Hi..!! My name is Amitanshu Shrivastava I am a student at Indian institute of crafts and Design. So it is 2nd of April and it’s raining in Delhi its amazing when it rains its nature’s way of playing and showing happiness. Is playing important and necessary for us? Do we play only when we are happy..? Why kids do the action that we call “play”..? Can play solve your problem..?

These are few questions in my mind, so let’s see if we get any answers...?

I would like to start with the meaning of “play”

As per Google it is

But here I like to add something more. Play is an activity to take out your emotion in a healthy way. And give you a sense of accomplishment, which is very important for any living organism.

This is what I have synthesized in these years, I have also applied design thinking and tried to connect to different aspects of ‘play’, game, and toys. So I have even tried to solve it with some of my stupid products.

We human have a very unique quality no other animal possesses this qualities in such a various spectrum i.e. “expression of emotion”. The things we express or share are happiness, sadness, excitement, anger, etc. We like to express everything which we come across. Humans from many generation people have discovered the way to express our self in many ways through speaking, writing, drawing, now we have better ways of doing it by our social networking sites through which we can share it with a large number of people.

When we express our self’s or share things with people we feel relaxed and the energy in you in form of happiness or anger gets transferred to the person you told, Simple rule off physics.

Now I want you to think when you were a baby or a kid, where not you more happier then you are now and we even didn’t had many way of expressions, we did not know how to write or to draw or to sing or speak but then also we were happy. how…?

Even as per Dr.Stuart brown

PRESIDENT

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR PLAY

Play is not regardless of the age, sex, and in one of his ted talk he showed that even animal like lions, grizzly and huskies also play. And anyways even we have seen animal playing with us and them self’s. But still I have a question why do they play? This is more elaborately explained in his book “Play-how it shapes the brain”

Many researchers have proved that playing is important. Many results have shown that many criminal acts are conducted by the people how are deprived from play in their childhood and so as a child it’s important to play. There is this news letter

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The Importance of Play for Adults

By MARGARITA TARTAKOVSKY, M.S.
Associate Editor

Our society tends to dismiss play for adults. Play is perceived as unproductive, petty or even a guilty pleasure. The notion is that once we reach adulthood, it’s time to get serious. And between personal and professional responsibilities, there’s no time to play.

“The only kind [of play] we honour is competitive play,” according to Bowen F. White, MD, a medical doctor and author of Why Normal Isn’t Healthy.

But play is just as pivotal for adults as it is for kids.

“We don’t lose the need for novelty and pleasure as we grow up,” according to Scott G. Eberle, Ph.D, vice president for play studies at The Strong and editor of the American Journal of Play.

Play brings joy. And it’s vital for problem solving, creativity and relationships.

In his book Play, author and psychiatrist Stuart Brown, MD, compares play to oxygen. He writes, “…it’s all around us, yet goes mostly unnoticed or unappreciated until it is missing.” This might seem surprising until you consider everything that constitutes play. Play is art, books, movies, music, comedy, flirting and daydreaming, writes Dr. Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play.

Brown has spent decades studying the power of play in everyone from prisoners to businesspeople to artists to Nobel Prize winners. He’s reviewed over 6,000 “play histories,” case studies that explore the role of play in each person’s childhood and adulthood.

For instance, he found that lack of play was just as important as other factors in predicting criminal behaviour among murderers in Texas prisons. He also found that playing together helped couples rekindle their relationship and explore other forms of emotional intimacy.

Play can even facilitate deep connections between strangers and cultivate healing. In addition to being a doctor and speaker, Dr. White is a clown. His alter ego, Dr. Jerko, is a proctologist with a large behind and a doctor’s coat that says, “I’m interested in your stools.” Over two decades ago, White began working with renowned physician Patch Adams.

Today, White continues to clown at children’s hospitals and orphanages all over the world. He even clowns at corporate presentations and prisons. “Clowning isn’t something we’re doing with kids, we clown with everybody,” he said.

He’s clowned on the streets of Moscow. White doesn’t speak Russian, but that didn’t stop him from playing with people in Red Square. Within 45 minutes, he was juggling and joking with a crowd of 30.

In Colombia, White’s wife and Patch Adams’s son – also clowns – visited a bedridden father, at his daughter’s request. Once there, they sat on either side of his bed. He didn’t know English, and they didn’t know Spanish. Still, they sang songs, laughed and played with a whoopee cushion. They also cried. The woman later told them that her father deeply appreciated the experience.

As White said, play can lead us to these sacred spaces and touch people in powerful ways.

What is Play?

“Defining play is difficult because it’s a moving target,” Eberle said. “[It’s] a process, not a thing.” He said that it begins in anticipation and hopefully ends in poise. “In between you find surprise, pleasure, understanding — as skill and empathy — and strength of mind, body, and spirit.”

Brown called play a “state of being,” “purposeless, fun and pleasurable.” For the most part, the focus is on the actual experience, not on accomplishing a goal, he said.

Also, the activity is needless. As Brown said, for some people knitting is pure pleasure; for others, it’s pure torture. For Brown, who’s almost 80, play is tennis with friends and a walk with his dog.

How to Play

We don’t need to play every second of the day to enjoy play’s benefits. In his book, Brown calls play a catalyst. A little bit of play, he writes, can go a long way toward boosting our productivity and happiness. So how can you add play into your life? Here are a few tips from the experts:

Change how you think about play. Remember that play is important for all aspects of our lives, including creativity and relationships. Give yourself permission to play every day. For instance, play can mean talking to your dog. “I['d] ask my dog Charlie, regularly, his opinion of the presidential candidates. He respond[ed] with a lifted ear and an upturning vocalization that goes ‘haruum?’” Eberle said.

Play can be reading aloud to your partner, he said. “Some playful writers are made to be read aloud: Dylan Thomas, Art Buchwald, Carl Hiaasen, S.J. Perelman, Richard Feynman, Frank McCourt.”

Take a play history. In his book Brown includes a primer to help readers reconnect with play. He suggests readers mine their past for play memories. What did you do as a child that excited you? Did you engage in those activities alone or with others? Or both? How can you recreate that today?

Surround yourself with playful people. Both Brown and White stressed the importance of selecting friends who are playful – and of playing with your loved ones.

Play with little ones. Playing with kids helps us experience the magic of play through their perspective. White and Brown both talked about playing around with their grandkids.

Any time you think play is a waste, remember that it offers some serious benefits for both you and others. As Brown says in his book, “Play is the purest expression of love.”

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Play is not an activity we do. it’s a an expression.

Recently I was reading a book by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

-How to Analyze People on Sight.

Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types.

In the front matter of that book there was a very interesting thing written

Survival of the Fittest

Nature has no accidents, she wastes no material and everything has a purpose. If you put up a good fight to live she will usually come to your rescue and give you enough of whatever is needed to tide you over. If you don't, she says you are not fit to people the earth and lets you go without a pang. Thus she weeds out all but the strong--and evolution marches on.

This paragraph is most interesting and useful in every scene I can think about.

NATURE HAS NO ACCIDENTS, EVERYTHINK HAS A PURPOSE. So now my question is what purpose is Play fulfilling?

Play or any activity is we see around us is not entirely meaningless there is always some reason we do things. there is always a propose of doing it, and we don’t keep on doing it, so we have a start then ,we have a time we do that thing and then we have an end, So even play have stages.

Have you ever observed yourself or people around you? We don’t cry without any reason, so we have a reason which makes us cry, then we cry and then we gather our self up, stop crying and do stuff which engage us with other things. This is how we have seen our emotion works.

Similarly like laughing or crying playing is also an emotion.

Playing is also a type of emotion, more complex one but as per my observation play is emotion through which other emotion can be redirected. Making people relax and more efficient to live.

As in the starting of the article I asked you how can kids be more happy and relaxed then us grownups because they have more effective and efficient way of taking or redirecting there simple emotion like anger, agitation, happiness.

We should play outside…

When we play (even it’s a meaningless play) it has stages. We have a start we have a time of play and in the end we have a accomplishment as a winner or as a loser. In this whole process of playing many unwanted and bad thoughts can be eliminated from your mind through play.

We have types of play

1- Dramatic- Children take on roles within pretend games about familiar experiences - going on a family fishing trip, sharing a family celebration.

2- Fantasy- Children create props and use these as they engage in fantasy adventures - creating an ocean floor using sheets for water and baskets for rocks in an underwater adventure.

3- Exploratory- Children explore the properties and functions of materials, equipment and objects - experimenting with a tool to find out how it works with clay or dough, using a magnifying glass to view different objects.

4- Manipulative- Children manipulate and explore objects, parts and materials - threading beads, doing puzzles, using construction sets.

5- Physical- Children explore movements and ways to combine movements — running and playing ball, jumping, climbing, dancing, and moving on an obstacle course.

6- Games with rules- Children follow or create rules to reach a shared objective in a game — playing outdoor games, following child-created games with rules, playing computer, board and card games.

so as in every signal one of them we can see we need a tool to play (a tool to play is called toy) or we need a companion to play (in many kind of play our own body part can also becomes tool to play with ) without that one cannot say he is playing . So this proves that we start a play with an intention. Now again we have to ask what intention does a child or anyone have, to do such selfless and interesting activity of ‘playing’?

With every act of play we give out many from of our negative thoughts. In this whole act of playing and different stages we give out many small form of silly emotion which disturbs us. Everyone is different and so the kid of play and expression is different but the gist is more or less the same.

I like to explain it with an example. let’s play basketball – (for now we take 2 people to avoid the congestion of different people and their types) I am playing basket ball so we “start something new” then we play “physically” I get exhorted , I have a opponent I have a competition and so I have something to prove to the other person , that I m better them him and I can win I compete with him for a game with determination, he does some baskets , then I do couple more, I run in excitement taking the ball and sometime struggling to take the ball from him in all this I m focused on a thing on a game on our play, I make strategies to win, then eventually I win I celebrate my victory and go back to work.

In this whole process I got and excitement, I got diversion from my routine n by the end I felt a scene of accomplishment and so now when I go back to work I feel much better and have more of free flowing and liberal ideas.

Why gym, video games are not enough?

Gym, video game, shopping can give you the same physical and physiological pleasure but the problem is that they all are different and insufficient individual source of pleasure. So going to gym and saying that its equivalent to play is not justified. Only physical exercise can turn a person in a brutal, heartless and non creative person, because in gym we train our body to be strong and muscular just for no particular reason. Gym is a place to train oneself for a combat in form of war or a rigorous game like football, boxing or rustling. It is not for living it for the part in life that we play.

Video game gives us a virtual world to play strategically and physiological indulge our self in it. Again we need the combination of all three stages to give you a state equilibrium in your mind. Video game many times have a tendency to go on for a longer duration that is very dangerous as you keep milk in your fridge for longer duration and it will get sore similarly any thought or idea or strategy in your mind for longer duration can harm your mind, thinking ability, your creativity and even can stop your thought generation also known as ‘depuration’.

Shopping, in this world of consumerism we tends to buy many unnecessary products. When people are frustrated or angry they tend to go to shopping mall and buy a lot of unnecessary stuff, I don’t want to standardize this is mostly seen in women. These people are people who have low tolerance power but not courageous enough or don’t have proper condition to speak out loud to express it, they go and shop. Even I have done it many times myself. And then we regret why we did this we don’t need it, shopping gives us a temporary satisfaction in our mind that we did something new.

If you find yourself or people around you doing this then please take them to a play ground nearby and play with them. You won’t be helping them you be making this earth a better place to live in.

We don’t have to be so strong, we don’t have to be so strategically right, we don’t always have to win. Life is not a war.. It’s a play ! so let’s play..!!!! Keep it simple.. ;)

Book and web reference

- http://deta.qld.gov.au/earlychildhood/pdfs/tip-sheets/different-types-play.pdf

- http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/11/15/the-importance-of-play-for-adults/

- Title: How to Analyze People on Sight

Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types

Author: Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

Release Date: December 4, 2009 [eBook #30601]

Language: English

Printed and Bound

By The Roycrofters at Their Shops

In East Aurora

N. Y.