Play: What Are The Benefits & Why We Should Do It More

From boosting creativity to relieving stress, play can have many health benefits; so why do we view it as a frivolous use of time? Today we talk about the benefits of play and why we should do it more frequently.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

My name is Sean White and I am a certified health coach specializing in lifestyle medicine.

Today,

I would like to speak with you about the topic of play.

What is play?

What is the benefits of playing?

And why don't we play more often?

To begin,

Let's start with a textbook definition of what play is.

And that would be to engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.

That is very open and very vague.

So let's narrow that definition a little bit more by discussing different types of play.

And we can begin with the very obvious ones.

Playing sports,

Playing musical instruments,

Playing a game,

Whether it be a video game or board game or a puzzle.

But we can expand upon this a little bit more and think of different things like dancing or singing or riding a bike,

Maybe going hiking.

These are all different things that we can do for enjoyment and recreation that can be considered to be play.

We can also add in a couple of things that might be a little bit more cerebral.

Reading a book,

Reading poetry,

Cooking.

These are all things that we can just do for enjoyment and they don't necessarily need to have a practical purpose for them.

So there's a lot of different things that can fall under the umbrella of play.

So that's why I want you to really start thinking about this as we're going through this lecture today.

So I want to begin by talking about play and the benefits of it for children.

Because as children,

We didn't really have a lot in the way of responsibilities.

We had schoolwork,

Maybe we had chores as we got older,

Maybe we started getting jobs.

But when we're much younger,

Really the one thing that we have to do is to play.

And if you really stop and think about it,

Play is probably one of the most important things foundationally for a child.

This is where a lot of our cognitive growth comes from.

This is where we start learning about a lot of different things and learning about ourselves as well.

So this is really,

Really important for the development of a child.

The first benefit that I'm going to talk about,

Though,

Is building imagination and creativity.

To play,

You have to think of things.

You have to be creative.

I was a huge fan of Star Wars when I was a child and I had all of my Star Wars action figures.

And those are great,

But they're inanimate objects.

And it comes down to you to create the world that those things live in.

So you need to build that.

So if you're playing with dolls or you're playing with action figures or remote control cars,

All this stuff,

You need to have that creativity.

You need to have that imagination to build worlds that you're playing in.

And that can create a greater sense of independence,

Because as you're playing,

Nobody's telling you what to do.

Usually,

Adults aren't saying play this way,

But you have to do this.

Play time is a little bit of your own time and it enables you to do things in your own way.

So that is great for developing a little bit more independence.

But if you're playing with someone,

With your friends,

Or if you're playing in a team sport or something,

It also facilitates group interaction.

You need to learn how to deal with other people,

Deal with different personalities.

And that's a very big thing at an early age to start learning how to do that.

If you're a child that just spends a lot of time alone,

You might develop a little social awkwardness as you get older,

Because you're not used to having those interactions.

So these are big things.

There's also a lot of reaping the benefits of emotional and behavioral benefits,

Learning different things,

Learning how to express yourself through playing and doing different things,

Learning how to be a gracious winner and not being a sore loser.

There's all these different aspects of play.

When you stop and think about it,

There's a lot of complexity to it.

And there's also the very obvious promotion of physical fitness.

If you're doing different types of play that requires being a little bit more athletic or being a little bit more physical,

Whether it be playing sports,

Whether it be riding bikes or skateboards or anything like that,

Hopefully it's something that you do when you're younger and you carry through with it into your adulthood.

And then this way you continue to do it.

I have never stopped riding a bike.

I used to ride my bike as a child and that was my primary mode of transportation.

And 45 years later,

Probably since I started riding a bike,

I still continue to ride a bike.

So hopefully the things that you do when you're younger,

You continue to do them as you get older and you kind of promote that physical fitness aspect of play.

So this is why it's very important for children to get out and play and to do things.

So why as adults do we not play as often as we should?

Why don't we play more?

And the number one answer and the one that I hear from most people is that there's just not enough time to do that.

There's no time to play.

We have to go grocery shopping.

We have to pick up the kids.

We have to go to work.

We have to do laundry.

There's always something that we need to be doing.

And therefore it never takes priority in our lives because it may just seem frivolous,

Right?

Like why am I going to spend my time doing this when there's all these other things that need to get done?

We don't put ourselves first.

We don't put that priority.

We don't think of the benefits.

So it just kind of gets pushed to the side.

There could also be an aspect of feeling embarrassed by doing something,

Right?

A lot of the topics that we spoke of before,

Whether it be playing a sport that you're not good at or dancing or singing and you may not be good at these things.

And so you don't want to do them because you don't want to have these feelings of embarrassment.

You don't want to feel like people might be judging you for not being good at doing something.

So instead you just kind of retreat and say,

You know what?

I'm not going to do that at all.

And other times we might just have physical limitations,

Things that are preventing us from being able to do something that we enjoy,

Right?

Particularly as we get older and we may not be able to physically do something.

You may have enjoyed mountain climbing as you know,

In your younger years and your body just can't handle it at this point or playing any sport for that matter.

There's a lot of people that try to go back to doing a sport that they used to do when they were younger and they stopped for a long time.

And you can suffer injuries.

It's like,

I haven't played football in probably about 20 years.

Do I think I can go out and run and be a wide receiver and do all the things I used to do?

Probably not.

Could I work myself back up into it?

Sure.

But like right now I can't.

So I have that physical limitation.

So these are things that we need to think about as we start moving forward.

So what would be the benefits for adults?

We've already spoke about the benefits for children.

And one of the major benefits is to relieve stress.

Right?

We have a lot of worries and stress and anxieties in life.

And sometimes we just need to do something purely for enjoyment and recreation,

You know,

And not just watch TV.

And we can view like watching TV as something that we do for enjoyment recreation,

But we're not active participants in that.

So when we're talking about play,

We're being an active participant in the thing that we're doing.

So relieving stress is a huge thing.

You know,

We really want to work at stress management in our lives across all boards and play is definitely a good way of doing that.

So it will also help us improve our brain function.

Right?

And if we're playing games and we're forced to think of things in different ways and you know,

How am I going to get through this or how am I going to do this particular thing?

It stimulates the mind and can boost our creativity as well.

We talked about it with children,

But it can definitely boost our own creativity and improve our own brain function.

Also playing just kind of keeps you feeling younger and feeling a little bit more energetic.

Right?

It's like,

How often do you do something silly and fun?

And then all of a sudden you just feel so much better.

You feel younger,

You feel more alive.

And these are great things.

Right?

So this is why having a little bit more play in our lives can be very beneficial because there's a,

We did a whole lecture recently on aging and talking about the benefits of feeling younger than your age as opposed to feeling older than your age.

So playing is going to help you feel younger than your age.

So that's going to be very,

Very beneficial for us.

And much like we said with children you know,

With the facilitating group interaction,

Playing for adults also teaches us to cooperate with others.

Right?

We have to,

We have to deal with the rules of the games.

We need to understand how somebody else is feeling while something's going on.

This helps us develop and improve our social skills.

As we're doing activities with other people,

We just have to be cognizant of them as well.

And this can also improve our relationships and you know,

Improve our connections to others as well.

As you're doing things together,

There's a bonding aspect that goes on.

And in certain cases,

I will also say playing can kind of help to heal some emotional wounds.

Right?

There's different things that we can do.

There's different aspects of what we would consider play that can be very beneficial from a therapeutic point of view.

There's a lot of,

There's a lot of charities that I know of that use art as therapy.

And I do that myself as well.

I love painting as my release.

If I'm feeling things,

I can kind of work through them while I'm painting or writing or something along those lines.

So there's a lot of different,

You know,

Aspects of things,

You know,

That can go on like during play and a lot of benefits.

So I also feel like there's a lot of benefits for playing at work.

And this becomes kind of one of those topics of,

Well,

I can't play at work.

Like that work is work and play is play.

Right?

We can't do frivolous things at work.

This goes back to that whole like,

Why don't we play more?

Because it seems frivolous.

Right?

But if you play at work,

You can start building those relationships that we were talking about before.

It can be a very like,

You know,

Bonding experience.

It really encourages teamwork in a lot of ways,

Which if you've ever done a any sort of team building exercises,

Usually there's some sort of fun activity that they get people to do,

Because then you see how everybody works.

Right?

You see who's the person who takes charge,

Who sits back.

You build this camaraderie.

Right?

But if you're used to kind of being a little bit more loose and a little bit more fun,

This can help you be a little bit more functional during stressful times.

Right?

Because you can just kind of have a little bit more of a release.

It'll refresh your mind and body a little bit more,

Might increase your energy and prevent burnout.

Because this is,

This is what happens when people get stressed out.

Everything just kind of,

You know,

Keeps building and building and building.

You need to have that release.

You need to have that little bit of enjoyment and recreation to let that go.

You know,

A little pressure valve for the,

For the stress levels.

But also if you can kind of play around,

This can also help trigger creativity and innovation in problem solving.

You know,

You might be able to see your problems in,

In,

In different ways.

And how can we attach,

You know,

Attack this from a different perspective?

You know,

There's,

There had been this very big boom,

Like say with like the,

Like the text boom and like all like these startups where they started creating more looser work environments.

Just for that reason,

Just so you're not overwhelmed all the time.

If we need to figure out how to,

You know,

Tackle this problem,

Problem,

Why can't we do it while playing ping pong?

Right?

We can still discuss things,

But it's a little bit more fun.

So these are the different things that can be very beneficial for us,

You know,

At our work environment.

So how do we create more play opportunities in our lives?

Well,

There's certain things that we can do very easily,

Like,

You know,

Hosting a regular game night.

I know,

I know friends of mine that have every Friday night,

They,

They,

They get together and play,

You know,

And play poker and you can also arrange nights out with friends and colleagues.

Right.

And,

And I know during a pandemic and lockdown doing that virtually became a big thing as well.

A lot of trivia based,

You know,

Games that you can play with people across,

Across online platforms.

So that's a lot of fun.

You know,

Something like doing karaoke,

Right?

Doing an escape room.

I think escape rooms are great because that's really like problem solving and,

And,

And learning how to work together.

But there's also different things that we can do,

Like getting outside,

Going out for hikes,

You know,

Schedule time to be in a park and be in nature,

Right?

Go bike riding.

If you like skateboarding,

Go skateboarding.

If you have a pet,

Take your dog for you know,

For a walk,

You know,

Play with your pets,

Play with your children.

If you have children,

Try different playful hobbies,

Right?

We've,

We've listed a few different things.

You know,

Different types of play.

None of them have to be serious.

I paint a lot.

I don't try to be a serious painter.

You know,

I play guitar.

I don't try to be an amazing guitarist.

I do these things for fun and for recreation.

So if there's a hobby that you've always thought about,

Just go ahead and do it.

It doesn't have to be this big,

Serious thing in your life.

It can just be something that you do for enjoyment and you know,

To pass some time.

I'd also say if you surround yourself with playful people,

That makes it a little bit easier for you to get into that mindset as well.

I think if you're around very stuffy individuals who don't like to get out and play,

Then you know,

You might fall into that same kind of mindset as well.

So sometimes just being around playful people can definitely help.

And I hope this has given you a lot to think about.

Hopefully you'll get outside.

You know,

The weather's getting nicer now here in the northeast of the United States of America.

So summer's coming up.

You know,

We want to get outside.

We want to do more.

I want to go.

I want to go paddle boarding and kayaking and swimming and all that,

That other fun stuff.

So hopefully you'll do the same.

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So until we speak again,

Be well,

Be safe,

And please be kind to everybody.