Guest Blogger Barb Fyvie
The Importance of Play
I have a guest blogger today.
I’m pretty excited about this because in COVID times this is like having company over. I might even have to put pants on!
Barb and I have known each other for a long time. We first met at the Science Centre as judges for the “Create an Alien” competitions they hosted. We decided to go Plein air painting together, which was the start of a wonderful friendship. I do enjoy hanging out with her and seeing what her lovely creative self is up to. She is an inspiration and I hope you enjoy her post!
I have had the pleasure of knowing Alice for over 25 years! We have enjoyed many hot summer days with our easels set up in the vivid Alberta canola fields sipping coffee and eating chocolate.
I have created a series of workshops called “JoyMakers”. These short lessons are about pressing the pause button on your day and taking a little time to focus on the process of playing with paint. I call them active meditations. They can provide the escape we all need from the troubles we face today and my students have told me they have learned a lot about themselves in the process. Since I spend a lot of time exploring new ways of playing with paint I thought I would share a few words about the value of play.
Why would we play at a time like this? Shouldn’t we be de-cluttering the basement, purging the filing cabinet, sanitizing all surfaces (again), or at the very least watching the news and washing our hands at every commercial break? Well, some of the world’s researchers on mental health say that there is no better time to play than during distressing times like these.
What is play anyway? I define play as anything we do for the joy of doing it rather than a means to an end. You hear people say, “embrace your inner child” – but what does that really mean?
Studies show that when you engage in an activity like painting you experience a state known as flow, where the brain goes into a near-meditative state. This kind of state has also been referred to as mindfulness where you become more fully aware of the present moment and allow everything else to fall away.
Happiness researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi conceived the modern concept of flow. He says in the state of flow the area of the brain responsible for higher cognition and memory (the pre-frontal cortex) is “down-regulated” and that you may experience the distortion of time, loss of self-consciousness, and loss of the inner critic. In other research, it’s been hypothesized that the flow state is related to the brain’s dopamine reward circuitry since curiosity is highly amplified during flow (Gruber, Gelman, & Ranganath, 2014). This is where the de-stressing comes in – those pesky hormones are always involved!
So here’s the bottom line, “embracing your inner child” actually means letting that kid inside you go into flow! You might have noticed lately that if you aren’t busy every moment, your mind tends to wander down that dark tunnel of anxiety. This is why we need to play more now than ever. Play is a restorative place where calm meets fun and time just disappears.
____
Do you want to give it a try? I have the perfect playtime opportunity to get you started. I have recently launched a JoyMakers class on Skillshare. It is called JoyMakers: Ignite Your Creativity Painting Kandinsky Circles. This activity is for adults and kids. Absolutely no art experience is necessary. The video is about 20 minutes long and then you can play as long as you like. Give it a try. Relax and trust your intuition and I think you’ll be surprised at the discoveries you make along the way.
I am currently offering this course for free and access to all the classes on Skillshare for free for 2 months if you signup here:
Note that you can cancel at any time so go ahead and see how many classes you can take in your 2 free months. Enjoy!
____
Barb Fyvie is a painter living in Canmore, Alberta Canada. She was born in Calgary and completed her BFA at the University of Alberta in 1984. Her work can be found in collections across Canada, in the US and Europe. Barb mentors emerging artists and teaches painting and the expressive arts. To see her work and learn more about her JoyMakers workshops click here.