Tag: Play Alchemy

Time for a Change

We celebrate this spring with a collection of exquisite invitations for co-creation and co-elevation. The more the merrier when it comes to True Play, so feel free to share these invitations with your friends, your colleagues and your loved ones!

The Lila Circle: Where True Transformation Happens – ONLINE

True Transformation begins with exploring our inner life. A unique women’s leadership circle for women ready to reclaim our power and realise big dreams

  • Tuesday 4 March 2025 @ 6-8 pm GMT
  • Tuesday 1 April 2025 @ 6-8 pm BST
  • Tuesday 20 May 2025 @ 6-8 BST
  • Tuesday 10 June 2025 @ 6-8 BST
TRANSFORM TODAY

Four Seasons of Play – ONLINE

Shine the light on your emotional life and enjoy a spring clean towards greater emotional intelligence and management even in the most stressful times

21 March 2025 @ 1-4 pm GMT – ONLINE

TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP

RECLAIM YOUR CREATIVE SOVEREIGNTY

Playful Leadership: CREATION

True embodied transformation takes time, just like the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Practitioner courses are fully immersive 3-day in-person learning experiences where playmakers and organisational archmages gather to explore a particular theme of leadership and organisational transformation.

The next Practitioner course is CREATION 7-9 May 2025 where participants will be reconnecting with their roots and wings of creativity as we explore the trio of Creator, Creations and the Creative process and what it means to be a playful leader.

After completing this 3-day experiential training, participants will experience a powerful leadership upgrade through techniques and ancient technology by transmuting their shadows into their greatest gifts aligned with their life purpose in service of the systems to which they belong.

A Kaleidoscope of Leadership Learning

This February we launch the next evolution of the Playful Leadership programme as a trio of courses available online and in-person to meet the enthusiasm for Play Alchemy worldwide. Find out more here.

Essentials Part 1

PLAY INTELLIGENCE

Reconnecting You with Your Greatest Superpower

Our 2-day introductory training offers a multitude of ways to experience the practical application of core Play theories and models in personal and group transformation.

Essentials Part 2

PLAY TECTONICS

Enabling Systemic Change and Have Fun Doing It

Our Essentials Part 2 training explores how organisations can thrive when we understand the relationships and patterns of interaction within a system using an approach known as Systemic Constellations.

Essentials Part 3

PLAY GENIUS

Emotional Mastery Through Our Play Circuitry

Our Essentials Part 3 training focuses on making friends with our own emotions even in the toughest of situations as we explore the phenomenological nature of leadership.

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST

Wishing you and your loved ones a Playful and Prosperous 2025! ~ With love from Portia The Play Alchemist xxx

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Explore the Healing Power of Play

Playful You and Me

Do you love the moments when you experience spontaneous bubbles of exploration and joy? And are these moments too few and far between?

Are you often holding your breath waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the goodness in your life to disappear? 

Delight is one of the most joyful experiences humans can have. From bursts of spontaneous laughter, to genuine smiles shared, to shared exploration of ideas, to goofy and rambunctious expression. 

Are you curious to learn how to cultivate the safety and self-care that will allow your nervous system to turn towards playfulness and joy with ease? 

Do you long to be surprised, enlivened, and nourished by your healing journey?

Did you know that each of us has a neural circuit and body system dedicated just to play?

Play is our birthright. 

The experience of playing lets us and our brains become who we are meant to be.

Playing brings balance into the body’s and the brain’s endocannabinoid system, which is the system that is responsible for our homeostasis. When we play, we balance every tissue in our body. 

And it feels so good.

Play–not the shallow, competitive kind, but the deep play that comes with both emotional discovery and surprise, and with truth-telling in safe environments– is spontaneous, emergent, and unexpected. 

This form of deepest play can only arise when our nervous systems are fully supported and in the company of people with whom we feel known and understood.  Without supported and safe nervous systems, our bodies are unable to experience the absolutely spontaneous and unexpected expressions that come with our PLAY circuit. 

Play in its purest form requires the interaction of two or more beings (people, pets, anyone that can be responsive). It also requires safety. 

But what do we do if people have not been safe? 

How can we support ourselves to have nourishing playful social connections and a sense of belonging even when we have lived through difficult things? 

Resonance is the experience of another human understanding what is happening for you, and you being able to say yes to their expression of understanding. It has the transformative capacity to connect and heal us by offering new experiences of safety and acceptance to our nervous systems, which opens the door to play.

With the help of a neuroscience-based understanding of what makes us safe, Resonant Language works directly with the nervous system to restore our birthright of safety so that true delight becomes possible and even frequent. 

Resonance enables us to have the experience of making sense to ourselves and others, sometimes for the first time. Often social safety is the missing piece that allows our bodies to find relaxation and open to joy. 

As our nervous systems become fully supported, the movement towards spontaneous emergent play is actually unstoppable: like a bubbling brook cascading down a mountainside after the snows melt. 

The Resonance Summit 5-9 April 2024

The fourth annual Resonance Summit, hosted by Sarah Peyton, offers a deep exploration of the latest neuroscience research on play plus wonderful interactive sessions, and an opportunity to immersively experience and learn resonance in community.  

Each morning of the Summit features a keynote address by five exciting voices in the field of relational neuroscience, play, and trauma healing. Following keynotes, the days unfold through workshops and practice spaces led by some of the most creative and rigorous resonance practitioners working today. 

My session “Play’s Hidden Symmetry: Constellations Through Play Alchemy” will take place on Tuesday, 9 April 10.30 am – 11.55 am PDT. I hope you’ll come to play!

Register here this free five-day experiential learning immersion to begin to change your brain into a kinder and more playful place, discover your own relational self, and catch a glimpse of the rich world of emergence that resonance and play can make possible for you.

What if you can’t make it to the LIVE summit?

In that case, you’re welcome to support this wonderful event by purchasing the summit recordings package available now with a pre-summit discount!

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Happy Birthday to an Agile Adventure!

Your team’s fate is in your hands. Choose badly and you’ll come to a sticky end. Choose wisely and you stand the chance of living happily ever after. What will you choose to do?

I’m delighted to share with you that my first book The Dream Team Nightmare: Boost Team Productivity Using Agile Techniques published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf turns 11 years old this year!

They say time flies when you’re having fun so if you’ve ever dreamed of writing a book, I highly recommend giving it a go. With plenty of caution, of course – because this is the only responsible and fair thing to do when it comes to doing work from the heart.

In my case, the result is the first ever Agile business novel in the format of gamebook – a fun and interactive story with eight different endings where you, the Reader, gets to put your Agile knowledge and experience to the test.

Back in the autumn 2011, The Dream Team Nightmare began as a personal challenge to see if I could write a book at a time in my life when I wanted to gift back something of me to the world.

Now, as I complete writing my second book and delight in the gifts of feedback from my first readers, I feel incredibly fortunate to have followed the wisdom of my heart. After all, this is the Play Way.

If you’re part of a book club that enjoys having fun as you read, I’d love to pay you a visit (be it online or may be even in-person) to explore and experience the exquisite adventure that is reading – in community!

The Secret to Heartwork

It’s possible that when it comes to writing a book, you find it easy. Believe or not, I’ve met writers for whom this is true. Or you might find it as tough as climbing Mount Everest which is my case (although I’ve yet to climb Mount Everest for real but I’ve been working on my yoga crow pose – slowly, slowly, catchy monkey – in preparation for a handstand or forearm stand). And that’s the thing. Whenever we do anything truly, madly, deeply important to us, it requires hard work because it’s heartwork.

The truth is, I’ve spent most of my life working from my heart. It may sound simple, but up until recently, it’s been anything but easy. Fortunately, I discovered in my wonder years the profound joy that comes from embracing a challenge and doing something for the sake of doing it and because my heart wants to (regardless of what those around me have to say on the matter).

The trick I’ve found about writing a book is to treat it as an adventure of self-discovery par excellence. If what I have come to know as play alchemy has taught me one thing, it’s that “The greater the purpose, the more fun you need to have”. In spite of the ginormous challenge writing a book may seem to you, just imagine how much more fun and joy you’ll experience if having fun and joy becomes part of the process.

This is the Play Way.

by Categories: Agile, Book Club, Play Alchemy, WritingTags: , , , , Leave a comment