The Healing Power of Play and Pleasure
As somatic and holistic therapists, we often sit with adults who long to feel more alive, connected, and joyful—but who also admit they don’t know how. Somewhere along the way, many of us lose touch with two essential states of being: play and pleasure.
And before a part of you starts to discount and minimize these experiences, please know that these are not luxuries or optional indulgences. Play and pleasure are vital for our healing, growth, and wholeness. Yet, for many adults, the invitation to play or experience pleasure feels confusing, foreign, even threatening.
Let’s explore why that is—and how reclaiming play and pleasure can be a game changer!
How We Lose Play and Pleasure: Emotional Wounding and Survival Strategies
Humans are biologically wired for play and pleasure. From infancy, our bodies seek out joyful movement, curious exploration, and co-regulated connection. But for many of us, emotional wounding disrupts this natural flow.
When our early caregivers are emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, or unsafe, we unconsciously adapt. We learn to suppress our playfulness to prioritize connection or safety because ultimately we need to have our basic needs met before we can feel safe and settled enough to let go and play. In cases of attachment injuries, trauma, emotional neglect, or relational pain, play starts to feel dangerous, frivolous, or even selfish.
Many children in these environments step into roles they were never meant to play: caretakers, peacekeepers, perfectionists. This process—known as parentification—requires kids to meet their own emotional needs (and sometimes their caregivers’) at the cost of their spontaneity and innocence. Play becomes a forgotten language. Pleasure becomes associated with guilt or fear. The nervous system becomes hyper-attuned to survival, not joy, and the human becomes disembodied living primarily in their head.
The American Disconnection from Play
Even for children with more secure upbringings, the larger cultural container—particularly in the U.S.—does not support the longevity of play or pleasure. In early childhood, play is encouraged, even celebrated. But by middle school, the message begins to shift: "Grow up." "Get serious." "What are you going to do with your life?"
The U.S. school system prioritizes performance, competition, and linear productivity. Children are often expected to sacrifice recess for test prep, creativity for compliance, exploration for achievement and predetermined curriculums. By adolescence, many young people have deeply internalized the belief that play is no longer useful—unless it produces something.
As adults, we find ourselves in a culture that severely restricts socially acceptable avenues for play and pleasure. We’re told that to be a “successful” adult, we must work hard, pay bills, take care of others, and be responsible. Play and pleasure? They become things we have to justify—often pushed into the shadows as private indulgences rather than embodied needs.
Is it any wonder so many adults turn to secret or quick-hit sources of pleasure—compulsive sex, alcohol, drugs, doom-scrolling, binge-watching, overeating—to momentarily escape the weight of disembodiment and disconnection?
What the Research Says: Play is Essential, Not Optional
Thankfully, science backs what our bodies have always known: play is essential to being human.
Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, has spent decades researching play in both animals and humans. His work reveals that play is not just a childish behavior, but a deeply biological drive. In fact, play is seen across the animal kingdom, from dogs and dolphins to bears and birds. Brown notes that animals deprived of play display poor socialization, higher levels of aggression, and impaired adaptability—traits that sound uncomfortably familiar when applied to humans.
Importantly, play literally builds our brains. It stimulates the prefrontal cortex, improves emotional regulation, enhances problem-solving, and strengthens our capacity for empathy and flexibility. Play is nature’s way of preparing us for an uncertain future.
As Brown says, “we are built to play and built by play.”
And it’s not just mental. Play brings the nervous system into a state of flow—a unique energetic zone between challenge and ease, where we lose track of time and become fully present in our bodies. This flow state regulates the vagus nerve, activates the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, and helps heal chronic patterns of hypervigilance or shutdown.
In short: play is medicine.
Pleasure as a Somatic Practice
Similarly, embodied pleasure—the felt sense of joy, warmth, delight, sensuality—isn’t a hedonistic escape; it’s a healing state. When we allow ourselves to feel pleasure (in safe, titrated ways), we expand our internal energetic container—our nervous system becomes capable of holding more life force, more complexity, more intimacy.
For many trauma survivors, the path to healing requires not just revisiting and feeling through the pain, but retraining the body to feel safe in play, pleasure and joy. This is where somatic practices shine. By slowly reintroducing the sensations of pleasure and play, we rewire the body toward aliveness.
But let’s be real: play and pleasure can feel terrifying. Many adults experience anxiety, guilt, numbness, or resistance when invited to loosen the grip of control and enter the realm of play. That’s not because they’re broken. It’s because their bodies learned long ago that joy wasn’t safe.
So we go slow.
A Simple Embodiment Practice to Reclaim Play & Pleasure
Here’s a short somatic practice you can try to gently reconnect with the energetic state of play and pleasure:
The "Curious Wiggle" Practice (5 minutes)
Find a safe, private space. Sit or stand comfortably. Close your eyes or soften your gaze.
Take a few deep breaths. Inhale through your nose, exhale with a gentle sigh. Let your shoulders drop.
Start to invite a gentle wiggle into your body. Maybe your fingers wiggle first. Then your shoulders. Let the movement be spontaneous, curious—how would your body move if no one were watching?
Let the wiggle grow. Maybe it becomes a little dance. Maybe it’s silly. Maybe it’s subtle. Follow your body’s lead.
Add sound, if it feels safe. A hum, a giggle, a sigh. Let your voice join the play.
Notice what sensations arise. Does it feel joyful? Awkward? Energizing? Numbing? Just notice—there’s no right way to feel.
Finish by placing a hand on your heart or belly. Thank yourself for showing up. For exploring. For being brave enough to reconnect.
Final Thoughts: Reclaiming Your Birthright
Play and pleasure are not rewards you have to earn. They are birthrights that belong to you simply because you are human. In a culture that glorifies productivity and pathologizes rest and joy, choosing to play is an act of radical reclamation.
In therapy at Brave Embodiment, we don’t just talk about healing—we embody it. And that includes finding moments of laughter, silliness, dance, breath, color, sound, imagination, curiosity, and connection.
Because in those moments, healing doesn’t feel like work. It feels like being alive.
If this resonates, or if you find yourself unsure where to start, know that you're not alone. The journey back to play and pleasure is not linear—but it is worth it.
Let’s begin again—with joy.
If our approach of involving play, pleasure and joy in the healing process speaks to you, reach out to us! We’d love to give you even more information and holistic, somatic tools to support you on your journey to wellness. Just click the “contact” tab in the upper righthand corner of our website, submit a contact form, and we will be in touch with you ASAP!