Episode 28: Adult Less, Play More

Summary:

The Heart of the Conversation: In this solo transmission, I am opening a door that many of us accidentally locked years ago: the door to Play. As we move into adulthood, we often trade our curiosity for responsibility and our joy for "toxic productivity". This episode is an exploration of why returning to our inner child isn't just "fun"—it is a biological and emotional necessity for staying young, resilient, and human.

What We Explore Together:

• Loosening the Grip: How play acts as a literal release valve for the physical and mental "tightness" we carry in our bodies and emotions.
• The Chemistry of Joy: Understanding how play triggers the endorphins and "happy hormones" that move us out of a state of anxiety and into a vibrant state of being.
• The Creative Download: Why stepping away from a problem to play is often the quickest way to "latch on" to brilliant ideas and solutions waiting in our consciousness.
• Play as Presence: How engaging in something with no required outcome—like doodling, car karaoke, or making a nature mandala—trains us to be truly present in the moment.

An Invitation for You: I am informing the field that it is time to soften. Whether it’s a five-minute dance break to a bouncy song or smashing Play-Doh just for the sake of it, I invite you to find your "micro-moments" of play today.

You don't stop playing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop playing. Let’s choose to stay young together.

Time Stamps:

• 00:00 Introduction 
• 01:17 The Invitation to Play
• 02:12 Adult Responsibility vs. Play
• 02:55 Play's Impact on Anxiety & Youthfulness
• 04:07 Play as a Release from Tightness
• 05:10 Physical & Mental Loosening through Play
• 06:04 Creative Expression & Healing
• 06:57 Bonding, Energy & Resilience
• 07:49 Play for Burnout & Creativity
• 08:46 Play for Flow & Insight
• 09:45 Practical Tips for Play & Cognitive Benefits
• 10:41 Movement & Physical Play
• 11:31 Play for Overwhelm & Scheduling Fun
• 12:29 Simple Play Ideas
• 15:14 Play as Presence & Overall Life Enhancement
• 16:09 Conclusion

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And we forgot how to have fun. How to just go enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it and not having a reason or an outcome that needs to transpire. Hello and welcome to That's Just Human, a podcast that explores all aspects of being human, living in a human body, and dealing with life's obstacles. I'm your host, Elisha Light Angel, and by day I'm a massage therapist. Right now, I'm a podcaster, and like you, I also happen to live in a human body and I have a plethora of human experiences. This is the space to talk about them, share my wisdom, and highlight other people's stories. If you are just listening and you want to see my face, please hop on over to YouTube. It helps out that algorithm over there. So I am excited about our little topic today. It is all about play, playing, having fun, inviting more play into your life. Yes, that is what we are going to be discussing. So some of you might be a little bit too serious about life. And I would like to give you the invitation to invite more play, to let your inner child out, to simply have fun for the sake of having fun with no reasons behind it, and to allow all of the everyday stressors of life to just fade to the background while you put your wholeness into simply releasing that inner child and having fun, nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no destination, no stress. So play is actually a lot more pivotal, I would say, than we think it is. Usually, you know, you're seeing kids, they're on a playground, they're making up little imagination games, all sorts of different ways to play. And the older we get, especially I think getting into those teenage years when you're really itching to be an adult and then you become an adult, and someday it dawns on you that being an adult means you have to be really responsible for this thing and that thing. It just means more responsibility, right? So I don't know what your life journey has been like, but mine has had a lot of challenges, a lot of things that have caused me stress, and before I had tools and techniques to reframe either the way I thought about stuff or the way that I was handling things or responding to situations, I was definitely stuck in a much more heightened anxiety place. And when you live in a place of anxiety, it's really hard to drop into play because your nervous system, your vagus nerve that controls your fight, flight, freeze, fawn response is pretty much just on the whole time. There's no there's no off button for it. And you really need to be in a calmer place to allow yourself the space to just let go, embrace that inner child, and do whatever it is that you find to be playful or fun. So it can keep you younger. Like if you're a child at heart, then internally you're going to feel younger, which may show externally, especially in the way that you're living your life, doing your activities, and interacting with other people. To quote George Bernard Sha George Bernard Shaw, a playwright, he said, We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. We stop at some point because we got so focused on the things that we think that we need to do or the things that we think we need to be responsible for. And we forgot how to have fun, how to just go enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it and not having a reason or an outcome that needs to transpire. This causes a tightness, a tightness in your emotions, and a tightness in the way that you're mentally processing, a tightness in your physical body as you're actually clenching your muscles, and then they remain in this holding position. So to play is literally to loosen the grip of this tightness in all aspects of your being. You loosen the grip on those muscles, allowing them to just become a little bit more wiggly, a little bit more jellified, going with the flow. You loosen the grip on the thoughts in your mind or what you think you need to do. You loosen the grip on your emotions and just allow them to soar into the moment. Play does a lot for us. It when you're out there playing, it will relieve stress by triggering endorphins, which are your happy hormones. That's like your oxytocin and your serotonin. They get pumping in there, you start feeling really good. So anything that you can do that is going to give you some of those happy chemicals is going to give you a more vibrant state of being. You feel happier internally. And so I'm all for going out and finding those things that give you some of those endorphins so you can keep creating the life that you desire to have and want to create for yourself. It also helps to heal emotional wounds when you use it through creative expression. So a lot of people that do art will pour a lot of their emotions into whatever that art is that they are creating as a process to work through. Something that you can have fun with. I'm sure there's a bunch of other things, but I'm not familiar with everything on the face of this planet, and we probably don't got all day for all that anyway. It also helps to build bonds by encouraging cooperation and communication with other people. So when you're playing not just by yourself, but with another person in a group dynamic, or maybe you even have some kind of little team sport or something going on, then you have to communicate with the other people, you have to cooperate, you have to get along if you're going to be a team so that you play together and then you're having fun with other people. It also helps to boost your energy, it keeps you young, it builds resilience. It it really does. I think just looking at my own life, anytime I'm feeling more playful, it does feel very energizing. It feels like I can do more. And so if I'm feeling myself working toward burnout, or maybe I'm just in general working too hard, that's when I take it as a sign to step back and invite some aspect of play into my life, and then that way I can go ahead and soften and then energize, right? Play will also increase your creativity and your problem solving. So if maybe you have a job where you need some creativity or some kind of problem solving, maybe you're running into a wall, maybe you're just a creative and you are having one of those moments where it's not happening or it's not coming to you, then this is the point where you want to stop, find something you enjoy doing again, play. It's releasing your mind from having to think of all these different ways that something could happen, and then allowing things to flow. I really think there's like this bubble of consciousness. It's the best way I can kind of think about it to describe, but this consciousness isn't just something that you have or that I have that makes us a conscious being. I feel like it is more etheric than that. It is something that we can latch on to. So within the vastness of the consciousness, there are ideas and thoughts and problem-solving solutions waiting to enter or download into our brains, but it will happen more effectively when you become playful, when you get into that state of joy and ease and flow and play, then all of these brilliant ideas. That's that's your light bulb moment. And so when you're at a block and you need that light bulb moment, let go, do nothing, cancel your plans, just go have fun, go run around, whatever it is that you do, and you can help to improve that for yourself. Um, playing, believe it or not, actually helps to improve your brain function, it helps reduce memory loss. So it's again letting letting go and then just allowing your brain to have a little bit of space. Some people might go to meditation to try and find that space, but you can equally find that in playing and just releasing. So not everything has to be one way. Whenever you're playing, a lot of times you're gonna be moving your body in ways that feel beneficial. So I am not I'm not like a um, what is it called? Oh, a gym rat. Definitely not one of those. I don't particularly enjoy working out, although I like um taking some classes that seem more fun. So if it's got more of a dance vibe like Zumba or something to that effect, or um, I do enjoy some yoga classes, not all of them. It has to be something that feels fun for me. And if there's plenty of movement that you can do, has nothing to do with the gym, not even with other people that you that will get your body moving, which is good for your body, good to clear toxins out in your system, and keeping your body young, keeping your body strong. And it's if you want to live into older age and still be a functioning being, then you need to keep yourself strong and moving and limber. And again, we stay younger when we invite play into our lives. It also helps to reduce the overwhelm. It encourages us to take a break from any toxic productivity that we get ourselves in a loop on. So just having that break. I would encourage you to even schedule playtime in if you're on a really tight schedule. Um, I know we all have different ways and fluidity in which we are able to live our lives. I currently am in a season of life where I have to schedule everything, so I actually put in time that I expect to play, but I also invite little moments throughout my day. So how do that looks for me, for instance, is um a song that I find a little bouncy and I choose to dance to it, and I'm having fun. Or maybe I'm just blasting the song out my lungs, singing as loud as I can because that's fun. So those are just like micro micro minutes, mo moments, whatever you want to call them, of inviting play in through the day. So play just enhances your entire overall well-being, it enhances your life, it helps you reduce the amount of stress that you're in, and so it's good to go do it. So here's a few ideas that you could do for play. You could like take five minutes and just doodle if you want, you don't have to be an artist to draw something, to paint something, to make something with your hands. It doesn't matter as long as you're having fun. Um, think about when you're a kid like uh Play-Doh. You're not trying to make anything specific, and if you are, then you just go splat, smash it, put it back into that Play-Doh can. This is that that same concept of just taking something and doing it for the sake of doing it with no need for it to go anywhere. And then, like a child, just destroying afterwards. Whatever, whatever, who cares? It's fine. We'll just make something else, and that's the beauty of it. The beauty to be creative, the beauty to just have fun in that moment. You can um you can take your own dance breaks while you're in your car. You know what? You want to make somebody's day, be that person at a stoplight, dancing in your car and getting down with whatever awesome music you have going on. The other person looks over at you and they start to smile. You just made their day. Here's this person vibing in their car. I do it all the time, guys. I'm telling you, I will be at stoplights just jamming out, and I'll see the people next to me, and they, you know, are giving me thumbs up or whatever. It makes somebody's day when you're having a good time. And maybe you help them to have a good time. You could do car karaoke whenever you're driving, especially if it's a long road trip. Um, you can color. You could write like maybe a little 500-word story or something if you enjoy writing or just getting creative. Um, you can make mandalas, not just coloring, but you can go outside and get all sorts of different little artifacts, rocks and sticks and leaves and whatever you find on the ground, and you can make a whole little nature mandala of it. It's gonna go away, but it's the fun is in that creating of it and being present in that moment. Read a chapter of a book at lunch, that could be considered play. It's something that's taking your mind to another space. So you could play games, um, you could do different sports. I do think for some people, even working out is a form of play for them. So if that is your form of play, then you can go do that too. As I wrap up on play and encouraging you to find play throughout your day, work it into your life often, as often as you can. It just makes life more fun. I mean, there's enough stressors, just do things that are fun, right? If you play, it can help heal pieces of you that maybe you didn't even know that you needed healed. When you play, you're doing work by not doing work. You're simply being, you're embracing who you are, you're stepping into this moment, you're learning how to be present. How cool is that? And I can't, again, I liken this to meditation because meditation a lot of times is to work you out of those thought loops in your head or to be more aware, to become more present, to be more mindful. There's a lot of different reasons one could meditate, but you can achieve a lot of those same benefits when you invite play into your day. So as you embrace your humanness, be kind, be you, and remember everything is part of the journey.