Embodying Playfulness for Inspiring Quality Presence and Authentic Creativity in the Classroom
Joelle Danant
I feel grateful and inspired to have participated in the Center for Teaching and Learning’s (CTL) 2023 Playground Institute, where we came together with other Pratt creative professionals and educators to explore the power of play. This experience was beautifully facilitated by CTL, using diverse activities that combined playfulness with meaningful prompts while building a sense of supportive and creative community. Together, we explored the ways that play, and a playful mindset, can inspire both our creative practices and our teaching approaches.
As was implicitly recognized by CTL during their Playground Institute, embodying what one strives to teach plays an important role in teaching. Embodying the playful mindset opens me to the newness of the moment through the cultivation of the quality of presence and the experience of the creative flow, whether in my creative practice or in teaching. It engages my full attention in the now, while I feel a sense of inner freedom, joy, and trust in the unfolding present, in myself, and in others with whom I get a chance to co-create.
From that state, I open up more easily to being and expressing my authentic self, to connecting genuinely with others, and to the possibility of co-creating a sense of community. I can also best model offering the gifts of presence, creativity, and play to my students.
At Pratt, I develop and teach meditation electives for wellness, creativity, and sustainability. I teach meditation within the context of emphasizing that the ultimate purpose of meditation is to uncover our true nature—which is what play can also contribute. Teaching meditation could be summed up as teaching primarily about the power and practice of presence.
In his YouTube video, meditation teacher davidji (2024), says:
Having experienced firsthand the transformational power of presence, I am eager to share this simple yet profound understanding with students and others.
My primary creative practice is music improvisation. I have performed and taught music improvisation, occasionally combined with improvisational movement, in a variety of settings, and I created a monthly virtual Jam for Everyone community event during the pandemic. I have been keeping a regular music improvisation practice, including with other musicians. My active creative practice has contributed greatly to my effectiveness in teaching—including through embodiment—whether teaching meditation to Pratt students or training adults in music improvisation.
The CTL Playground Institute experience further reinforced for me the relevance of infusing a sense of playfulness in my classes, whenever possible or appropriate, including by bringing an occasional sense of gentle humor into my teaching approach. I added “gentle” before “humor” because I have found that, in order for a sense of play or playfulness to be nurtured within a class or community, it would typically benefit from going hand in hand with a sense of supportive caring or compassion.
Some key messages from my vision board work during the Playground Institute included:
I have always been a fan of playing, both as a child and as an adult, although there was a time as an adult where my intense level of seriousness in my work made me forget its essential importance for creative expression in particular. I luckily stumbled upon the power of play thanks to my love of music and to a life-changing music improvisation training organization for adult learners called Music for People (MfP) co-founded by late Grammy-Award recipient and cellist David Darling (Music Improvisation Workshops & Facilitator Training, n.d.). There I discovered the transformational power of play through improvisational music-making and teaching. MfP’s philosophy—as summed up in their book Return to Child: Music for People's Guide to Improvising Music and Authentic Group Leadership (2015)—is based on drawing from the power of play and cultivating a child-like mindset for fostering creativity, building on the wisdom of the Inner Child archetype, an aspect of consciousness that is naturally playful and creative.
I play to remember who I am is an intuitive insight I received through meditation one day after I had begun my music improvisation practice. One of my pieces, a multi-instrumental improvisation on my musical album Sacred Union, is called “Lila,” which means “Divine Play” or “spirit of play” in Sanskrit. “Lila” is but one illustration that reflects the power of play in my creative practice.
Typically perceived as fun, play fosters a lightness of being as an antidote to potentially taking ourselves too seriously. Play represents an accessible and inviting gateway to our creative flow state where we can tap spontaneously into our natural bliss or joy and a sense of inner freedom through creative expression.
Play invites us to practice receptivity, listening, openness, and sensory and present-moment awareness. It can also serve as an invitation to suspend judgment, which is valuable to stimulate the creative process.
Similarly to a flow state, play tends to engage the whole person: my experience as a creator and teacher is that play typically relies on the intelligence of the body-heart-mind connection and coordination, as well as on our intuition, not just on the mind.
I have also found that play contributes to motivating people to shift from resistance and anxiousness to excitement and allowing.
When I teach music improvisation (in non-formal education settings), I tell my workshop participants that the instructions are not mandatory: they are invitations to explore. There is no wrong moment, no wrong interpretation of the proposed activities, and, most importantly, participants are invited to honor and follow their own natural impulses, even if it might mean stepping out of the proposed form—as long as they feel authentically present and connected to their creative expression (and to that of others if in a group setting)—and to cultivate awareness of their choices and intentions behind them. While the proposed playful activities include musicianship skill development goals, they are also intended as catalysts for participants to express their own unique creative voices authentically. When participants are heard and met supportively where they are in the moment, this ultimately leads to a transformation and recognition of who they are—an opportunity for self-actualization.
Just as in meditation practice, play fosters the possibility of making accessible connections between wellness and creativity. In my meditation classes, I weave together the above elements throughout the semester. One illustration of this is when I cover the delicate topic of meditation for emotional fitness and introduce the practice of meditation on the archetype of the Inner Child, wherein I also frame this practice as contributing to awakening our natural sense of play and creativity—in this example, the emphasis is on connecting emotional wellness with creativity.
Play and the Power of Intention
Throughout this article, there are points hinting at the power of intention-setting behind play. Intention-setting can perform an essential role in contributing to maximizing the power of play for both creative practice and teaching approaches. In education, the role of play can best be used by combining a human-focused intention—such as building a supportive, enthusiastic community—with an educational one, such as fostering creativity and/or developing skills in whatever medium is covered.
Play holds the potential to contribute to filling the essential need to experience what mythologist Joseph Campbell (1988) wrote about: “The rapture of being alive is what it’s all about.”
Part of the power of play lies in how it can efficiently reconcile attention to both process and outcome in ways that can strengthen the outcome through the heightened quality of our attention to process.
Potential Obstacles to the Spirit of Play:
According to renowned physician and meditation teacher Deepak Chopra (n.d.-a), “if your attention is focused only on the result, then you are no longer in the process. But if you’re in the process, then the result is guaranteed.”
Along with an exclusive focus on results, a related potential hindrance to the genuine spirit of play is the intention to have a winner and at least one loser versus choosing to establish a win-win situation. A win-or-lose outcome runs the risk of focusing more on the goal than the process, whereas play with a win-win outcome allows the benefits to be optimized in both process and outcome.
Are we playing primarily to win or are we allowing ourselves to enjoy the process?
As a sports fan, I have watched countless sports films based on true stories where the importance of reconciling both process and outcome is compellingly demonstrated. Competition plays an important role in motivating participants to give their best, and yet, the foundational training has to strike a balance between both intentions noted above, as well as cultivate team building and the art of detachment. The art of detachment can best be assimilated when realizing that there is still valuable growth in the so-called “losing.” As Chopra (n.d.-b) states, “In every failure is the seed of success… . Our failures are stepping stones in the mechanics of creation, bringing us closer to our goals. In reality, there is no such thing as failure. What we call failure is just a mechanism to do things right.”
We can further explore reconciling both above intentions. There are times when process can be effectively emphasized over the outcome, at least on the surface, as seen in warm-ups or ice-breaking exercises in various creative disciplines that get students to bypass potential emotional barriers to their creative flow—I have experienced this not only in music improvisation, but also in drawing and improvisational theater sessions—although there is still an underlying, big-picture type of outcome-setting beyond the apparent immediate “success” for performing a given warm-up: i.e, getting participants to prepare for the actual creative practice. The joy, and even fun, often found in the process of play deserves to be acknowledged as a form of success, which is when process and outcome can become one—hence the value of beginning sessions or courses with warm-ups.
Here are some further obstacles to play in education:
Deepak Chopra (2004) emphasizes that, “When you work from …internal reference, your sense of self is clear and is not affected by external factors. This is the source of personal power…. You also understand that we are all equal…you are beneath no one and superior to no one” (p. 202). This statement is not intended to go against the importance of remaining receptive to critiques on one’s creative work. One’s sense of self-worth should not be confused with that of one’s work.
Play and Community Building
I believe that community building through the power of play is our human and spiritual destiny. The playful mindset can enhance the effectiveness of community building by adding a vibrant lightness of being, both to break the ice among participants and to set a positive tone for the whole.
The image of the sacred geometry symbol of the Flower of Life comes to mind, particularly if it can be shown in diverse colors to symbolize both the unity and the interconnectedness of all life, as well as diversity within unity.
Play can have an important part in collaborative community building, as demonstrated by the CTL Team during their 2023 Playground Institute. The term community implies a supportive, caring setting. Community building in the classroom can contribute to best preparing students to thrive in and out of the classroom.
Based on my experience, play can foster a sense of equality and ultimate sense of unification among players. Play can promote empowerment, encourage the commitment to cultivating a non-judgmental attitude, and possibly facilitate genuine relationships or interactions with others.
Community, especially if nurtured within a circle setting, can serve as an effective container for the self to blossom—both as an individual and as a member belonging to a greater whole—by both receiving and giving what has meaning for the one and all, and fostering the possibility of finding ourselves through finding each other. In the circle, everyone can see (or hear) and be seen (or heard) by everyone equally.
At its best, the power of play in community can open the heart-mind—to use a term from Buddhist meditation classes—to uncover what feels like the ultimate point of the game of life, where the needs and aspirations of the one are understood as fitting the needs and aspirations of the whole, fostering growth for the one and all, like from acorn to tree to forest1 in the circle of life.
1To build on the metaphors used by both Swiss German Analyst Carl G. Jung on the acorn as symbol of the Self in the individuation process (Jung, 1979) and on Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn” (Emerson, 1841).
References
Alshami, A. M. (2019). Pain: Is it all in the brain or the heart? Current Pain and Headache Reports, 23(12), 88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-019-0827-4
Campbell, J. & Moyers, B. D. (1988). The power of myth. Doubleday.
Chopra, D. (n.d.-a). Deepak Chopra quotes about focus. A-Z Quotes. https://www.azquotes.com/author/2840-Deepak_Chopra/tag/focus
Chopra, D. (n.d.-b). Deepak Chopra quotes about goals. A-Z Quotes. https://www.azquotes.com/author/2840-Deepak_Chopra/tag/goal
Chopra, D. (2004). The spontaneous fulfillment of desire: Harnessing the infinite power of coincidence (Reprint edition). Harmony.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (1st Harper Perennial Modern Classics ed.). Harper Perennial.
Danant, J. (Director). (2017, March 5). Sacred Union. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3JXed5oICE
davidji (Director). (2024, January 12). Life Tools: Harnessing the power of presence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Unwxg1IV4
Dumas, A. (2016). Les trois mousquetaires. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Dzogchen meditation: An introduction. (n.d.). Pristine Mind Foundation. https://pristinemind.org/about-us/dzogchen-meditation-an-introduction/
Emerson, R. W. (1841). History. Emersoncentral.com. https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/history/
Jung, C. G. & Hull, R. F. C. (1968). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (Second edition). Princeton University Press.
Music for People. (n.d.). Music improvisation workshops & facilitator training. https://www.musicforpeople.org/wp/
Oshinsky, J. (2015). Return to child. Music for People.
As was implicitly recognized by CTL during their Playground Institute, embodying what one strives to teach plays an important role in teaching. Embodying the playful mindset opens me to the newness of the moment through the cultivation of the quality of presence and the experience of the creative flow, whether in my creative practice or in teaching. It engages my full attention in the now, while I feel a sense of inner freedom, joy, and trust in the unfolding present, in myself, and in others with whom I get a chance to co-create.
From that state, I open up more easily to being and expressing my authentic self, to connecting genuinely with others, and to the possibility of co-creating a sense of community. I can also best model offering the gifts of presence, creativity, and play to my students.
At Pratt, I develop and teach meditation electives for wellness, creativity, and sustainability. I teach meditation within the context of emphasizing that the ultimate purpose of meditation is to uncover our true nature—which is what play can also contribute. Teaching meditation could be summed up as teaching primarily about the power and practice of presence.
In his YouTube video, meditation teacher davidji (2024), says:
The Power of Presence cannot be underestimated. It is the living, breathing background that rests behind everything that we see, do, and experience in the world…. The power of presence can be your fractal to walk through this world with greater grace and ease. In the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2 Verse 48, we learn that Arjuna is asking God how to live his life–and God replies “Yogastha Kuru Karmani”: establish yourself in the present moment and then perform action…. Infuse the power of presence into all that you do, and watch how everything transforms.
Having experienced firsthand the transformational power of presence, I am eager to share this simple yet profound understanding with students and others.
My primary creative practice is music improvisation. I have performed and taught music improvisation, occasionally combined with improvisational movement, in a variety of settings, and I created a monthly virtual Jam for Everyone community event during the pandemic. I have been keeping a regular music improvisation practice, including with other musicians. My active creative practice has contributed greatly to my effectiveness in teaching—including through embodiment—whether teaching meditation to Pratt students or training adults in music improvisation.
The CTL Playground Institute experience further reinforced for me the relevance of infusing a sense of playfulness in my classes, whenever possible or appropriate, including by bringing an occasional sense of gentle humor into my teaching approach. I added “gentle” before “humor” because I have found that, in order for a sense of play or playfulness to be nurtured within a class or community, it would typically benefit from going hand in hand with a sense of supportive caring or compassion.
Some key messages from my vision board work during the Playground Institute included:
- I have found that the practices of contemplating nature, elemental meditation, and/or resting in the view of our interconnectedness and/or oneness with the natural wholeness of life can open our consciousness to tap into our own natural flow of creative expression (Dzogchen Meditation, n.d.).
- Offering the Gift of Presence: Listening, connecting, trusting the unknown, following the heart (the heart has its own brain!), Balancing Being and Doing.
- Community to me is: all for one and one for all. Cultivating community through diversity is finding ourselves and each other.
I have always been a fan of playing, both as a child and as an adult, although there was a time as an adult where my intense level of seriousness in my work made me forget its essential importance for creative expression in particular. I luckily stumbled upon the power of play thanks to my love of music and to a life-changing music improvisation training organization for adult learners called Music for People (MfP) co-founded by late Grammy-Award recipient and cellist David Darling (Music Improvisation Workshops & Facilitator Training, n.d.). There I discovered the transformational power of play through improvisational music-making and teaching. MfP’s philosophy—as summed up in their book Return to Child: Music for People's Guide to Improvising Music and Authentic Group Leadership (2015)—is based on drawing from the power of play and cultivating a child-like mindset for fostering creativity, building on the wisdom of the Inner Child archetype, an aspect of consciousness that is naturally playful and creative.
I play to remember who I am is an intuitive insight I received through meditation one day after I had begun my music improvisation practice. One of my pieces, a multi-instrumental improvisation on my musical album Sacred Union, is called “Lila,” which means “Divine Play” or “spirit of play” in Sanskrit. “Lila” is but one illustration that reflects the power of play in my creative practice.
Typically perceived as fun, play fosters a lightness of being as an antidote to potentially taking ourselves too seriously. Play represents an accessible and inviting gateway to our creative flow state where we can tap spontaneously into our natural bliss or joy and a sense of inner freedom through creative expression.
Play invites us to practice receptivity, listening, openness, and sensory and present-moment awareness. It can also serve as an invitation to suspend judgment, which is valuable to stimulate the creative process.
Similarly to a flow state, play tends to engage the whole person: my experience as a creator and teacher is that play typically relies on the intelligence of the body-heart-mind connection and coordination, as well as on our intuition, not just on the mind.
I have also found that play contributes to motivating people to shift from resistance and anxiousness to excitement and allowing.
When I teach music improvisation (in non-formal education settings), I tell my workshop participants that the instructions are not mandatory: they are invitations to explore. There is no wrong moment, no wrong interpretation of the proposed activities, and, most importantly, participants are invited to honor and follow their own natural impulses, even if it might mean stepping out of the proposed form—as long as they feel authentically present and connected to their creative expression (and to that of others if in a group setting)—and to cultivate awareness of their choices and intentions behind them. While the proposed playful activities include musicianship skill development goals, they are also intended as catalysts for participants to express their own unique creative voices authentically. When participants are heard and met supportively where they are in the moment, this ultimately leads to a transformation and recognition of who they are—an opportunity for self-actualization.
Just as in meditation practice, play fosters the possibility of making accessible connections between wellness and creativity. In my meditation classes, I weave together the above elements throughout the semester. One illustration of this is when I cover the delicate topic of meditation for emotional fitness and introduce the practice of meditation on the archetype of the Inner Child, wherein I also frame this practice as contributing to awakening our natural sense of play and creativity—in this example, the emphasis is on connecting emotional wellness with creativity.
Play and the Power of Intention
Throughout this article, there are points hinting at the power of intention-setting behind play. Intention-setting can perform an essential role in contributing to maximizing the power of play for both creative practice and teaching approaches. In education, the role of play can best be used by combining a human-focused intention—such as building a supportive, enthusiastic community—with an educational one, such as fostering creativity and/or developing skills in whatever medium is covered.
Play holds the potential to contribute to filling the essential need to experience what mythologist Joseph Campbell (1988) wrote about: “The rapture of being alive is what it’s all about.”
Part of the power of play lies in how it can efficiently reconcile attention to both process and outcome in ways that can strengthen the outcome through the heightened quality of our attention to process.
Potential Obstacles to the Spirit of Play:
According to renowned physician and meditation teacher Deepak Chopra (n.d.-a), “if your attention is focused only on the result, then you are no longer in the process. But if you’re in the process, then the result is guaranteed.”
Along with an exclusive focus on results, a related potential hindrance to the genuine spirit of play is the intention to have a winner and at least one loser versus choosing to establish a win-win situation. A win-or-lose outcome runs the risk of focusing more on the goal than the process, whereas play with a win-win outcome allows the benefits to be optimized in both process and outcome.
Are we playing primarily to win or are we allowing ourselves to enjoy the process?
As a sports fan, I have watched countless sports films based on true stories where the importance of reconciling both process and outcome is compellingly demonstrated. Competition plays an important role in motivating participants to give their best, and yet, the foundational training has to strike a balance between both intentions noted above, as well as cultivate team building and the art of detachment. The art of detachment can best be assimilated when realizing that there is still valuable growth in the so-called “losing.” As Chopra (n.d.-b) states, “In every failure is the seed of success… . Our failures are stepping stones in the mechanics of creation, bringing us closer to our goals. In reality, there is no such thing as failure. What we call failure is just a mechanism to do things right.”
We can further explore reconciling both above intentions. There are times when process can be effectively emphasized over the outcome, at least on the surface, as seen in warm-ups or ice-breaking exercises in various creative disciplines that get students to bypass potential emotional barriers to their creative flow—I have experienced this not only in music improvisation, but also in drawing and improvisational theater sessions—although there is still an underlying, big-picture type of outcome-setting beyond the apparent immediate “success” for performing a given warm-up: i.e, getting participants to prepare for the actual creative practice. The joy, and even fun, often found in the process of play deserves to be acknowledged as a form of success, which is when process and outcome can become one—hence the value of beginning sessions or courses with warm-ups.
Here are some further obstacles to play in education:
- anticipating the idea of failing, of being graded and/or judged;
- receiving feedback (or criticism) on one’s work that focuses exclusively on what needs to be improved without any preliminary positive feedback about what works;
- judging the lack of seriousness in playing while focusing on cultivating a credible, professional, responsible image;
- observing that, when the stakes for delivering compelling art or design are high, including as an aspiring or experienced professional in one’s creative medium, the idea of play and a playful mindset tend to seem like a non-essential luxury in life for which there was no need to make time; forgetting one’s original sense of joy in creating one’s art, a risk that is increased with heavy workloads or course loads.
Deepak Chopra (2004) emphasizes that, “When you work from …internal reference, your sense of self is clear and is not affected by external factors. This is the source of personal power…. You also understand that we are all equal…you are beneath no one and superior to no one” (p. 202). This statement is not intended to go against the importance of remaining receptive to critiques on one’s creative work. One’s sense of self-worth should not be confused with that of one’s work.
Play and Community Building
I believe that community building through the power of play is our human and spiritual destiny. The playful mindset can enhance the effectiveness of community building by adding a vibrant lightness of being, both to break the ice among participants and to set a positive tone for the whole.
The image of the sacred geometry symbol of the Flower of Life comes to mind, particularly if it can be shown in diverse colors to symbolize both the unity and the interconnectedness of all life, as well as diversity within unity.
Play can have an important part in collaborative community building, as demonstrated by the CTL Team during their 2023 Playground Institute. The term community implies a supportive, caring setting. Community building in the classroom can contribute to best preparing students to thrive in and out of the classroom.
Based on my experience, play can foster a sense of equality and ultimate sense of unification among players. Play can promote empowerment, encourage the commitment to cultivating a non-judgmental attitude, and possibly facilitate genuine relationships or interactions with others.
Community, especially if nurtured within a circle setting, can serve as an effective container for the self to blossom—both as an individual and as a member belonging to a greater whole—by both receiving and giving what has meaning for the one and all, and fostering the possibility of finding ourselves through finding each other. In the circle, everyone can see (or hear) and be seen (or heard) by everyone equally.
At its best, the power of play in community can open the heart-mind—to use a term from Buddhist meditation classes—to uncover what feels like the ultimate point of the game of life, where the needs and aspirations of the one are understood as fitting the needs and aspirations of the whole, fostering growth for the one and all, like from acorn to tree to forest1 in the circle of life.
1To build on the metaphors used by both Swiss German Analyst Carl G. Jung on the acorn as symbol of the Self in the individuation process (Jung, 1979) and on Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn” (Emerson, 1841).
References
Alshami, A. M. (2019). Pain: Is it all in the brain or the heart? Current Pain and Headache Reports, 23(12), 88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-019-0827-4
Campbell, J. & Moyers, B. D. (1988). The power of myth. Doubleday.
Chopra, D. (n.d.-a). Deepak Chopra quotes about focus. A-Z Quotes. https://www.azquotes.com/author/2840-Deepak_Chopra/tag/focus
Chopra, D. (n.d.-b). Deepak Chopra quotes about goals. A-Z Quotes. https://www.azquotes.com/author/2840-Deepak_Chopra/tag/goal
Chopra, D. (2004). The spontaneous fulfillment of desire: Harnessing the infinite power of coincidence (Reprint edition). Harmony.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (1st Harper Perennial Modern Classics ed.). Harper Perennial.
Danant, J. (Director). (2017, March 5). Sacred Union. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3JXed5oICE
davidji (Director). (2024, January 12). Life Tools: Harnessing the power of presence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Unwxg1IV4
Dumas, A. (2016). Les trois mousquetaires. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Dzogchen meditation: An introduction. (n.d.). Pristine Mind Foundation. https://pristinemind.org/about-us/dzogchen-meditation-an-introduction/
Emerson, R. W. (1841). History. Emersoncentral.com. https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/history/
Jung, C. G. & Hull, R. F. C. (1968). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (Second edition). Princeton University Press.
Music for People. (n.d.). Music improvisation workshops & facilitator training. https://www.musicforpeople.org/wp/
Oshinsky, J. (2015). Return to child. Music for People.
