I’ll never forget the time my husband decided he was going to move like a kid again. He had taken our two boys to a kid’s birthday party at an inflatable obstacle course and, without thinking twice, ­proceeded to join in and attempt a jump from one giant bouncy ball to another.

I was not at the party, but I soon learned the outcome of his exuberance: I received a call informing me he was in the ER with a fractured and dislocated shoulder.

As enticing as those oversize red balls looked, there’s a reason my ­husband was the only parent playing at the party. For many adults, running, jumping, or swinging with abandon is not only intimidating but also risky. Our ­mature bodies typically lack the stamina, mobility, and strength-to-bodyweight ratio of their childhood counterparts. That can make the prospect of revisiting ­“children’s ­activities” — sprinting, climbing, jumping rope, crossing monkey bars, and more — feel daunting. As a result, the well-intentioned advice to “just move like a kid” ­becomes easy to ignore.

Yet playful movement can be incredibly beneficial for adults. Even my husband — now fully recovered — is still a believer. Play has been shown to relieve stress, boost creativity and productivity, and strengthen relationships. Physical play can encourage you to move more and have fun while doing so.

“Playful physical activity ends up meeting more than just your body’s need for movement — it can bring you joy,” says biomechanist Katy Bowman, MS, founder of Nutritious Movement and coauthor of I Know I Should Exercise, But … : 44 Reasons We Don’t Move and How to Get Over Them (read an excerpt for Bowman’s book here). “Play is ­often associated with not being aware of how much time has passed, so playful physical activity can be easier to stick with, helping you stay physically active overall. You’re likely to do it for longer and more often.

“Playfulness is also positive, so it can be a mood booster, and that positive state of mind can linger beyond the bout of movement.”

Play is a fundamental part of ­being human, says Stuart Brown, MD, founder of the National Institute for Play. “Play is embedded in the subcortical area of brains in the instinctive survival areas. It is a part of our survival.”

Yet just because an activity has a playful reputation doesn’t necessarily mean you’re playing while doing it, explains Brown. Two people can be throwing a ball while only one is actually playing. To play requires you to  be fully engaged and unaware of the passage of time. “I think we all know when we’ve been playing,” he notes. “It’s really a state of being.”

Brown recommends pursuing ­activities that intrinsically move you toward a playful state. If you love nature, you might feel more playful while climbing a tree than while jumping rope in a gym. If tumbling was once your jam, you might feel especially playful reviving your cartwheel.

“You can usually find the kind of core joyfulness that is intrinsic to who you are,” he notes. “Finding that and putting that into your workouts — or playouts — is central to allowing play to infiltrate your being.”

Brown suggests gradually leaning into the discomfort of a movement that seems scary or doesn’t come easily to you. “Managing mild fear, in accord with realistic risk for you, is a way of improving your play life.”

Ryan Hurst, head coach and program director for GMB Fitness, agrees, noting that challenging our fears and embracing some risk can pay real dividends.

“The goal is physical autonomy — to really have freedom in your body to do things in a way that serves you,” he explains. “This is where play happens. The better you move, the better everything becomes.”

Swinging, jumping, climbing, and cartwheeling might feel different now from when you were a kid, but they can still bring you joy as an adult — and enhance your fitness. The following tips can help you safely rediscover what play means for you.

HOPSCOTCH

Playing hopscotch can offer incredible benefits by steadily improving your capacity for high-impact movements, says Mark Schneider, a Minneapolis-based strength coach and founder of The Retreat Strength Gym. Because the game offers some structure, it can also be a great way to encourage playful movement with a sense of direction and purpose.

“Structured games like hopscotch encourage focused attention on the task at hand while still allowing the body to solve problems in its own way,” Schneider explains. “There’s no emphasis on perfect form — just a simple set of constraints to guide exploration.”

HOW TO DO IT:

• Draw a hopscotch grid on the ground with chalk or scratch it into some dirt. Or, if you are doing this indoors, imagine the hopscotch grid on the floor in front of you.
• Begin hopping through the grid. If you’re using a drawn grid, land inside of each solo square on one foot and land on both feet simultaneously in the side-by-side squares. (If using an imaginary grid, alternate landing on either one or two feet with each hop forward as if you were jumping into squares.) Once you get to the end, turn around and hop back.
• Increase the challenge by tossing a flat stone or other object in one square, skipping that square as you hop. Skip a different square each round. Or try hopping through all the squares with one leg only — or hop backward through your grid. Feel free to practice solo or play with friends.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

If you struggle with balance, start small. “At its core, if you can walk, you can ‘scotch,” says Schneider. “The hopping component can be introduced over time, but the essence of the game — movement along a path with rhythm and coordination — can be accomplished through simple stepping.”

Imagine a line on the ground. Begin with your feet straddling the line, then step forward with one foot landing on the line. Follow this by stepping into a straddle position again, then step forward with the other foot on the line. Repeat this pattern: Step, straddle, step, straddle. From there, you can try increasing the speed of your steps. As your speed progresses, the movement will naturally evolve into a light hop.

JUMPING ROPE

“Jump rope offers a full-body workout that’s portable, low cost, and incredibly efficient. It improves cardiovascular health, balance, coordination, and endurance,” says jump-rope instructor Steve ­Harris, founder of JumpBeatFit. “Beyond the physical benefits, it’s a creative and joyful way to connect with others and rediscover a sense of play.”

For adults, the biggest challenges may include managing impact and coordinating jumps with the timing of the rope.

SPRINTING

As a kid, you didn’t have to learn to sprint — you just did it, whether chasing down a soccer ball or before sliding into second base. But no adult wants to pull a hammie trying to be a hero.

If you’re out of practice, go easy on yourself. Sprinting can be as low-key as playing Red Light, Green Light with your kids, says Kim Alexander, a strength coach and yoga instructor who specializes in natural/primal movement. Once you get more comfortable with picking up the pace, you can gradually challenge yourself with more speedwork.

MONKEY BARS

For an adult, navigating the monkey bars can be challenging — not just because you’re bigger than your kid self but also ­because you’ve likely ­accumulated some movement baggage over the years. “To start it as an adult typically takes more than just doing it, especially if years of shoulder, neck, and arm tension have created patterns of wear on your ligaments and left you with some major muscle atrophy,” says Bowman.

If it’s been years since you’ve swung across a jungle gym, she adds, start with hanging progressions and gradually work toward monkey-bar mastery.

HOW TO DO IT:

• Start by gripping the first bar with your leading hand. Use momentum to begin swinging your body forward.
• As the opposite side of your body swings forward, reach that arm to the next bar.
• Gently swing your body backward, then use the momen­tum from your backswing to generate your next swing forward. Continue alternat­ing arms.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

Most people aren’t going to be able to traverse the monkey bars without building up strength and endurance. Bowman recommends the following progressions.

• Practice hanging from a bar with both feet on the ground, using your legs as much or as little as you need them. Try to hang without letting your shoulder blades pop up toward your ears.
• Once you can hang without support and with active shoulder blades, practice a two-handed swing, continuing to keep your shoulder blades down.
• Practice “shuffling” across a bar or the sides of the monkey bars, shifting your weight from one hand to the other as you move sideways.
• When you can hang from a single hand for a moment, try doing the monkey bars hand over hand, taking one rung at a time. Start by hanging with both hands. Then reach one hand to the next rung, and bring up the other one beside it. Take turns with your reaching arm.

Whether you’re doing spinal rocks, over-the-shoulder “ninja” rolls, or somersaults straight out of a gymnastics class, rolling backward and forward can strengthen your core and improve your spatial awareness. “One benefit is the incredible amount of proprioception you develop when upside down and rotating,” Alexander says.

Yet rolling can feel intimidating if you haven’t done it in a while. Alexander recommends starting with the backward shoulder roll.

HOW TO DO IT:

• Start in a crouched seated position on a slightly cushioned surface, such as a gymnastics mat.
• Engage your core by drawing your abdominal muscles toward your spine as you roll backward, bringing your legs back and over your left shoulder. Place your right hand on the ground next to your head to help support your roll.
• Touch your feet to the ground as you continue to roll over.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

The most challenging aspect of rolling is keeping your body in a tucked position throughout the movement, says Alexander. To practice, start in a seated position, hold the front of your shins, round your back, and tuck your chin. Hold this position for up to 30 seconds while keeping your core engaged. Then try the same thing while lying on your back, holding the backs of your thighs and bringing your forehead to your knees. Once you can do this, practice bringing your legs over one shoulder and then lowering them back to the ground with control.

CARTWHEEL

Whereas your 6-year-old niece might make cartwheeling look easy, the act of holding your body up with your hands as you turn yourself upside down and return to your feet might be a trial. Not only do adults have more body to move, but they also tend to be less flexible.

Add to this the fear of getting hurt, and it’s easy to give up on cartwheels altogether. But if you start with the most basic cartwheel progression and gradually build it up, you can improve strength and mobility while also overcoming your fears, says Hurst.

HOW TO DO IT:

• Imagine a line that points in the direction you wish to cartwheel. Start by placing your front, or lead, foot on that line, pointing toward the other end of the line.
• Reach your lead hand up in the air, point your palm in the same direction as your lead foot, and reach your opposite hand out to your side.
• Reaching with your lead hand and hinging at your hips, place your lead hand on the line, followed by your opposite hand, as you kick your legs over one at a time. Try to keep your legs as straight as possible, and lock out your arms. Land with your feet on the other side of where you placed your hands, and return to a tall standing position.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

If it’s been years since you attempted a cartwheel, start by squatting low to the ground and placing your hands, one at a time, on the floor at one side of your body. Push into your arms and lock them out as you kick your feet over to the other side of your hands. Don’t worry about keeping your legs straight or bringing them up too high.

Gradually practice bringing your butt higher off the ground and eventually straightening your legs. Side-bending stretches, wrist-conditioning exercises, and hip-mobility work can all improve your range of ­motion.

This article originally appeared as “Child’s Play for Adults” in the July/August 2025 issue of Experience Life. Illustrations by: Kveta.

A few years ago, Catherine Price had a minor crisis. She was sitting on her couch, in the middle of a 24-hour break from screens, and her young daughter was napping. She could do whatever she wanted.

“I had a glorious free hour in front of me — and I realized that without any screens to fill my time, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she recalls. “And I totally freaked out.”

Price was shocked to find that somewhere between graduate school and this moment, she’d forgotten how to have fun.

So she asked herself a question she’d posed to research subjects for her book on screen addiction: What’s something you say you want to do but supposedly don’t have time for?

“My answer was, Learn to play the guitar,” Price says.

After several weeks of guitar classes, she sensed a change in herself. “The lessons gave me this boost of energy, this feeling of nourishment, that really ­carried through for the whole week.”

One dictionary definition of fun is “lighthearted pleasure or enjoyment,” yet the lessons had a deeper, more lasting impact on Price. She decided to give a name to what she’d felt each week at guitar class: true fun.

Since then, she’s made fun her mission — and, being a journalist, her new research project. Her most recent book is The Power of Fun, and her Substack newsletter is called How to Feel Alive.

Most of us know what true fun feels like — a buoyant, joyful, sometimes silly energy. It connects us to the present moment. It can arise during a belly laugh or a goofy Zumba class. It can show up in quiet moments of concentration during shared activities, such as assembling a puzzle.

Like a refreshing breeze, true fun is mostly visible in its effects: We feel better after experiencing it than we did before.

So why do we so often neglect to make time for fun? This is what some experts think is behind the abandonment.

Fun as Foundation

Most adults have been misled about fun. We’ve been taught that it’s a waste of time or something we deserve only once we’ve accomplished enough of the hard stuff.

But fun is not frivolous. Silliness and joy are good for your health, your relationships, and even your career.

“Those who incorporate fun into their lives are not just happier in the moment,” says Mike Rucker, PhD, a behavioral scientist and organizational psychologist who writes about the science of fun in his book, The Fun Habit. “They are also better at pursuing long-term objectives, balancing their emotional states, and nurturing their mental health.”

Fun gives us more than immediate gratification, he adds. It helps us build “a foundation for a more fulfilled, balanced, and resilient life.”

Yet many of us feel as Price once did: We’re no longer sure where to start.

Fun often comes easily to us as children, when we typically have fewer responsibilities. As we grow older and have more obligations, however, many of us become vulnerable to a stringent work ethic, Rucker says. “This tired cultural norm emphasizes hard work, discipline, and frugality, often at the expense of well-being.”

Some cultures are more vulnerable to this type of thinking than others — American culture being one of them. A 2022 poll conducted for the American Psychological Association found that 27 percent of Americans are “so stressed they can’t function,” a likely indicator that life has become all work and no play.

Still, observes Price, if we make it a habit to seek out playfulness, connection, and flow, we are on our way to having more true fun.

Find Your Fun

If you feel like you really don’t know where to find fun in your life, try setting a modest stretch goal that pushes you out of your comfort zone, Congdon suggests. It doesn’t even have to be something that sounds especially fun; you’re seeking the satisfaction that comes from pursuing a new skill. Then you can build on that feeling of full engagement.

“So, rather than put too much pressure on the result, focus on the process that leads to the result,” he says. “That’s much easier to control, and it’s going to result in the outcomes that you want.”

You can also do what Price calls a “fun audit.” Conjure up some memories of playful, silly, engaging experiences, then write down the ones that stand out.

These don’t need to be profound. One of Price’s interview subjects shared a memory of going out in the rain with their grandfather when they were a child, no umbrellas. They allowed themselves to get soaked. “I love that,” she says, “because it shows how fun can be mundane but also deeply meaningful.”

You might also write about the last time you laughed hard, smiled so much that your face hurt, or felt really alive. Where were you? Who was there? What were you doing?

As you start to build out your own personal fun history on paper, search for themes. Most likely, you’ll find some activities surfacing repeatedly — certain people and settings too.

Price calls those activities, people, and places your “fun magnets,” and they’re clues to your own personal “fun type.” Understanding what type of fun appeals to you makes it easier to find more of it and to take a pass on ­activities that you know won’t light you up. (For more information about fun types, take the quiz at What’s Your Fun Personality Type?)

In addition to fun magnets, we all seem to have “fun factors” as well. These are the characteristics that make certain things feel fun to us, she explains, and each of us has a different collection.

Maybe you’re drawn to physical activities, like dancing or playing sports, or to intellectual ones, like Scrabble or witty wordplay. Maybe you have the most fun when you’re in nature or while cooking or eating with people you love.

Finally, Price suggests cultivating a fun mindset. This is less about identifying preferences and more about opening yourself to possibilities. A fun mindset helps you seek chances to “create — or appreciate — humor, absurdity, playfulness, connection, and flow,” she writes.

It also enables you to have fun in nearly any context. “I’ve had fun in doctor’s appointments,” Price says. “You [can have fun] chatting with an Uber driver or in other random moments.”

In short, knowing ourselves and what we enjoy can help us have more fun. We don’t have to wait for permis­sion or perfect conditions either. Playful, connected, engaged fun can almost always coexist with whatever else we have going on. We just need to be willing to drop our guard and let it in.

What Is Fake Fun?

Phone scrolling, binge watching, and needless online shop­ping are all examples of what author Catherine Price calls fake fun. These “fun impostors” can be tricky, because we associate them with relaxation, and we may very well lose track of time while we’re doing them. But fake fun is really just spacing out.

That’s fine if it’s what you mean to do, Price says, but spacing out won’t satisfy your soul the way true fun will. Fake fun is likely to leave you drained and dull, while true fun makes you feel energized and renewed.

We have skillful engineers to thank for how much of our time gets consumed by fake fun. Social media apps, including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, are designed to hold our attention. Scrolling has no automatic off-ramp. Likes and other notifications give us quick dopamine hits, convincing us that whatever is on the screen is more reward­ing than what’s in the room.

All of this amounts to a state of distraction, which goes hand in hand with disconnection. MIT professor Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation, has pointed out how leaving a cellphone out on a table during a meal is likely to prevent the conversation from going too deep — when we know we can be interrupted at any moment, we stick to shallower topics.

“True fun and distraction are like oil and water,” Price adds.

She shares plenty of strategies for reclaiming your attention in a previous book, How to Break Up With Your Phone, such as putting a rubber band around your phone to make it more noticeable when you pick it up. You can also remove time-sucking apps from the home screen.

Overall, anything you can do to remain present — including noticing when you grab your phone to distract yourself — can help you stay in control of your own attention.

(For more ideas on how to break free from tech, visit “How to Break Free of Tech Addiction.”)

This article originally appeared as “Joie de Vivre!” in the July/August 2024 issue of Experience Life.

Play might seem like a pretty lightweight topic for mental health. Yet play is an active form of fun, and fun is an essential element of joy. Joy, in turn, helps fuel our inner lives.

Nobody can function well without adequate fuel — we all need good food, clean water, fresh air. Similarly, our inner selves require joy to thrive, and play is a direct route to that state.

Of course, there are obstacles: You feel too busy, too burdened, too preoccupied with seemingly more important things. Most of us can talk ourselves out of play pretty fast.

By the time I (Henry) was 16, I felt and acted a lot like a 50-year-old man. I was laser-focused on academic success, so I learned to set fun and play aside — to delay gratification.

On the positive side, delaying gratification later helped me survive my medical training. But it also turned me into a workaholic who was ready to defer joy indefinitely.

We think workaholism is best described as an amnesia where one completely forgets how to play. But I found my way back to it, and so can you.

Rediscovering Play

After years of all work and no play, I discovered mindfulness practices. These gave me enough self-awareness to become a witness to my own life. I saw how avoiding play had kept me from being “in flow” and able to enjoy myself. I could tell something inside me was stuck.

We all know this feeling: It’s like a blockage. Every time we refuse to loosen up, when we cling to our seriousness and urgency, we’re rein­forcing that block and refusing to let it go.

When we play, we stop clinging to these obstacles. We make room for the feeling of joy — and this frees us.

By “free,” we don’t mean free to do whatever we want. We mean free to be our true selves.

We’re convinced one of the most profound aspects of play is its relationship with authenticity. The more playful we are, the better we feel in our own skin, and the more easily we can let go of pressures to perform.

This allows us to show up as we really are. As monk and theologian Thomas Merton wrote, “Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ­ambition is to be what I already am.”

This is how play helps us become more fully ourselves. We are all more than the roles we play in our professions and families, and play helps us remember who we are and what brings us joy.

Finding Your Playful Nature

A Morning Meditation From Aimee Prasek, PhD

Close your eyes. Gradually turn your attention inward. Become aware of your breathing and the sensations of your body. Allow any tension you’re holding to leave your body.

Now think of a time you felt playful.

It may be an activity you enjoyed as a kid or a game you played recently with your children or pets. If you don’t have specific memories, try to recall the last time you laughed really hard.

Go over all the details in your mind. What did it feel like to be playful? Who were you with? What were you doing?

Now think about the day ahead and allow this playful feeling to emerge. If you allowed yourself to be a little more playful, how would the day unfold? What would you do differently? How would you feel?

Imagine yourself maintaining this playful feeling throughout your day. Do you have more energy? How do your interactions feel? How would you respond to a stressful surprise?

Set an intention to become more playful, exuberant, loving, joyful, spontaneous, humorous. Take time to absorb any feelings or images you experience.

When you’re ready, open your eyes. Sit quietly for a few moments and enjoy the feeling. Maybe you feel more peaceful, less anxious. Take that sense of play into the rest of your day. Let it make your life a little lighter.

This article originally appeared as “Hit Play” in the May/June 2023 issue of Experience Life.