Parkour and the Play Paradigm

When do you feel most alive? When do you feel most like yourself; unrestrained, engaged, natural, focused? When are you completely in the moment, not overthinking or analysing, just flowing and expressing yourself with total commitment?

Take a moment to think about your answer.

For most of us, we feel like that when we are doing something for no other reason than for the sheer enjoyment of doing that thing. Something totally voluntary, something we’re not obliged to do out of duty or need or to pay bills. Something fun.

For most of us, we feel most alive when we play.

The Play Paradigm

Play is a vital part of healthy human life, particularly when young but also carried on into adulthood and old age. The more time we can devote to play the happier, healthier, less stressed and more vibrant we feel. It energises, it fulfils, it gives shape, balance and value to our days.

Across all cultures, play is something that naturally, spontaneously arises. All we have to do is stay out of its way and let it happen. In fact, it being something that arises from within rather than something enforced from without is a defining attribute of play. Think of Monica in the hit TV series ‘Friends’, constantly trying to order and manage play for her peers, to impose it like a set of rules and codes for ‘having a good time’, only to have her attempts rebuffed time and again. That’s not play, far from it. Authentic play is self-organising and creates its own rules as it goes along – and those rules bend to fit the play, as opposed to the play being defined by the rules.

Play exists as its own self-contained paradigm. Children play best when unsupervised, as secrecy is thought to be a vital element of play for the young: their games have secret rules, shared only with, and important only to, the players. Their play almost always involves discovery, exploration, taking risks (be they physical, mental, social, whatever), pushing boundaries, and it is usually adaptive – it innovates, imagines, creates. It reinvents space, using it for its own purposes, with no ostensible goal other than for the playing of the game. And while that game is happening it is, to the players, the most meaningful thing in the world. It’s serious business, this play stuff!

Sound familiar? It should. Play is a central element of parkour; it’s just that we are very serious about our play, which is as it should be. Indeed, according to the founders, parkour was – partially at least – born out of childhood games of exploration, challenge and experimentation. That doesn’t devalue it nor remove its effectiveness as a tool for self-improvement, education and self-knowledge; quite the contrary, as huge amounts of our learning as children occurs during play.

It’s important to understand that play isn’t just a leisure activity; it’s a crucial part of leading a healthy, balanced life. The restorative effects of regular play enable us in turn to apply ourselves to our work far more effectively and with more energy and focus. We marginalise it at our peril, not only as individuals but as a society as a whole.