Play as a Gateway to Deeper Resilience

For the past 8 months, I’ve been dreaming about, brainstorming, and planning, in detail, the program that would become a weeklong summer gathering for an intentional community in western Washington. This workshop retreat would bring together a group of committed adults eager to improve themselves, deepen their relationships and explore ways to address the adversities we’re facing today. The topic for the week: Resilience, Resistance and Regeneration: Standing Strong in Times of Stress. 

My initial plan was to lean on my foundational 5-step framework for building personal resilience and weave the topics of resistance and regeneration throughout the week:

1. Noticing & Naming

2. Accepting & Allowing

3. Seeking Help & Building Community

4. Practice

5. Rest & Repeat
   

But this left me with a quandary. Since I normally address play and joy as opportunities to weave into our practices, this would mean we wouldn’t address these more lighthearted topics until late in the week - after exploring the first three steps. But something felt off with that plan, so I decided to mix it up a bit, and let my inner structuralist suffer a bit.

We started slowly, integrating playful facilitation into our first session on resilience with a bean-bag squid. Laughter came quickly, squid flying through the air, before sliding into camp chairs on the smooth wooden floor. Supportive cheers became the norm. 

Playing “What are you doing” in the shade of the tree

We dove more deeply that afternoon, with a whole session dedicated to play, joy & positive psychology. Though initially hesitant, smiles ensued quickly, throughout various stages of Rock, Paper, Scissors: trying to lose, switching hands, playing in teams and championships. People quickly caught on to the permission they’d been given that they didn’t know they needed.

Why play? We explored this, too. I find that it can be helpful - especially for those of us skeptics in the room, and people raised in cultures where ‘play is for kids’ - to understand scientific benefits of play. Improved healing and mental well-being. Increased connection with others. Decreased sense of anxiety and emotional overwhelm. And my newest favorite: Play, joy and creativity are among many results of what is referred to as a positive emotional attractor (PEA). This is a concept developed by Richard Boyatzis referring to a particular mind-body state of positive emotion. Specifically, it involves the activation of our body’s restorative parasympathetic nervous system responses and the default mode network (brain areas active during rest and reflection). When we're in this state, we become more open, creative, and resilient—qualities crucial for effective change and visioning. In order to thrive, Boyatzis asserts that we need PEA in a ratio of 3:1 in any one week, in contrast to Negative Emotional Attractors (NEA), which are characterized by negative emotions and stress responses. Leaning into play, joy and playful states can help us create this balance.

My hope in starting with play was to create a throughline - a running theme and practice that people could look to and lean on whenever they wanted and needed. Coming together to explore resistance and related themes is no easy task. Things come up. Feelings get activated. Opinions get questioned. Relationships get challenged. True play, like resilience, allows us access to a state of flow, where our sense of time and space disappears, and we’re fully present and captivated by the moment. 

I think it worked. When prompted, people became tigers, otters, cats, and eagles, embodying their mood in the communal space. They danced, with the intention to move out of their heads and into their bodies. They did the Kate Winslet, an open stance that can help generate oxytocin. They became seeds, sprouts and trees, in addition to the four elements, to form triads and groups of four. They threw stuffed chickens to one another, in addition to the squid, and explored a sense of rest using natural objects they found.

And on the last day, standing in our circle and harvesting highlights from the week, people returned to the concept of play. They raved about the eight play personalities and how they opened up a sense of grace and understanding for themselves and others. They highlighted how much fun they had throughout the week, with each other, and expressed a deep desire to carry that sense of freedom and joy into their daily lives.

This past week was so powerful for me, as a facilitator – in so many ways, on so many levels. It reminded me to trust what I know to be true. It helped me reflect on the nuances of the human experience. And it validated my understanding that less is more, and space is invaluable. But I keep coming back to that throughline of play, as it continues to affirm what I've long suspected: we build resilient communities not despite our playfulness, but because of it. Play truly is a gateway—not just to joy, but to the deeper work of resilience and transformation itself.