The Joy in Play
the practice:
Playfulness is a quality the yoga practice teaches us is an inherent part of who we are, though we also recognize is a part of us we tend to forget about as we grow. As we grow, our innately playful spirit becomes overshadowed by ego, rules and life making it far too easy to take things seriously as we go about carving out our maturing and evolving paths. The need to do things and the need to do things well enough to achieve and succeed culture such a dominating ritual that it bends our perspectives to only see fun and joy as only existing in certain situations and only allowed in certain ways or at certain times.
When we were much younger it was recess or after-school when we could play with our friends, pull our heads out of our books and connect to things with less rigidity. Later on, in my memory, it is connected to bigger ideas like vacations or bigger school breaks, field trips. Maybe play was found through an outlet like sports or art, games, social and community activities. Play time was time to connect and explore what was possible through that play. Anything is possible in that time and in that space and with that quality blanketed over.
Somehow over time, it can feel like there is less and less play and more and more work and obligation. And perhaps on the surface those notions mostly ring true. But the yoga practice teaches us through it’s philosophy that the concept of play and the quality of playfulness is within us already. We just tend to forget. And our tendency to forget is linked to our forgetting to stay connected to it within ourselves. The place within that harbors the quality of seriousness- hardening and adding weight to our life by creating a border of strict sincerity around it and most things is the same place that harbors our playfulness. That place, what we believe to be our hearts, has the same potential and capacity to be light-hearted.
The energy of lightheartedness is airy and light. It is the quality of Nature that manifests and creates. The part of us that absorbs and connects us to what is going on more flexibly because we are being more cohesive with what is around us. Whether the experience or circumstance is what we think of as fun or play, we get more out of it. Simply because we are engaging with a positive attitude. We learn through play more easily than we learn through hard-fenced barriers. It is like the difference between a playground and a cage. Our practice is remembering and holding on to the inner child that lives in all of our hearts, that sees the world like a big playground- eager to participate and ready to find out what everything has to offer. Our inner child reminds us keep it light. To try things, to wonder, to see what happens, and to explore boundaries.
Divine Play, or the concept of Lila in Sanskrit, is the sacred act that we are all both byproducts and co-creators of. The spiritual act and the spiritual nature of interaction for the sake of experience and finding joy and pleasure from experience in its purest form. Circumstance aside. This play, this cosmic dance, between all the different elements and parts, is happening at all times within us and around us at all times. Play is the act of energy coming together sparking the delightful gift of life.
Truthfully, taking this seriously is a rite of passage that we all partake in in one way or another as we evolve. The level at which we connect to our sincerity varies.
And I dare ask the question to myself and to my students- to you the reader:
When we start to take things seriously, to what end? And when it gets so serious that we are losing out on the enjoyment, then what for?
Can we be so serious that we tighten our muscles, clench our jaws, furrow our brows in places where none of those actions are needed? Yes.
Maybe we find good, valid answers to those questions. Justification for being so serious that we no longer enjoy the poses, the practice, the process, the experience, our time here. After all not everything is inherently fun. Nor does everything feel playful. But can we guide our experiences through the channel of our heart which carries them on a higher plane than the limits of our mind and the conditions of our body? Can we find the play in all things as energy collides and interacts? Our practice teaches us that becoming aware of the playfulness within ourselves and all things leads us back to the childlike attitude of light-heartedness at the core of our being. We strengthen our ability to stay more easy-going, curious, and joyful. We are here, conscious and capable, with a pumping heart and bodies full of vital energy to experience ourselves and experience through interplay with our outer world. We play and learn. We play and connect. We play and remember that it’s not all that serious.
On the mat:
Our asana practice is already a play in and of itself. A way in which we move that is, or can be, less conventional than what we do with our bodies throughout the day. Wiggling in and exploring and testing the boundaries of our bodies by connecting ourselves to different shapes, activating muscles to produce a certain result, connecting to our breath and experiencing it dance its way in and out to provide the vital energy needed for us to live.
This week’s practice has been a further exploration of the ways in which we can move and even coloring outside of the lines a bit. Reverting back to a more child-like way of practicing. Encouraging an openness that moves the practice onto a playground where we can be like kids again. Who cares about whether or not we know how to do a pose, let’s play with it! Let’s play in it! Not sure if we can do something? Why not try and find out?
Awareness of Lila is a call to our innate joyful spirits, ready to embrace life and connect with it’s dynamic power. Like a child looking to get the most out of every activity and every experience and everything on the playground, we remember that through play we find ourselves immersed in our experience of being and seeking the most out of it. We know this experience. We know this feeling. The feeling of being so full of wanting and readiness. Present and eager. A truly boundless experience from which the exploration pours itself out of freely. There is less thought, forethought, afterthought. The weight is off of the activity’s shoulders which means a less stress for us and our experience.
When we align our experience of being from an attitude of playfulness and connect to Divine Play, we encourage the mind and the muscles to relax which allow a natural flow of energy to seep into and out of everything we do. It becomes a fluid dance, a fun experiment or a delightful wonder.
And maybe, hopefully, we find ourselves a little more amused or a little more delighted as we move in our bodies and experiment with different postures.
Maybe we find ourselves having more fun along the way.
This is our practice.