Connecting playfulness with mindfulness offers some mutually reinforcing benefits for presence, learning, freedom and inner peace.

On the one hand, playfulness helps us to move, experiment, laugh, release energy, connect, feel, explore novelty, embrace change, get lost in flow, and absorbed in the moment in a task positive way.

Mindfulness on the other hand helps us to be more aware of sensations, events, experiences in the moment.

This doesn’t have to be from the point of view of a detached ‘mindful’ witness view watching the breath or thoughts (this is only one flavour of mindfulness and seen as a preliminary or misguided practice in many traditions).

Another way of looking at mindfulness is as a way of attending to our interactions with other people and the world, from a space of effortless, spacious and inclusive awareness.

A couple of definitions

In his book ‘Free to Learn’, Play expert Peter Gray defines play as follows:

“Play is activity that is self-chosen and self-directed, intrinsically motivated, guided by mental rules, imaginative, and conducted in an alert, active, but relatively non-stressed frame of mind.”

He adds:

“Children learn best when they are free to follow their own interests and are free from coercion. When children are free to play, they engage in activities that are deeply meaningful to them.”

And in the other corner we have Mindfulness expert, Jon Kabat Zinn who defines mindfulness as:

“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.” and he sometimes adds “…in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”

Dancing between carnival and mass

It’s easy to see that it’s a short hop from one to the other.

They can both be understood as natural capabilities that enable us to be fully absorbed, attuned, emotionally present, and responsive in the moment. They are ‘Ways of attending’ as Iain Mcgilchrist would have it, and go together as a conscious expression of our innate freedom.

Alas, this freedom can be suppressed by coercion, overcontrol, rigid structures and that shift our attention away from what intrinsically motivates us towards external compliance and outcomes. This is so often the story of our culture and I feel this is where playful mindfulness offers a ‘skillful means’ of helping us recognise our conditioning, and loose the bonds that capture our attention and limit our self expression.

In this sense the product of combining playfulness and mindfulness returns us to the freedom we have always had – but somehow forgotten.

The trap of seeking…seriously

When we are playful as children we are naturally mindful but here’s the rub…when we are mindful as adults we are not naturally playful.

And so our ‘spiritual practice’ can become another thing to do perfectly, a way of getting somewhere, a gradual path to somewhere else – and when we become po-faced and overserious we are truly missing something valuable: the spontaneous and ever-present awake awareness that we are.

We don’t have to go anywhere or achieve anything to experience the lightness of being.

As the Chinese sage Chuang Tzu said in The Book of Laugher & Harmony “That’s like leaving for Yueh when you’ve already arrived there.” (Translation by David Hinton)

Let’s look at the a few of the facets of this diamond of mindful play, with some stripped back points to reveal how play and mindfulness go together and reinforce each other.

Expanded presence

• Playfulness brings spontaneity and joy into the moment.
  
• Mindfulness deepens awareness of sensations in the moment.
  
• Together they invite expanded presence.

Embodiment

• Mindfulness grounds us in sensation and breath.
  
• Playfulness enlivens the body with movement, rhythm, and gesture.
  
• Together they cultivate embodied aliveness, being in this moment here & now.

Resilience

• Mindfulness helps us feel deeply without attachment.
  
• Playfulness allows for emotional expression with lightness and humour.
  
• Together they support resilience.
  

Acceptance & compassion

• Mindfulness notices inner criticism as it arises, without fusing with it.
  
• Playfulness softens perfectionism through creative risk and silliness.
  
• Together they cultivate acceptance and self-compassion (and commitment).
  

Relational connection

• Mindfulness supports attuned listening and presence with others.
  
• Playfulness fosters shared laughter, bonding, and co-creation.
  
• Together they create warm relational connections.
  

Psychological flexibility

• Mindfulness reveals the fluid, constructed nature of the self, and the paradoxical nature of reality.
  
• Playfulness lets us try on roles, voices, masks, or ideas without attachment.
  
• Together they nurture a sense of psychological flexibility.
  

Creative Insight

• Mindfulness tunes into subtle signals and patterns with steady attention.
  
• Playfulness encourages unexpected connections and improvisation.
  
• Together they create fertile ground for creative insight.
  

Generous inclusion is the foundation of unity and in a small way bringing these two concepts together is a revolutionary act. It’s certainly heretical in some quarters, which is usually a good sign.

In ancient wisdom traditions such as Taoism, Ch’an, Zen, Hinduism, Mahyana Buddhism, Dzogchen, Kashmiri Shaivism and others these ‘two things’ of mindful play with a playful mind are one and the same, a play of awareness that goes together or not at all.

The idea that presence and play, attention and activity, are separate is really a cultural artefact – a byproduct of a society that tends towards the fragmentary and reductive. Where we conjure up discreet labels for everything and keep them apart to feed the root illusion of separateness.

One of the key characteristics of flow (and everyone wants flow, right!?) is that ‘action and attention merge’ and yet we don’t question how they merge? How do two become one?

Or as Gregory Bateson put it: “It takes two to know one.”

Photo by Samantha Fortney on Unsplash