Play Through the Madness

Finding spaciousness in serious times

In a world that often feels too heavy to hold, where the realities of health, identity, loss, and global overwhelm press in from every direction.

Play might seem misplaced. Even frivolous.

But again and again in my clinic, I see something remarkable:
The power of play is not just a balm, it’s a deeply regulating, energetically transformative force.

Clients often reflect that what surprises them most about our work is how it feels “serious but light at once”.

We meet the deep stuff; the hormonal chaos, grief, rage, exhaustion, life transitions. But there’s something else alive in the space:

Playfulness.
Spaciousness.
A flicker of levity, when it’s least expected.

And here’s why that matters:

In Chinese Medicine, we call it Qi stagnation when energy becomes stuck.
From chronic stress, emotional suppression, overthinking, under-feeling — life becomes tight, hot, restless, and blocked.
It shows up in the mood swings, irritability, fatigue, physical tension, the sense that you’re trapped in your own skin.

But Qi needs movement. Because Qi is the life-force. If it's not moving - we are in trouble!

And one of the most under-recognised antidotes to stagnation?

Play.

Not distraction.
Not bypass.
But the kind of spontaneous movement — emotional, physical, energetic — that allows the system to shake loose what has hardened or calcified.

Play softens what feels too rigid to touch.
It brings oxygen into suffocated spaces.
It lets the body breathe again.

I often think of the Dalai Lama, a figure who carries enormous gravitas — yet laughs often and easily. His Tibetan Buddhist lineage shares deep resonance with Taoist principles. He embodies the wisdom of yin yang — the sacred dance of opposing forces. He models how light must sit beside darkness, how grief and laughter can share the same breath, how we can bow to the shadow without collapsing into it.

And maybe that’s the point:
True wisdom doesn’t require heaviness.
In fact, it often arrives more clearly through lightness.

Through the Taoist lens — which informs the foundations of Chinese Medicine — life is never one thing. Everything is both/and.
Joy and sorrow.
Stillness and movement.
Masculine and feminine.
Holding and releasing.

Rising and falling.

When we hold to only what’s “appropriate,” we suppress the full flow of Qi.
But when we allow contradiction — when we honour the shadow and the spark — healing happens.

This is why I bring play into the work.
Not because it’s cute.
But because it’s vital.

The body, like a child, needs permission to express, Most of us weren’t even allowed then!
To feel — and allow it to move.
To dance, to shake, to laugh inappropriately, to make sound, to be ridiculous, to be real.

Play unblocks the system.
It releases held emotion.
It brings warmth to cold places, breath to held spaces, and movement to what has become rigid.

So if the world feels like too much, if your body feels like a container too tight to live in...
Start here: move, shake, laugh. Let something shift.

We don’t have to be serious all the time to be healing.
We don’t have to stay stuck to prove how hard it’s been.

Sometimes, play is the most radical act of freedom we have.

Big Love, Anny 🤸🏽