- Exuberant Animal seminar in London
Back in April Wildfitness hosted the first Exuberant Animal seminar in the UK and we got to hang out with one of our gurus, Frank Forencich. We played all day in the park and ended up feeling tired and elated at the end of the day. And sore for about 3 days afterwards too! But our bodies felt strongly loose and energised, not with that unoiled / can’t-walk-up-stairs feeling you often get from exercise. Playing, we discovered, is not just stupendous fun and deeply bonding, but also IMPORTANT for our fitness and health.
All mammals play. Carnivores play more than herbivores, young’uns play more than adults, domestic animals play more than wild ones. But it is a remarkably widely preserved evolutionary trait.
There must be something to it.
Studies show that:
- The more play behaviour displayed by an animal, the greater its chances of survival.
- Play promotes oxytocin, which is a body chemical that makes us trusting and disposed to bonding.
- Play releases BDNF (brain derived neurogenic factor) which promotes brain growth. (We are, in fact able to grow new brain cells – phew!)
Play is an important antidote to stress and people become playful when they are healthy. In fact playful behaviour is a good barometer for overall health. Playing can also be a hard workout – plus it’s functional, it captures your attention, it’s non-competitive and makes you skilful.
There should be a lot more room in life for play, more than just foreplay. And it’s not just larking about – there is a precise mix of discipline and freedom. No-one gets hurt, no-one leaves anyone else out, no-one feels silly and everyone gets a hard workout. This is serious stuff. Check out the functional fitness games on the Exuberant Animal website for a whole list of playful ideas for a workout.
We are going to take play a lot more seriously at Wildfitness from now on.
Wildfitness & Exuberant Animal playtime!
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
Plato
“The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that.”
Nagle Jackson
“The opposite of play is not work, it is depression.”
Brian Sutton-Smith
Want to see what we got up to at the Exuberant Animal seminar? Click here to check out the album of pics on Facebook.
[...] meet in playfulness, an ancient human behaviour that has all sorts of translations to health (click here for blog on Play ). Crack a joke at [...]