Discover practical tools for personal leadership training for healthcare professionals— learning how playfulness can expand your capacity, support nervous system regulation, and build resilience in high-pressure settings.
Why Play Matters More Than We Think
Working in high pressure settings can leave us feeling like seriousness is part of the dress code.
And in healthcare, where lives are on the line, that can be the case even more so. Moving from patient to patient, chart to chart, making one decision after another — all with the weight of responsibility, urgency, and limited time. Even your breaks can feel… serious. So the idea of play may feel out of place, maybe even unprofessional.
And here’s the paradox:
It’s often in the moments when we most need play — playfulness — that we become the most serious.
Deadlines, difficult interactions, staffing shortages, long shifts . . . all of it narrows your focus and contracts your body. Tight shoulders. Shallow breath. A crease between your brows. A mind that may feel laser-focused but at the same time, drained. Or worse, you’re having difficulty focusing and everything seems to take twice as long.
But play is not the opposite of professionalism: Play is a resource that expands your bandwidth so you can meet pressure with clarity instead of collapse.
It’s often in the moments we most need playfulness
that we become the most serious.
Deadlines, difficult interactions, staffing shortages, long shifts . . . all of it narrows your focus and contracts your body. Tight shoulders. Shallow breath. A crease between your brows. A mind that may feel laser-focused but at the same time, drained. Or worse, you’re having difficulty focusing and everything seems to take twice as long.
But play is not the opposite of professionalism: Play is a resource that expands your bandwidth so you can meet pressure with clarity instead of collapse.
What Happens in the Body When We Shift From Seriousness to Play
In our most recent Embodiment Lab, we explored the embodied difference between seriousness and playfulness. Not conceptually — but as a lived experience.
- Participants described seriousness as:
“Like an armor I put on.” - “Angular, pointed, closed in.”
- “My neck and shoulders tense, my breathing shallow.”
- “It’s like I put on my metaphorical white coat.”
And play?
- “Lighter, more open, hopeful.”
- “My breath deepens.”
- “I see more, not less.”
- “I feel supported rather than braced.”
The difference was immediate — visible in posture, energy, and presence.
Here’s what matters: Play opens your perceptual field. Seriousness narrows it.
That narrowing may feel productive, but it can drain your system quickly. Neuroscience backs this up: playful states increase cognitive flexibility, curiosity, attention, and emotional resilience — all critical capacities in high pressure settings such as healthcare.
Using Challenges as Your Playground
A core inquiry from the Lab was:
How can challenges become a place for play — an opening for practicing your own values rather than fight against the moment?
One participant shared:
“There’s a colleague who really annoys me sometimes. But I realized I could use interactions with her to practice my values. It actually became fun to see how I was doing — what I noticed, how I shifted.”
And that’s the heart of the practice. Using play to reframe difficult situations as opportunities rather than threats.
When you approach challenges with a fixed mindset (“this shouldn’t be happening”), your system contracts. With a growth mindset (“what can I practice here?”), your system opens.
Which one conserves energy for the long haul? Which one expands your agency?
When Seriousness Takes Over the Body
Every lab involves Embodied Exploration® and in this one we investigated what happens when we intentionally step into the embodied feeling of seriousness. We first turned toward one direction and invited seriousness in, allowing our bodies to respond.
The shift was unmistakable. Our bodies got tighter. Our breath, shorter. The field of vision narrowed. One person shared, “It was like bracing myself — my shoulders rose, everything pulled inward.” And another: “My whole system contracted from head to toe.”
When we turned in the opposite direction, connecting to playfulness, the contrast was immediate. Movement returned. Breathing softened. There was more openness, more awareness of detail, but without the heaviness of needing to control it.
Someone described it as, “I felt gravity differently — like I could stand taller without trying.” Another added, “My system became softer and more curious. Even my eyes relaxed.”
These weren’t mental shifts — they were whole-body shifts. The body tells the truth of the situation long before the mind catches up.
A Surprising Shift: How a Moment of Play Changes Everything
Later in the Lab, a playful moment changed the entire atmosphere — and the internal experience of many participants.
After reconnecting with a situation that felt serious or heavy, we introduced something unexpected. Nothing structured or “exercise-like,” just a light hop that gently disrupted the body’s seriousness.
What previously felt dense or overwhelming suddenly felt more workable.
- “It became lighter, almost manageable,” one person shared.
- “I saw things I hadn’t noticed before,” another said.
- “I didn’t want to go back into the serious direction — my body resisted it,” someone admitted.
Even a few seconds of embodied play created spaciousness, new options, and a sense of ease. Not because the situation changed — but because the state changed.
It was a living example of something neuroscience tells us clearly: playful movement increases flexibility in the brain, expands attention, and softens the grip of stress.
Play doesn’t erase seriousness. It transforms how we meet it.
Why We Need Play as Healthcare Professionals
In high pressure systems like healthcare, culture tends to reward productivity, precision, performance, hyper-responsibility, and perfectionism
And this makes sense. Often the stakes are high.
But the cost is real: We forget the parts of ourselves that restore aliveness, creativity, connection, and self alignment.
Play supports a nervous system download creating:
- more bandwidth to handle stress
- more emotional flexibility
- more capacity to connect with patients and colleagues
- more resilience in high-pressure settings
- more sustainability throughout long work cycles
This isn’t frivolous. Play is fuel. And in a profession facing record levels of burnout, we need every resource we can reclaim.
Bringing Play Into Your Workday
Play doesn’t require extra time — only tiny openings. Try sprinkling play into your day:
- Wiggle your toes before entering a patient’s room.
- Let your breath become 5% more spacious while charting.
- Lighten your gaze when walking down the hallway.
- Softly touch the air around you with your fingertips between tasks.
- Allow a hint of humor or curiosity into a difficult interaction.
These small movements can restore the nervous system faster than you’d expect.
They build the muscle of shifting from react-ability to response-ability — the foundation of embodied leadership.
The Takeaway
Seriousness has its place. But so does play.
And play is not the opposite of responsibility — it’s a vital resource that helps you meet responsibility with steadiness, creativity, and clarity. In the end, play reconnects you with the part of yourself that is spacious, adaptive, and fully alive — even in high-pressure settings.
That’s not just good for you.
It’s good for your patients, your colleagues, and the sustainability of your work
Karin Karis & Kimberly Woodland
Founders of Body Comes to Mind
We’re occupational therapists, embodiment practitioners, aikido teachers, coaches, and facilitators. But more than that—we’re two people deeply committed to creating spaces where others can come home to themselves.
We bring decades of experience in healthcare, somatic practice, trauma-informed training, and leadership development.
We love working with people who care about making a difference, and want to do that with sustainability, integrity, and joy.
References for Play as an Embodied Strategy
- Dietz, Laura. “Play, Stress Recovery, and Emotion Regulation.” Learning Through Play / LEGO Foundation. https://learningthroughplay.com/explore-the-research/the-scientific-case-for-learning-through-play
- Gershman, Samuel J. “Uncertainty and Exploration: A Neural Perspective.” Nature Communications. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43098-0
- Gordon, Andrew M. et al. “The Mirror Game: A Play-Based Intervention for Coordination, Attention, and Social Engagement.” PLoS ONE. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0189171
- Løkken, Gunvor et al. “Playful Interactions and the LC–NA System.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2025.1490864/full
- Panksepp, Jaak. “Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions.” Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/affective-neuroscience-9780195178050
- Pellis, Sergio M. & Pellis, Vivien C. “The Neuroscience of Play: Implications for Learning and Brain Development.” Brain Research Bulletin. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036192301630303X
- Yogman, Michael et al. (American Academy of Pediatrics). “The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development.” Pediatrics. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/3/e20182058/38649/The-Power-of-Play-A-Pediatric-Role-in-Enhancing
Body Comes to Mind provides EMBODIED skills and practices to the globe through online courses, skills labs & workshops to enable people to take care of themselves while caring for others.
