Our society tends to dismiss play for adults. Play is perceived as unproductive, petty or even a guilty pleasure. Eberle, Ph. Play is art, books, movies, music, comedy, flirting and daydreaming, writes Dr. Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play. Brown has spent decades studying the power of play in everyone from prisoners to businesspeople to artists to Nobel Prize winners. For instance, he found that lack of play was just as important as other factors in predicting criminal behavior among murderers in Texas prisons.
Make friends with your inner critic
Borrow your memories
HelpGuide uses cookies to improve your experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. Privacy Policy. In our hectic, modern lives, many of us focus so heavily on work and family commitments that we never seem to have time for pure fun. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we stopped playing. But play is not just essential for kids; it can be an important source of relaxation and stimulation for adults as well. Playing with your romantic partner, friends, co-workers, pets, and children is a sure and fun way to fuel your imagination, creativity, problem-solving abilities, and emotional well-being. Adult play is a time to forget about work and commitments, and to be social in an unstructured, creative way. Play could be simply goofing off with friends, sharing jokes with a coworker, throwing a frisbee on the beach, dressing up on Halloween with your kids, building a snowman in the yard, playing fetch with a dog, acting out charades at a party, or going for a bike ride with your spouse with no destination in mind. By giving yourself permission to play with the joyful abandon of childhood, you can reap oodles of health benefits throughout life.
The importance of adult play
Get wild and learn all about the value of playtime at Wellspring this October—or ignite your inner child at a Wanderlust this fall. For Wellspring information click here ; for more on Wanderlust click here. Tickets available now! We all love hearing the cackling, giggling, and uninhibited screams of joy from children who are out and about playing. Seeing children play is a joyous moment in itself—we are often brought back to a simpler time, when life was about having fun and enjoying ourselves. Play allows us to learn how to be creative and helps nurture critical thinking, personality development, and adaptive pathways for us in childhood.
Most parents know about the importance of play for their children to develop essential life skills. But did you know about the importance of play for grown-ups, too? When you think of the word play, you probably imagine a group of children running around, chasing a colorful ball as they laugh and cheer. Play can be defined simply as engaging in activity for pure enjoyment and recreation. Soccer star David Beckham credited Lego toys for saving his life, saying that they served as therapy for a brain injury he sustained after a jet crash. Barack Obama said he enjoyed playing basketball or golf as a way to relax. It can fuel your creativity, emotional wellbeing and ability to problem solve. As Dr. Gray puts it, play is by definition creative and innovative.
