Practice of Play
Play is important across all areas of life. Discover how we can prioritize play and show up to the world through the lens of playfulness.
Play in the workplace is often misunderstood. It’s seen as distraction from overall performance rather than a driver of it. In a professional context, play is not a lack of professionalism. It is not always about entertainment or stepping away from work. It should look like the creation of conditions where people can think more flexibly, connect more authentically, and perform more sustainably.
The science of play in the workplace tells us a vastly different story than the stereotype of play in the workplace. Across neuroscience, psychology, and organizational research, play is increasingly recognized as a practical, evidence-based lever for improving how people think, collaborate, and perform at work.
Modern workplaces are under strain. Leaders are navigating rising rates of
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Burnout and stress
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Declining engagement and connection
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Increasing complexity and pace of change.
Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that one in six people report experiencing loneliness. Gallup estimates workplace disengagement is estimated to cost the U.S. economy $1.9 trillion annually.
At the same time, organizations are asking teams to be more creative, more adaptive, more collaborative, than ever before.
These are not separate challenges. They are deeply connected. Play is what sits at the definite center.
From a biological and cognitive standpoint, play supports those very same capacities modern work demands. The play state
- Enhances creativity and innovation: play increases cognitive flexibility, allowing individuals to generate new ideas and see connections others miss.
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Improves learning and problem-solving: play empowers trial-and-error learning in low-risk conditions, accelerating skill development and insight.
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Provides stress regulation: play helps downshift the brain from chronic stress states, improving clarity, decision-making, and emotional balance.
- Builds connection and trust: Play activates social bonding systems, strengthening relationships & psychological safety within teams.
Research highlighted in Harvard Business Review shows that creativity and breakthrough thinking are more likely to emerge in play states — where the mind is relaxed and playful — and not when put under sustained pressure or rigid control.
When play is consistently absent, teams can become more rigid, transactional, and depleted, which in turn makes innovation and sustained performance much more challenging to achieve.
The future of work will not be powered by efficiency alone. It will depend on human capabilities—creativity, connection, adaptability—that are fundamentally supported by play.
Play is not frivolous.
It is foundational to how people—and organizations—perform at their best.
Play in the workplace is not about distraction or entertainment. Rather, it is about creating conditions where people can function at their best. This includes designing environments that invite spontaneity and interaction, building moments of informal connection into employees’ workdays, encouraging experimentation without fear of failure or punishment, and allowing space for humor, curiosity, and exploration.
These are not “soft” interventions. They can directly influence how teams think, communicate, and adapt.
Organizations that understand this aren’t lowering their standards; they’re raising capacity. They are cultivating more adaptive teams, stronger collaboration, greater creativity under pressure, and healthier, more sustainable performance.
Play is not a break from work. It is a biological mechanism that strengthens the human systems work depends on.
Within families, play is so much more than simple recreation. It is a primary vehicle for development, connection, and relationship-building across generations.
Dr. Stuart Brown often emphasizes that play is one of the most fundamental ways that humans connect, learn, and build relationships throughout their lifespan. Within families, play becomes like a shared language — one that allows for expression, repair, and reconnection without pressure or performance.
Play is essential to development because it supports cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being across the lifespan. It also offers one of the most powerful opportunities for parents and caregivers to fully and meaningfully engage with their children.
A widely cited clinical report — American Academy of Pediatrics: The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development — highlights that, despite its benefits, free play has declined due to the hurried lifestyles, increased academic pressures, and reduced unstructured time in our modern world. The report urges pediatricians and communities alike to actively protect play as a critical component of healthy development and family life.
Play is not just good for children, it strengthens the entire family system. It
- Builds secure attachment and trust between parent and child
- Creates shared experiences that deepen connection and communication
- Supports emotional regulation for both children and adults
- Reduces stress and introduces moments of joy and lightness into daily life
Neuroscience and relational perspectives also attest to why play among families matters, as studies show that play creates a state of mutual engagement and attunement, reinforcing the bonds that help families navigate both everyday life and periods of stress.
Stuart Brown often emphasizes that play is a primary way humans connect, learn, and build relationships across the lifespan. Within families, play becomes a shared language—one that allows for expression, repair, and reconnection without pressure or performance.
When families play together, they are not stepping away from what matters—they are investing directly in the relationships that shape development, resilience, and well-being.
Play in families does not need to be structured or elaborate. It can be as simple as:
- Shared laughter or storytelling
- Playing a game or making something together
- Outdoor exploration or physical play
- Following a child’s lead in imaginative or spontaneous activity
What matters most is not the activity itself, but the quality of presence and connection it creates.
Play helps families stay connected, adaptable, and resilient.
In a world that increasingly pulls attention away from one another, play brings it back—creating the conditions for children and caregivers alike to grow, relate, and thrive together. With this in mind, paradoxically, we also need to acknowledge a shift in less free play for children in family (and other) settings.
A Cultural Shift Toward Encouraging Independence
Children today are growing up in a world with less freedom to play than previous generations. At the same time, rates of anxiety, depression, and disengagement have increased. Advocates like Lenore Skenazy, through Let Grow, have worked to restore childhood independence by helping families and schools reintroduce free play and real-world responsibility. Their website is filled with practical tools.
Similarly, Jonathan Haidt, through his research and writing on youth mental health, has highlighted the link between declining independence, increased screen time, and rising mental health challenges among young people. His efforts are resulting in massive public-policy swings aimed at limiting the use of smartphones in an effort to reclaim playful childhood and adolescence.
Together, this work reinforces a core scientific insight: children need unstructured, unsupervised, real-world experiences to develop into resilient, capable adults. Prescribing play is not a metaphor—it is an emerging clinical response to a real problem.
A practical starting point for families: free downloadable pamphlet on play and independence.
Play is not a break from learning; play is learning. Across developmental psychology, neuroscience, and education research, play is consistently shown to be a powerful mechanism for building knowledge, memory, skills, and capacity in children, adolescents, and adults.
From a scientific perspective, play creates the optimal conditions for learning to occur. It is:
- Intrinsically motivated → students engage more deeply
- Actively engaging → learning is experienced, not just received
- Iterative → trial, error, and adjustment are built in
- Emotionally positive → which strengthens memory and retention
Peter Gray emphasizes that play is nature’s way of ensuring children acquire the skills they need to thrive. When children direct their own play, they are not “off task”—they are practicing problem-solving, social negotiation, self-regulation, and creativity in real time.
Across disciplines highlighted on this site, the findings converge:
- Play strengthens neural pathways associated with learning and memory
- It supports executive function (focus, planning, self-control)
- It builds social and emotional skills essential for collaboration
- It increases engagement and motivation, key drivers of academic success
As explored in our broader science sections, play activates systems in the brain that support exploration, flexibility, and adaptation—all essential for meaningful learning.
Different educational and research traditions arrive at the same conclusion from different angles:
Self-Directed, Playful Learning (Peter Gray)
- Children learn best when they have agency and ownership
- Play allows them to follow curiosity and develop intrinsic motivation
- Mixed-age and collaborative play builds real-world social competence
Playful Learning in Higher Education (Lisa Forbes)
- Play creates psychological safety, making it easier to take risks and learn
- It supports whole-person learning—cognitive, emotional, and relational
Playful environments increase engagement, belonging, and meaning.
Play in the classroom does not mean a lack of structure. It means designing environments where students of all ages can:
- Explore concepts through hands-on, experiential learning
- Engage in imaginative and creative processes
- Collaborate and learn from one another
- Test ideas, make mistakes, and iterate
- Feel safe to participate fully without fear of judgment
These conditions are not ancillary—they are central to effective education.
Traditional models often position learning as the transfer of information.
Play-based approaches recognize learning as an active, embodied process.
When play is integrated into education:
- Students are more engaged and motivated
- Learning is more durable and transferable
- Classrooms become more adaptive and human-centered
By creating space for play in the classroom, we are not lowering academic rigor—we are aligning education with how humans naturally develop, learn, and thrive.
For healthcare providers, play is not about making serious work less serious. It is about restoring the human capacities that make healing possible. In healthcare contexts, play encompasses experiences that are playful, relational, and low-stakes — humor, spontaneity, lightheartedness, and creative connections — that help providers and patients reach a state of safety and openness.
For providers looking for a play-specific perspective in healthcare, see the work of Caroline P. Cárdenas, whose work connects play, compassion, and helping professionals.
Health care providers work under sustained stress, emotional load, and high stakes. In that context, play can seem secondary. The broader literature suggests the opposite: playful, relational, low-stakes experiences can support stress regulation, empathy, communication, and flexibility – capacities that caregiving depends on. Burnout is also tied to patient safety and quality of care, making provider well-being a clinical issue, not just a personal one (AHRQ).
For a play-specific lens, see Caroline P. Cárdenas (internal link), whose work connects play, compassion, and helping professionals.
The broader research base is also worth exploring. For example, research on medical clowning in health care settings highlights how playful, human-centered interactions can reduce tension and support connection in clinical environments.
NIFPlay Board Member Emeritus Bowen F. White, MD, has long translated this idea into practice through medicine, humor, and clowning. In his work, he demonstrates how play and playfulness intersect with healing and well-being, bringing this approach into hospitals, hospices, refugee camps, rehabilitation centers, and other high-need settings around the world. American Journal of Play interview, “Play, Healing, and Wellness as Seen by a Physician Who Clowns”.
His work also sits within a broader tradition of physician-clowning and compassionate care associated with Patch Adams and the Gesundheit! Institute, where clowning has been used in hospitals and underserved communities internationally.
Play and Healing
The work of Dr. Stephen Porges, Dr. David Hanscom, and Dr. David Clawson helps explain how and why play matters in healing. Porges’s Polyvagal Theory shows that safety, social engagement, and connection are foundational to recovery. Hanscom and Clawson likewise identify play as a key pathway out of threat and into safety into healing.
Part of these efforts includes helping patients understand their play styles and how to activate them. NIFPlay is working toward incorporating play into the patient journey at all levels, including prevention, intake, care design, and healing modalities.
A growing movement in pediatrics and mental health is simple but powerful: physicians are prescribing play. Not as recreation—but as a primary intervention for children’s well-being.
Clinical and research guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (The Power of Play) affirms that play is essential to healthy brain development, emotional regulation, and social competence. Complementing this, research published in the Journal of Pediatrics—Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being—links the decline of free, independent activity to rising rates of anxiety and depression in children.
In practice, this means encouraging what scientists call free play: self-chosen, self-directed activity that allows children to explore, take risks, and learn through experience. Increasingly, clinicians are also recommending Independence Activities (IAs)—age-appropriate opportunities for children to do things on their own—as a way to build confidence and resilience.
1. It Builds Intimacy
Play creates a safe emotional space where partners can express themselves more freely. Light teasing, shared humor, and spontaneous moments of fun help deepen trust and vulnerability.
As Leslie Baxter found, playful interaction allows couples to explore closeness while maintaining individuality (Baxter, 1992).
Complementing this, the work of Assael and Galit Romanelli highlights how playfulness helps partners move out of rigid interaction patterns and into more authentic, flexible connection — where new emotional responses and relational possibilities can emerge.
2. It Helps Navigate Conflict
Playfulness can shift the tone of difficult moments. When partners introduce humor or creativity into tension, it can reduce defensiveness and create a sense of “we’re in this together.”
Research shows that playful interaction is linked to lower stress and improved communication during conflict (Aune & Wong, 2002).
The Romanellis’ work reinforces this: play interrupts repetitive cycles in relationships, allowing couples to re-pattern interactions and respond differently in moments that would otherwise escalate.
3. It Sustains Attraction and Energy
Couples who play together tend to experience more joy, novelty, and satisfaction. Play introduces variation and openness, helping relationships stay dynamic rather than routine (Metz & McCarty, 2007).
More recent research also highlights how everyday playful exchanges contribute to ongoing relationship quality and connection over time (Gold, Timmons, et al., 2024).
From a scientific standpoint, play supports the same systems in relationships as it does elsewhere:
- Social bonding and trust
- Emotional regulation
- Flexibility and perspective-taking
It allows partners to move fluidly between seriousness and lightness—an essential capacity in long-term relationships.
You don’t have to be naturally outgoing or “funny” to benefit from play. Playfulness is a way of engaging, not a fixed trait.
It can be as simple as:
- Sharing a private joke
- Sending a lighthearted message
- Turning a routine moment into something unexpected
- Being willing to be a little less guarded
- Saying 'yes' to new adventures together
Play is not an extra in relationships—it is part of what sustains them.
It creates connection, eases tension, and keeps relationships alive, flexible, and human. Even small moments of lightheartedness can deepen closeness and strengthen the bond between people.