Beyond Exercise: The Art of Sincere Play

The Limitation of Single Solutions

No one movement practice holds all the answers to ultimate vitality. Every discipline—whether martial arts, CrossFit, yoga, climbing, or dance—offers something valuable. I've experienced the unique gifts each brings: the resilience bred in BJJ gyms, the centeredness cultivated in yoga studios, the community forged in sports leagues, the creativity unleashed in partner dance.

But what captivates me most are the practitioners who dig deeper—people like Jozef Frucek, Ido Portal, and Marcello Palozzo. These individuals study the layer underneath the sport, fusing parkour with martial arts, dance with gymnastic strength training, breathwork with complex coordination patterns.

The Practice Beneath the Practice

What this movement practice offers isn't just another method. It's an approach that addresses mobility, strength, coordination, and focus simultaneously, especially transformative in those first 2-3 years. More importantly, it creates a community of adult learners united by shared growth, fostering an environment where we help each other develop through shared practice.

But underneath the exercises, locomotion patterns, and physical games lies something deeper: the opportunity to reveal our own nature, to practice being, to engage with life's complexity in a way that translates beyond the training space—into how we balance work and family, aging and excitement, responsibility and the part of us that just wants to relax on the couch.

Sincere Play as Ancient Practice

Children play to practice adult skills. They play house, dress up in costumes, wrestle and run and seek each other because our ancestors lived outside, hunted, foraged, and organized in groups that required deep social bonds. We've lost this essential play.

This movement practice is a return to that play—not the superficial "haha, this is silly" kind, but the sincere type where you're focused, intentional, working within clear parameters toward meaningful aims. Watch a child immersed in make-believe with their toys—they're incredibly serious about it. Interrupt them and they'll be upset. That's the quality of engagement this practice cultivates.

The Expanding Field of Possibility

Yes, we learn cool tricks, develop strength, master pull-ups, build joint resilience. Yes, we create friendships with people who share knowledge and help us grow. Yes, we age more gracefully. But these are byproducts of something larger.

The real gift is developing freedom in the body like a master painter who captures the image in their mind with fluid brush strokes and deep knowledge of color and contrast. This freedom doesn't just create longer lives—it creates lives of greater quality, where more becomes possible, opening the field to greater opportunities for richness of experience.

A Hub for the Art of Learning

Having a dedicated space for this art of learning—with movement practice as the vehicle rather than the destination—is the greatest gift I've found. You can become a "mover's mover," diving into intricate details, attending workshops, traveling to learn from masters like Tom Weksler, Nils Tiesner, and Tina Afiyan.

Currently, I'm wrapping up year two of a five-year Human Movement Studies program in Italy with Marcello, alongside 40 people from around the world. We practice everything from acrobatics to breathwork, from fighting to energy systems, from technique to the philosophy of teaching itself, and even storytelling as a way to understand and share our embodied experiences.

This is sincere play in its fullest expression—the kind that doesn't just build bodies, but builds humans capable of engaging fully with the beautiful complexity of being alive.

References

• Elfering, A., Grebner, S., & Semmer, N. K. (2024). Mindful movement reduces negative affect and increases vitality: A randomized controlled trial in a field setting. Work, 76(4), 1157–1165. https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-230495
• Brown, S. L., & Vaughan, C. (2009). Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. Avery.
• Waitzkin, J. (2007). The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance. Free Press.