his mouth for his mother. She looks, and in his mouth she sees the entire universe. A pretty good indicator that this was not a typical child!
So the dust in this village is considered sacred. It’s also silky soft. People come from all over India to roll in this dust — releasing themselves in homage to Krishna, experiencing the divine through play in an intimate, tangible mixing with the very earth of the sacred place.
Your turn!
My teacher took her group of American yoga students to Gokul as part of their spiritual journey. She shared the stories, and then she invited them to roll around in the dust.
You can imagine their reaction. Lovely, naive, open soul that she is, she had expected them to abandon themselves and start rolling around. I know I would have. But no. She looked out at stiff figures, retracted expressions. People pulled back without actually stepping away, arms crossed over protected bodies.
No one was getting down on that ground.
No one wanted to be the first one to start. (And yes, she had warned them that they would get dirty that day. So it wasn’t just about their clothes.)
Really — try it! You’ll like it!
Undaunted, my teacher cajoled them to try it. She got down on the ground and started rolling around to show them what she meant. Still no one joined her. She started to despair that the lessons of the day were not going to be learned, and that the trip was wasted.
And then — a large group of Indian women arrived to worship.
Magic, unleashed
Sitting in our quiet, sparkling clean yoga studio this morning my teacher described how the Indian women threw themselves onto the ground at Gokul, shrieking with laughter, rolling around the ground like crazy children. They rolled into the American group with such fervour that the sightseeing yoga students had to step back to avoid being knocked down.
And then these women, full of joy in worship and community, reached out and literally pulled the yoga students in. They clasped hands and whirled in circles until they fell over. They held hands and jumped up and down like little kids. And yes, they rolled on the ground. Laughing til their stomaches hurt, they rolled and bathed in the sacred dust of Gokul. Inhibitions and doubts cast aside. Lesson learned after all.
Why is so hard for adults to play?
Why do we feel so inhibited?
How can playing be this hard?
People talk about ‘letting your hair down’ or ‘letting go’. But have you ever watched a group of adults confronted with the opportunity to play?
It looks more like they’re putting something on than letting go of it. Some kind of unfamiliar garment — one that doesn’t even fit very well.
Playing seems almost beyond most adults.
I’ve seen this repeatedly in my undergraduate courses. Just getting them to talk is hard enough. In every single class I ask my students to talk to each other and work together. It’s always awkward at the start of the semester. They’re uncomfortable with it at first (and some, even until the end of the semester). They’re not confident voicing their opinion, or asking each other questions. But they do it.
Yet even this experience didn’t prepare me for the complete failure of playing.
Playing, in college?
I was teaching a class called — wait for it — Play, Creativity and Imagination. Yes. That’s a real class. With theory and research, and assignments and exams, and everything.
I figured that students who signed up for a class like that might be, well, a little less inhibited. More playful.
Now it’s your turn!
My first time teaching the class I brought in a ton of my kids’ toys to demonstrate what the assigned reading had been about. I distributed tubs of toys around to the groups and invited students to dive in.
Awkward silence in the classroom. Silly, naive, open soul that I am, I had expected them to abandon themselves and start playing with the toys.
No one was getting toys out of the bins.
No one wanted to be the first one to start.
Go on, give it it a try!
Undaunted, I cajoled them to try it. I grabbed a couple of toys and started playing with them to show them what I meant. I started to worry that the lessons of the day were not going to be learned, and that the activity was a bust.
Slowly. Painfully slowly. The undergrads in my Play & Creativity class started taking toys out of the tubs and looking at them. Most of them just talked about what the toys were. Or whether they’d had something like it as a kid. A couple of students pretended to make the toy talk. Only one student warmed up enough to set up a little scene with the toys and move them around.
I could tell you that this lone student had blue hair. That might suggest she was non-conforming enough to risk standing out. But that’s actually not what mattered.
What mattered was who among us had had imaginary friends as a child. Only two people in the room. Want to guess who they were? (I’ll give you a second….)
Yep. Blue hair, and me.
Ice broken
My students found that surprising, and kind of intriguing. It gave us the in we needed, and we dug into the reading (Kidd, Rogers & Rogers, 2010, Psychological Reports). My students learned that having had an imaginary friend as a kid is correlated with being more creative as an adult, and is also correlated with two personality traits associated with creativity:
1) a tendency to become immersed in what you’re doing (Absorption)
2) a tendency to prefer working hard on challenging projects (Achievement) They talked about being more willing to try the activities I brought in next time.
Why are adults so bad at playing?
The study explains the readiness of the two of us to dive into playing — we had immersed ourselves as children in fantasy-land. But what about the rest of the class? Really — why is it so hard for adults to play?
When I was teaching I had thought that it was simply the self-consciousness of young adulthood. Not that far removed from their teenage years and high school, I chalked it up to my students not wanting to look foolish in front of their peers.
Hearing about how the adults on this yoga tour of India had resisted the call to play, I found myself revisiting this question. Why do adults find it so hard to play freely?
What are we so worried about? What do we think we have to lose?
Maybe we should be asking ourselves instead — What do we have to learn?
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