Dianne Gammage - Playful awakening: releasing the gift of play in your life

Playful Awakening

Releasing the Gift of Play in Your Life

Di Gammage

Foreword by Stuart Brown, MD

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

Contents

Foreword

PLAY Who are we without it?

The reason we play is simply because it is fun and pleasurable to engage in. It makes us feel connected to LIFE, otherwise we would not do it.

What does it mean to live completely within our human capacities? And how can we most effectively embrace and achieve fulfilment as we identify and activate those capacities?

Read this book carefully, and in the process gain access to paths toward fulfilment through play that often otherwise are elusive.

So Di Gammage, in her comprehensive look at PLAY in these pages, shown through her lifetime lenses of clinical exposure, is able to place play in its broadest contexts. And in this process, the reader can begin to appreciate its richness and life-affirming reality. Through direct observation and prodigious scholarship, the mosaic of play that unites the spiritual, psychological and biological is presented.

Play is a deeply embedded survival drive that needs to be understood, appreciated and enacted throughout our lives. What is often missed about play and is addressed clearly here are its healing qualities and its place in the remediation of children dispossessed by the horrors of trauma and abuse. Like an overturned iceberg, that which is usually hidden in the depths (about play) becomes lucidly visible.

The traditions of Buddhism and the ancient wisdom of Hinduism are interwoven into the body of this book, as are the reverberations of Jungs contributions and other relevant scholars such as Joseph Campbell, as their works amplify the place of play in the overall scheme of things.

I left its pages feeling affirmed in my embrace of play, more compassionate for kids who suffer from early trauma, and deepened by her embrace of the wisdom traditions of the East.

I have written elsewhere that play is largely accountable for our existence as sentient intelligent beings. Di Gammage weaves an intricate tapestry that provides a colourful foundation for these contentions.

Stuart Brown, MD
Founder, President, The National Institute for Play

Permissions

The author thanks the following for their permission to reprint from copyrighted works.

Excerpts from The Cloak on page 13 and throughout the text reprinted by kind permission of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop ( www.petersfraserdunlop.com ) .

The Summer Day excerpt on page 19 from House of Light by Mary Oliver, published by Beacon Press, Boston, copyright 1990 Mary Oliver, reprinted by permission of The Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency Inc.

Excerpt on page 39 from Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown with Christopher Vaughan, copyright 2009 by Stuart Brown. Used by permission of Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Excerpts on page 41 and throughout the text from Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch, copyright 1990 by Stephen Nachmanovitch. Used by permission of Penguin Random House.

Permission to quote Michael Rosen on page 42 courtesy of Michael Rosen and his agent Christian Ogunbanjo at United Agents.

Elements of Play table on page 52 The Strong Museum, New York.

How do you do? (pages 5960) A.L. Kennedy.

A Name is an Anchor and a Coffin (pages 6364) Carol Rifka Brunt.

There Was a Child Went Forth (page 74) Walt Whitman.

Margaret Lowenfeld excerpt on page 74 by kind permission of the Margaret Lowenfeld Trust.

Daniel Stern excerpt on page 78 by kind permission of Basic Books.

D.W. Winnicott excerpts on page 98 and throughout the text by kind permission of Routledge.

Rollo May, The Courage to Create and Love & Will excerpts on pages 112 and 147 by kind permission of W.W. Norton & Company.

Excerpts throughout from Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson, copyright 1995 by Jeanette Winterson. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

The Value of Poetry (pages 187188) Andrew Motion.

Jackie Juno excerpt on page 188 by kind permission of Jackie Juno.

Excerpt on page 199 from Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life Using Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy by Mark Epstein, copyright 2005 by Mark Epstein, M.D. Used by permission of Gotham Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Camilla Carr and Jonathan James, The Sky is Always There excerpts on pages 202 by kind permission of Canterbury Press.

Eudora Welty extract on page 215 by kind permission of Lippincott Massie McQuilkin Literary Agency.

Finding a Way Through

For those who feel the weight of a damp hessian sack filled with the rubble of grief,

I can tell you It will pass.

For those who drop to the bottom of a well that has been dried out by a depression deemed unquenchable,

I can tell you There is a way through.

For those who waver on the edge of the labyrinth for fear of what feeling life might mean,

I can tell you Enter, it is worth it.

For those lost in the myriad of chambers of the minds endless wondering and wrangles,

I can tell you Drop into your heart.

For those who catch a run-away train that abandons the present for what-ifs and worry,

I can tell you Be here now.

For this moment holds fierce beauty,

The bitter and the sweet,

And the taste of one ignites the other,

Both exist in perfect balance,

Shadow and light.

When dark times beckon

Keep it simple.

Walk out on the land,

Breathe,

Through cloud,

On wet stone,

Across water,

The light is there.

Anna Trevone

Prologue

While training to be a drama teacher, I was given the task of directing a short piece of theatre. In the college library I stumbled upon a play entitled The Cloak by a playwright I had never heard of before. Clifford Baxs surreal and intriguing play is set in a world of spirits and depicts an encounter between an Angel, an Unborn Spirit and One Newly Dead. We first meet the Angel conversing with the fervent Unborn Spirit, eager for her birth on Earth, but before the Angel can show her the way to go, the Angel has a harder and more pressing task: that of persuading the Dead One, whose arrival is imminent, to remove her richly decorated, highly elaborate cloak. The Angel explains:

I am waiting here to guide

The footsteps of a woman who has just died,

For when they slip their bodies and, as men say,

Are dead, all human spirits pass by this way.

From heaven they go forth simply-clad, like you,

But, as years pass, they let the whirring brain

Weave no thoughts but of self-glory and self-gain.

These, though not visibly to their mortal view,

Become a cloak, a richly-patterned cloak,

That hides their true selves as a flame in smoke;

And having worn it (there

On earth) so long, they will not cast it by,

But think they are the garment which they wear.

It is my task to teach her that before

She enters heaven her separate self must die,

And she become simple as you once more.

This intricate design makes her who she is. It is unique. There is no other cloak like hers. She clings to her garment and pleads with the Angel, who, despite her compassion, remains intractable. To lose her personality, her identity, her protection what would this mean?