Original Play on Parents Television Network See last year's Seattle Playshop! (link opens in separate browser window)

Original Play^® is a gift from creation that physically connects all of life. It is a kind loving touch that conveys the message that "You are loveable and that there is nothing to fear." Original Play promotes a sense of belonging, which is the most powerful alternative to human fear and contest behavior.

Original Play is manifested by a sequenced pattern of touch. This allows you to lovingly respond to aggression and violence while maintaining or enhancing self-esteem for all involved. O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D., who has been studying play with children, adults and animals for over three decades, coined the term "Original Play."

Original Play is what we all did before we knew about win/lose games and competition.  This type of play is innate to us - it is natural play; all of Nature does it. We know it when we are born but lose our memory of it when our competitive-based culture begins to inculcate us. Once we are born, that happens in a mere 3 years, and we begin to "lose touch."

While we are born as playmates, to actually play with life again is an enormous leap out of the confines of our normal contest relationships. Here the possibilities are not defined by cultural categories and patterns that have hardened through generations, but by a kind of spontaneous rightness of fit that cannot be defined at the beginning, but can only be rediscovered in the process of playing."

Fred Donaldson playing with Wolf

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