A short introduction...
Living in the modern world can feel like a constant struggle to enforce happiness in barely manageable situations. We pursue mindfulness and release of stress in the hope to get happy, to find relief or meaning. The Play of Now offers accessible and far-reaching approaches to that struggle. It addresses the centre of the problem by paying attention to the way we engage with our experience and the world around us.
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The Play of Now works not just from a basis of good and helpful ideas, but investigates direct experience in interactive physical exercises and training. Participants discover their own unfolding, like the magical play of a kaleidoscope, new facets of themselves being revealed in relation to others and the world around.
A longer introduction...
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The Play of Now creates opportunities for people to dwell more and more in the present moment, offering programmes in the areas of personal training, for work or at play. When we notice the present moment, the first thing we recognise is that it is already past! How short it is! How quickly is it replaced by the next and the next …. Does that matter? After all, there is always the next one ...
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Often the above questions are relevant for people who are interested in meditation, Eastern religion or spiritual practice. The Play of Now is rooted in this ancient research. Bringing those practices together with techniques drawn from drama, dance and improvisation, people are given tools to identify and let go of what stands in the way, and discover how the next rich and unique moment arises from the present one, without us needing to do anything.
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The metaphor of ‘play’ is maybe a good way to look at this. Within play a child (or adult) is fully engaged; body and imagination of all come together to create a world everyone inhabits for that moment. There is a naturalness and ease to this, yet it involves focused attention, full commitment, dedicated energy and a recognition that everybody’s contribution is needed.
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The Play of Now creates more sensitivity for the interdependence that takes place between inner and outer events, and helps us to directly experience the unfolding of our lives, amidst other people, animals, and the entire world around us. We learn to listen, respond, delight in the interplay between ourselves and others, as they are in the moment - always new, like light sparkling on the ocean for a moment only.
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The principles of listening, sensitivity, awareness, noticing are vital in all areas of life and work. We can practice them in the different offers made by The Play of Now:
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Improvisation, always starts with listening: we listen to our own body and feel how it moves. We sense, how a stretch or an imbalance brings with it various shifts or physical adjustments. We notice how certain positions are more open, or closed, how they seem to carry or express a mood, or invoke an emotion, image, sounds, words. In the same way, we notice how our own action might be taken up by someone else. We are always visible. What we do matters.
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Clown teaches us about the unique qualities that we bring to the world, and how they become apparent in our fallibility, and through that, reveal our very own poetry.
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Meditation is the direct engagement with our ever-moving mind, the opportunity for deep listening within.
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Travel is an extension to the programme, which enables us to see how our familiar surroundings and ways of living are limited in their way. Travel gives us the possibility to become new and unknown to ourselves, in interaction with what we see as 'foreign'.
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