The Art of Play
Reconnecting through self-care, free movement and playfulness
If you or your team need some down time, some time to regroup or refocus your energies, an Art of Play workshop may be just what you need! Join a planned session or get in touch to organise a private team event.
When was the last time you played: freely, without competition or a goal in mind?
Do you struggle to focus on work or family?
Are you feeling uninspired?
Do you need a safe space to reconnect to yourself?
Would you like to find some peaceful joy in beautiful surroundings?
By using simple, everyday objects, we’ll rediscover things about ourselves – the importance of joy, self-awareness, and an appreciation of our relationship with the world around us.
The events of recent years have added more stress to already stressful lives and many of us will be holding onto fear and anxiety.
Self-care is the key to finding the emotional balance we all need in order to be our best selves. An Art of Play workshop will help you to make the connections you long for – firstly with yourself and then with those you care for at home and work.
What to expect
We’ll spend a few hours reconnecting with our inner childlike self. If you’re a parent or caregiver, you’ll understand that this doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be ‘having fun’, although I think we will.
Play is the work of the child and it is sometimes hard work. But it is also very rewarding when, as it is for children, the work is about the activity and not the result. This will be our approach.
During the workshop, we’ll think about and explore basic everyday movements - such as walking, sitting, lying down. We’ll also use everyday materials – stones, wooden objects, shells, cloth, etc. – to tune into our senses and bring our awareness into the present moment.
This work is based on years of experience working on myself and with parents, using the wise and wonderful guidance of Sensory Awareness teachers, including Ute Strub and Stefan Laeng.
Past Seminars…
Sensory Awareness - Stefan Laeng
Stefan Laeng
Living Upright & Down to Earth
In-Person Seminar UK
Sensory Awareness is a movement-based mindfulness practice, reconnecting us with the living moment. Everyday movements rather than exercises, playful explorations, quiet attentiveness rather than effort, take us to a place of renewed engagement.
Through the practice of Sensory Awareness, we learn to fully connect with life as it is, a stream of experience, ever-changing and awesome. Grounded in the moment, we are freed to act from a place of curiosity rather than ambition – engaging with reality rather than fighting it.
Sensory Awareness is a process of inquiry through simple explorations of everyday movements, quiet presence and lively interactions with life. It is an invitation to question our beliefs by experiencing the world with open senses. Playful interactions with the earth’s primary forces — gravity, ground, and air — prepare the foundation for meaningful action. The constant tug of gravity is earth's call to engage, to find orientation. Ground is the support from which we rise, its firm presence gives our moves traction. Air fuels life, its free flow through us is a condition for sustainable participation in the joys and challenges of living — upright and down to earth.
Stefan Laeng
Stefan Laeng is a Sensory Awareness leader and the Executive Director of the Sensory Awareness Foundation. He offers workshops in the USA and Europe. His many years of study of Buddhist meditation and philosophy inform his work and life.
Currently, Stefan is working on an oral history and biography of the Somatics pioneer, Charlotte Selver. He lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Natural Unfolding - Ute Strub
Ute Strub, London 2019
Following our March event, you are now invited to express your interest in attending a seminar with Ute. Click the button below to email me for more details.
Possibilities for Regeneration in Everyday Life
A 4-Hour Online Seminar (Sessions usually run from 13:00-15:00 & 18:00-20:00 GMT)
Can we prevent exhaustion in our professional or parenting life by exploring healthier attitudes when sitting, standing or walking?
Or by discovering new ways of lying and relaxing at night for optimal recuperation?
How can we enjoy waking up and beginning the day in a confident mood?
How can we use the rare quiet moments during a busy day to come to ourselves?
And last but not least: How can we use simple everyday actions like going up and down the stairs to gain new strength, flexibility and lightness?
As an instructor of the pedagogies of Elfriede Hengstenberg and Emmi Pikler, as well as in her own field of playful experimenting, at 88, Ute is still active presenting online seminars worldwide.
She studied from 1955-57 with Hengstenberg in Berlin, observed her work with children and, with her, wrote and edited the book “Entfaltungen” where the unfolding of the children is documented with photos and descriptions. Ute initiated the reproduction of Hengstenberg’s equipment which children of many daycare centres and kindergartens in Austria and Germany now use. She also introduced the work with this equipment in seminars for adults.
As a physiotherapist, Ute worked for 12 years at University Hospital in Freiburg, Germany, with very sick patients.
From 1979 she worked closely with Dr. Emmi Pikler, Budapest, on translating various of her publications into German. In 1996 she initiated the Pikler® Playroom movement in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. In 2007 she was co-founder of the Emmi Pikler House for abandoned children near Berlin and in 2010 founded a unique playroom in Berlin - the Strandgut - for children and adults.
The book, Entfaltungen (Unfoldings), will soon be available in English.