PODCASTHappiness Break

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

We all have a playful side, and research shows acting on it can help us when we need to move through challenging emotions, manage conflict, and be more creative.

How to Do This Practice:

1. Find a comfortable position to begin the practice. Focus on breathing deeply.
2. Think back to a moment of play during your childhood. Recall specific details like your age, what you were doing and who you were with. As you remember, notice how the memory is affecting you in the present moment.
3. Next, focus on a recent memory of play – maybe with your partner, friends, or family. Fully recall the moment, again bringing to mind specific details. Notice how this memory makes you feel.
4. Take note of how reflecting on play has affected your breathing. Did it affect the tight areas in your body? How about the relaxed and open ones?
5. As you refocus your attention on your breath, make a commitment to add play into your busy schedule going forward.

Today’s Happiness Break host:

Dacher Keltner is the host of the Greater Good Science Center’s award-winning podcast, The Science of Happiness and is a co-instructor of the GGSC’s popular online course of the same name. He’s also the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Check out Dacher’s most recent book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/4j4hcvyt

More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

What Happens When We Play (The Science of Happiness Podcast): http://tinyurl.com/mrfm5pj5

Can We Play? http://tinyurl.com/prhv22rf

What Playfulness Can Do for Your Relationship: http://tinyurl.com/n9b3h7e4

For Black Children, Play Can Be Transformative: http://tinyurl.com/mwnfcu26

What memories of play came to your mind? Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Find us on Spotify: http://tinyurl.com/ycydhyxz

Help us share Happiness Break! Rate us and copy and share this link: http://tinyurl.com/ycydhyxz

We’re living through a mental health crisis. Between the stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout — we all could use a break to feel better. That’s where Happiness Break comes in. In each biweekly podcast episode, instructors guide you through research-backed practices and meditations that you can do in real-time. These relaxing and uplifting practices have been shown in a lab to help you cultivate calm, compassion, connection, mindfulness, and more — what the latest science says will directly support your well-being. All in less than ten minutes. A little break in your day.

Transcript:

Dacher Keltner: I'm Dacher Keltner. Welcome to your Happiness Break, where on each episode, we do a practice to make us feel happier and we learn about the science behind why it works. This week we're doing a practice to tap into our sense of playfulness.

Play is one of humanity's great strengths. It's actually observed in chimpanzees and other social mammals, like rats. It's just fundamental to who we are and when we play, be it in wordplay or rough and tumble play, or the sociodramatic play of children, it brings about a lot of different benefits.

It makes us better able to take other people's perspectives, helps us regulate emotions better. It can help us with really hard times like stress, negotiations, conflicts, and even bereavement. And of course, it brings about greater creativity and even better health. 

Remembering times when we're playful and then savoring them is a way to tap into this inherently playful nature that's in all of us, and it can make us more playful in our daily lives. So in this exercise, we will revisit your memories of playfulness and savor them to remind ourselves how easy it is to access this great human strength.

Settle into a comfortable and safe position with your hands resting at ease on your laps. 

Allow your breathing to deepen. Sensing how those deepening exhalations bring you relaxation and maybe some ease. 

Now, close your eyes or gently soften your gaze. 

And now we're going to use our imagination and our capacity for memory to think back to some times of play, our way of savoring what's good in life. 

Call to mind a moment of play from your childhood. Where were you? How old were you? Who were you with? Get an image of the scene.

What was going on? What were people doing? What did the laughter sound like? 

And when you think about this memory of play from your childhood, what does it give you right now? What does it make you feel? 

Now, think of a recent moment of play, maybe with a partner, your children at work with a friend, someone in your family. A recent moment of play. Again, think about where were you, who was there?

What did the laughter sound like and feel like?  

And when you call to mind this recent moment of play, savoring it, noticing it. How does it make you feel right now? 

We all have histories of play and play for many of us is so pervasive, so powerful. And in this brief tour of your arc of play or your history of play, what did you notice? Who do you like to play with? Your style of play? How it might have brought you some perspective or some insight or a flight of the imagination to something you hadn't thought about?

What does play bring to you in your life? 

And now in reflecting on play, notice what it has brought to you in terms of your breathing in the tight areas, and then the relaxed ones or the spacious ones. 

Take a few more deep breaths and in this space, make a commitment to add more play to your busy day, 

Whether it's a playful idea, a play on words, funny gestures, nicknames, goofing around with friends.

Playfulness is so powerful, such an under-appreciated pathway to wellbeing, something we can add to our days in so many different ways.

Thank you.