'Be More Playful’ was the feedback I got from my trainer. I was undergoing my certificate training for a therapy called ‘Mystic rose’. It was an in-house training cum participation session for almost a month. My trainer had been observing each one of us. What made my trainer say ‘Be More Playful’ to me? From then started my quest of, how to ‘be more playful’?

I met my life coach friend and asked her. What does “be more playful” mean? She said it means, “Be a child again”. I looked at her and said, “All these years everyone said grow up Savitha, grow up. You are not a child anymore." Now you are telling me to “be a child again”.” She said “Listen, this is where most of us have gone wrong. Everyone told you not to be childish. There is a difference between “being childish” and “being a child”.

When I was studying engineering, I used to have a slanting desk table at my home. I had got it designed that way. I would arrange all pencils, sketch-pens, pens in the drawers beneath just like in a stationery shop. I would never allow anyone to touch them. My dad had nicknamed me as “military” for that reason. My two cousins aged 4 and 6 used to stay on the ground floor. They would always come and play in our house (meddle in my language) with all my things. One day when I came home I was shocked to see the drawers open with few pens and pencils scattered here and there. I shouted and screamed and brought the roof down. My cousins got scared and ran away like frightened rabbits. My dad intervened and said, “Stop behaving childishly, they are your kid cousins after all. It is ok.” I was enraged. I ranted and raved like a mad girl, “Nobody cares about me in this house. I will never speak to any of you again.” After 2 hours, the kids came back, they started speaking to me as though nothing had happened. I had expected them not to speak to me at all, after the stormy showdown. Their attitude of let-go was an eye-opener. They didn’t hold any kind of ill-feelings, unlike me. I realized that “to be playful is to be a child again” and not have “evergreen grudges”. Always learn from expert teachers – kids. Children are truly the best teachers.

A playful person does not take himself seriously. The child within him is alive. In a non-playful person, the child within is dead. The child within has been repressed and in most cases, playfulness is completely destroyed. A non-playful person starts carrying a dead child within himself or herself. This dead child destroys your sense of humor. One cannot laugh with a total heart; one cannot play and becomes very serious. This seriousness will not allow you to enjoy the small things of life. Life starts shrinking instead of expanding.

A playful person is full of laughter and joy. A playful person is healthy, wholesome and integrated. Always nourish the child within you, it is then you start enjoying life. Anything that is being done should be done out of playfulness and joy. Then life becomes a moment-to-moment joy. It will change the flavor. It will give you a sense of humor, beautiful laughter and you will start becoming more compassionate and a person of the heart. A person who starts living in the heart will have so much energy and out of that abundant energy will become very creative.



Allow the child within you, which is waiting to play, sing and to dance. Rejoice and celebrate life. Of course, the body will be no longer a child’s body, but the consciousness can be as pure as the consciousness of the child. Children come with the intrinsic, intuitive quality of let-go. They are utterly relaxed. That’s why all children are beautiful. They have tremendous grace, aliveness, and beauty.

As children grow their beauty, their grace will disappear. It is very difficult to find a fully grown-up man with child-like quality. All the ups and downs of our lives make us serious and tense. We have lost the capacity to relax. It is very simple to relax, as we already know how to relax when we were born. Because you have been a child, becoming a child again is not difficult. It is already there deep down in your being. It has to be rediscovered.

It is the child’s experience that haunts intelligent people their whole life. They want it again; the same innocence, the same wonder, the same beauty. The intelligent, sensitive, creative people remember deep in their being the paradise they had once experienced. The search for paradise is the search for childhood again.

Be a child again and you will not be running away from yourself, you will be running within yourself to find the source of life, this consciousness.

While this article is truly inspiring and insightful, the book Erupt With Joy has a lot more content that you cannot miss reading. The book is available both on amazon.com & amazon.in for you to grab a copy of your own.