Why Practice Play & Playfulness?

Our gift to you is our gift to ourselves.

We, the co-founders and co-creators of Practice Playfulness, have first-hand experience with the positive impact play and playfulness have had on our lives as individuals, as friends, and as co-founders.

Years ago we organized a group of friends to join us in raising funds for a non-profit and completing a marathon. That evolved into an amalgamation of friends, a variety of races, and significant dollars raised over the years.

EVERYONE who trained with us – FINISHED each race unharmed, be it 5k, half or full marathons. All in, we collectively completed over fifty competitive local, national, and international events/races…perhaps even pushing closer to 100. And, we raised over $250,000 for the Arthritis Foundation.

How does this relate to play and playfulness? And why is this important now? We learned, over time, through personal experience, the value of habits and practice. Thank you B.J. Fogg. One does NOT finish a marathon without practice — often slow and arduous. We also learned the importance of accountability partners and the joys, silliness, and pains that come with friendships through thick and thin. We ALL had life experiences hit us full on – yet our walk/run method (thanks to Jeff Galloway) enabled us to survive and even thrive individually and collectively. A few of us turtles even beat some marathon hares using his method.

These experiences led to our deep desire to share what we learned about the process and the importance of keeping it healthy, meaningful, and most importantly fun!

The creative practice of playfulness, for example, led to ending our training races at pubs. Race locations were always chosen to ensure side adventures, unique spa recovery days, fantastic food, and fun. We always plan a healthy dose of playfulness sprinkled into the mix of any practice! It’s a great motivator and without it life just gets too serious.

PracticePlayfulness.com is the outgrowth of our friendship and combined learnings over time. Our foundation is built on initial questions we posed to friends and family on the importance of play and playfulness in their adult lives. These inquiries led to deep and wide academic research thanks to our friend and lead researcher, Leslie Frazier, Ph.D. at Florida International University and Founder of the Health and Development Lab.

Scientific articles have been written, and a few published in accredited journals, from the survey data collected. Over 2,000 adults provided input which has helped solidify the meaning of adult play and playfulness and its unquestionable value today.

We have begun to crystallize some of our ideas through our scientific research and our practice of writing blog posts. To kick off the New Year we have mapped out a major plan to explore effective ways to inspire others to join us in the life journey to practice the art of playfulness. We recognize this will take time and have begun to tackle it bit by bit each week.