Achieving Balance through Play With Jenny Ward

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. On today’s podcast we’re discussing a practical ways to achieve balance in your life. What does that even mean? What does balance even me, well we’re going to talk about that in today’s podcast, it does involve incorporating more play in your life. My guest is speaker and author Jenny Ward, who has crossed the continent bringing play work life balance and work life workshops to Visa, Google, youtube, Merrill Lynch, the girl scouts, YMCAs, Stanford, Dove, Nickelodeon and many other corporations and nonprofit organizations. Her individual clients have enjoyed working with Jenny on parenting and play stress management, recovery and meditation and play-based living. Her work has been recognized in many media outlets. Jenny majored in psychology and received her MFA in dance education, choreography and performance education from NYU. She’s also a licensed yoga educator, wellness coach and the author of “Who Said So”, “101 Ways to Play”, and “Who Said So About Parenting”. In today’s interview we discuss what balance in life really means and how curiosity play and other techniques can help you achieve more balance in your life. So please enjoy this interview.
Dr. Cates: Okay. Jenny is so great to have you on my podcast. Welcome.
Jenny Ward: Thank you. It’s good to be here.
Dr. Cates: Great. So I know we, we talk a lot about and life, especially women. I think we talk about having balance in our lives and having that work life balance. And it’s easy to say, oh, I want more balance in my life, but to actually incorporate in to make it a reality is a whole other thing. And I think that you have kind of a unique approach on ways to make that happen. So first of all, can you start with your background and what led you into doing what you do?
Jenny Ward: Yes. Um, I initially was in theater and I was a performing artist and I did a lot of soap operas. There’s not a lot of soap operas anymore, I was on television back in the day and I was a professional dancer. But I also had this background in psychology and women’s studies. And I lived in New York City and I did that for about 15 years. But I was always curious about creativity and how even in the arts I had to be, I had to audition and get rejected and even it’d be expression of something that I was so passionate about was even limited there. And so I was more drawn to the psychology of it. I left New York City and started writing articles on the importance of using creativity and stress. Um, how can we navigate communicating as women and being empowered as mothers. So that led me to play ward. It led me to be more drawn to play. And then I became a mom and then I became a single mom. And now I’m at a place where it’s evolved into … How can stress be my friend? How can I use it instead of be against it? What, what the heck is balanced? Like how can I create my own version of that as opposed to taking somebody else’s version and try and implement into my own life, which usually doesn’t work. So now I speak with parents and children. I’m working with educators on how to also help children navigate finding balance, how to regulate their own feelings, how to be in relationships with each other. Because it’s a fascinating world that I don’t think we really know anything about. Actually. I think what we’re craving at the end of the day is freedom to have our own way of living. And maybe that equals balance, but I’m not sure. So yeah, I’m a speaker and I do a lot of different modalities around particularly parents and women.
Dr. Cates: Yeah. Well that’s great. So balance. So I think about balance. I think of, um, I think about what people think of not feeling, feeling balanced and feeling like, oh, I, you know, I can, I can figure out a time for everything and I feel comfortable with my life and I’ve got enough of the work and I’ve got that figure it out and I’ve got enough of social, family fun, all that stuff. I’ve got time for all of that and I feel good about it. Right. And so but it is tricky. It’s really tricky. And I think this idea of finding, being, being curious and finding opportunities for play and all areas of our life and not having to say like, here’s my fun time and that is separate from everything else. Right? Like how do we incorporate that fun and that, you know, passion and excitement and fun and life and everything that we do.
Jenny Ward: Yeah. I think the curious, you mentioned curiosity and I like that philosophy on life. I feel that even sometimes even we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find balance. You know, it’s like I wasn’t balanced today and it’s like we get into this cycle of having to achieve and having to do it right, having to get it right. I think those are the moments where play and curiosity and compassion can really become our friends. Like can we laugh a little bit about it? Can we lighten up about, you know, the fact that we didn’t fit in the five minute meditation that we have to do every single day. Because I think that yeah. Is a way of softening how we talk to ourselves. And self talk is a really important aspect of finding balance. It’s an important aspect of taking care and nurturing herself and having a child like wonder towards life as opposed to a regimented compartmentalized. It does lighten the mood. It’s also really easy to make work this and family that and you know, put this in different categories. But the one that’s the central piece of all of those are us. It’s like how are we approaching work? How are we approaching family? How are we, how are we playing with these different parts of our lives? And how are we meeting it to, so if I’m meeting work with real seriousness and if I’m meeting work like, that I have to be one particular way, there’s no room for curiosity or growth in those ways. So I think it’s more about understanding that we’re the director, we’re in charge of, of how we play with all aspects of our lives. And it’s a shift of power. It’s more empowering as opposed to life is happening to me. I’m, I’m playing director in my life. So how do I want this seem to go to today? Or how do I want to seem to go today? It’s really amazing. But I think the lack of compassion can cause us to spiral it. Cause a lot of women come to me like I’m not finding balance and they’re putting a lot of pressure in finding something. And sometimes it’s not about finding anything really, you know, asking yourself questions and being more curious about what’s unbalanced in your life, what feels unbalanced and the taking it from there. Does that makes sense? It’s a softer approach.
Dr. Cates: Right, right. Certainly we don’t want to give ourselves another reason beat ourselves up. Right. But what, I know I heard you speak at a conference and you gave some exercises to help people think more about incorporating curiosity in play. So what are some of the tools that you give people? What are some of those things?
Jenny Ward: Well, I think, it can’t be overstated quite a lot, but it’s so simple. His breath. I mean, I think transitions are extremely challenging for kids, but they’re also tricky for adults as well. Like we do it every day. We’d go from one thing to another, to another, to another. But I like to call it the pause where you put your phone down, you’re sitting in your car, wherever you’re about to enter into the next aspect of your day and just pause. And it could be for five seconds, it could be for 10 seconds. Some people now are doing it for five minutes, but it’s, it’s deactivating all of the activity that’s gone on removing the screen time and just sitting there. And for kids it’s, it’s also called being bored, you know, just sitting there like, but what’s happening is it’s sort of reframing our body and I think we’re forgetting that our body needs to also compress in order to enter into the next thing that we’re supposed to be doing. It also helps shift our brain and remove what we laughed and kind of come into a new scene. So breathing or sitting quietly inbetween transitions is important. And I encourage parents to also make their kids do it as well. Just quiet time, whatever that means. We’re not doing anything. Um, another wonderful way of, of dealing with as an adult with dealing with feelings and emotions is asking a lot of questions. So asking yourself questions, what is really going on here? Can I find a different way of looking at this? How can I like myself more in this moment? How, what can I do that’s a beneficial to my good and my health right now? So asking more questions as opposed to getting caught up in life happening to you. So I think pausing is something that we forget to do. And it creates more of a coming back to the south. So we’re coming more from the center. And more often than not, even with children, they can have more empowering. They’re filled more empowered, have over their life as opposed to it’s happening to them all the time. So pausing, breathing, asking questions, being more curious, how can I like myself more in this moment? What could I have done it differently next time as, and then moving on. Kind of stops the energy of Oh, all the time that we’ve put ourselves in.
Dr. Cates: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I love this idea, of the childlike curiosity, of describing it that way. If you think about, which I know you talked about, how do, how do children, how do the children look at things? How do the children look at the world? And as we get older we get further away from that and there’s something very pure and healing and grounding and balancing about that. Finding a curiosity and life and the little things like, you know, stopping and noticing things that we just forget to look at.
Jenny Ward: Okay. I think it also, it goes into our dynamics with people and relationships and how we, whether we were aware of it or not, we do kind of take it for granted how we take life for granted. And I think that for me, when play comes into importance when it’s hard. So like when you do grieve or when you are in pain or you are angry, those are the moments where it’s tricky to find the play and finding the play means how can I be more compassionate towards myself in this moment? And you know, life isn’t mystery most of the time. We don’t particularly know what we’re doing ever. Really. Like we think we do, we don’t really know what we’re doing. And so to remember that we’re still in charge of creating this play, we’re still in charge of creating our life. And you know, we have the power to change our minds and change the story whenever we launch. And kids do that all the time. Like they fall, they bruise their need, they get up and they move right on. They don’t like think about it for days. They don’t go to therapy for years like therapy’s great, but they don’t relish in feelings for that long. They’re able to really understand that there was more to the sandbox that they can explore and they don’t have to be so limited in thinking it’s this way. So for me it’s life is play. This is our big play. We had dramatic scenes, we have painful scene. And in those moments it’s really honoring the child inside of yourself. Because that’s so often we treat children with compassion, but we forget that we are still children inside. Like we still have that part of ourselves that needs to talk to our own selves the same way we would talk to a child or our own children. Yeah.
Dr. Cates: Yeah. So when you talk to like, let’s talk about more about that, how do you talk to a child differently than you talk to yourself?
Jenny Ward: I mean, I’m still practicing this. I feel I am a recovering perfectionist. Like I was petrified of making mistakes when I was a child. I still, you know, have to talk myself into trying new things even if I’m not going to be good at it. Yeah. So it’s, it’s really redirecting the way that I talk to myself and I wonder in those moments, like I would never talk to my daughter that way. I wouldn’t be like, you probably won’t do great at it. You shouldn’t even try it. You know, I would never even come into my mind. I’d be like, you totally can do with it. I believe in you. And it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to fail. So I think I have to remember how I talk to myself as equally as important as how I would talk to my students and my daughter. And I forget that often. It’s a practice for me.
Dr. Cates: I think that is so valuable. I think that we’re so hard on ourselves that we are our worst critics. We see all the flaws in ourselves and we’re so hard on ourselves. And we would never I mean, (I think most people anyway) wouldn’t talk to our children or you know, if you, if you think of yourself, I mean, even if you like look in the mirror and you imagine yourself as a child or whatever it takes, like, or close your eyes and imagine yourself as a, as a little kid. Like how would you talk to your little child? Would you really say those things? And, and so how can you reframe it? Right? How can you, how can you talk to yourself and then a more loving way in a more gentle way and a more playful way and allow more of that, right?
Jenny Ward: Yes.
Dr. Cates: Yeah. I think that’s so, so important. And I know you, you, um, you also are, exploring a lot with emotions, like you mentioned about anger and sadness and how, and again, this is something we learned from children, children like when they’re upset that everybody knows, like, you know what kids are thinking and they’re just like, you know, they get upset, they cry and then they’re, you know, they go on, right. And as we get older, we suppress our emotions. Like anger is bad, sadness is bad. These are things that we need to hold back or we have judgments about it. We have judgements of others. And Yeah, there is, there’s a time and place for everything and we can all like act like kids throw temper tantrums all the time. There’s also balanced in this, right. And our emotions. Talk some about that, about what your exploration in that.
Jenny Ward: I definitely feel, um, I’ve always been fascinated with anger and grief. I was told as a child that we had, I had just had to be happy all the time. So that’s how I was raised. So I had a very interesting relationship to anger. I didn’t particularly know what to do with it when I felt it. And I notice in society it has a negative rap. You know, it’s like, it’s one of the most important. It’s equally as important as joy. I mean, anger is a fuel and we can have a healthy approach towards it. Like it’s sharing something with you. It’s information, that needs to be explored. So I’m working with myself and with other people in there. How do I relate to anger differently when my child is angry and throwing the temper tantrum? Why does it trigger me so much? Why am I triggered by anger? Why do I need to fix it? Why do I want it to go away? I mean, asking all these kinds of questions because it makes us feel uncomfortable. There’s something about anger that makes us feel uncomfortable. So I’m more curious about, can I be uncomfortable with it? Do I have to change that? Do I have to do anything about it? And how can I use this feeling and do something like that? Maybe set a boundary, maybe learn how to say no more, maybe stop saying yes when I want to say no. You know? So all of these things that maybe don’t have a relationship with someone that is not healthy for me. So anger invites me to look at what’s not working. But making sure that it’s not coming from a place of, Oh, I’m doing bad or I’m poor or something is wrong with me. It’s like it’s showing me something that I need to look at. Kids are innately strong at expressing their anger. They know exactly when something’s not working for them. I think too often, kids get labeled as aggressive or they’re hitting too much and I think they’re just trying to figure out their relationship to anger. And I don’t think we need to worry that much about it as parents, as educators, I find kids are getting labeled way too early. And anger isn’t really the issue. It’s just they have to figure out how to deal with it and express it in ways that work for them that aren’t hurting themselves or other people. Anger and grief I find is another one where no one really knows what to do with it. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. Uh, you can’t fix it. And I do find that we’re not allowing our children ourselves as a society to really have open discussions about grief. And because it’s too uncomfortable for most people, I was one of those people, I just didn’t want to play in that emotion at all. I resisted it for years even, in my own work. I just didn’t want it. And then my, I lost both of my parents. I lost my fiance and I had to grieve. I had to look at this feeling and now I’m noticing that, it’s the area where play is the most essential. It’s where how I can look at life with more curiosity and not take it for granted. Like it sort of feeds into my child, like wonder of the world because life is so short. So it’s really enhanced my play. It’s really enhanced how I view play as being so essential. Because too often we do take things for granted and they could go very quickly. And you know, kids don’t know that yet. They live here and they’re like, oh, this is so great. You know? So it’s kind of grief and play are very intertwined for me and that’s something I’ve become more and more fascinated with lately.
Dr. Cates: Yeah. So you have a book 101 Ways to Play. Obviously we don’t have time for 101 ways. Can you give us examples of some of those ways to play?
Jenny Ward: Well one, I think there’s a few. My daughter actually helped with some of them, but one of them was make sure everyday tell someone that you love them in different ways. Verbally write it in notes, and do it everyday for 30 days. And it doesn’t have to be for a holiday. It’s, it’s really an energetic high. It makes you feel good and makes them feel good. Drive a different way to work. Where are something you would never wear to work. Wear a different tie, wear different shoes. Find a different way to drop off your kid at school, find a different way to pick them up at school. Um, sometimes allow your kids to make breakfast for a week and it can be anything they want and you and go on an adventure with your kid that you would’ve never thought doing. So it’s more about stepping outside of your day to day activity and seeing if you can add a little something into it. One of my favorites, and they had a group of Moms, we’re doing this, which was really funny. Um, make put glitter on something every day. So they got these glitter glasses and they just ended up doing it for like three months. They thought it was just so funny, like putting, sprinkling glitter on this sprinkling glitter on that. So it reminded them it wasn’t really about the glitter, it was about stepping outside of what the day to day could feel like. Monotony and adding a little fun into it and play and lightness. Go to meters where you people park and put quarters in everybody’s meter. Sort of like giving back and being like the angel of meter and like laughing and playing in that way. So it’s more of feeling good as opposed to doing your day to day activity and an offering service and in gratitude to other people, which I believe is there should be way more in the world.
Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Gratitude is so huge. And yeah, there’s so much in that. One of the things you mentioned was finding a different way to drop off your child at school. Can you explain what that would be?
Jenny Ward: A couple of examples are you can skip your kid, it depends on how old your kid is. You know, my sister would be mortified. My daughter would be mortified. So skipping into work with a, into school with them, wearing some sort of like costume that’s like superman with your kid. Like finding a different way, going in a different, going into the room a different way. You can do sideways. You could be low, medium, high. You’d have to go in as a bird. You have to go in as the real is like very playful. Obviously at the age of the kid really, really matters. And for teenagers, you know, it’s interesting because play for them is different. My daughter’s a teenager. But I still find that there are ways that we can, I can play with her that are not as cheesy or embarrassing for her, but even just talking in the car with her or doing something about listening to her music and, you know, dancing with her, I still feel like I can play in a way with her that meeting, not in front of her friends, but just to show her that I’m not going to get old. I’m not going to stop playing. I don’t care if she’s a teenager or not. It’s like, I think it’s important to keep modeling that for her, whether she does it with me or not. Cause I don’t want her to have the philosophy that you get old and you stop playing or you stop trying something new or being silly. Yeah.
Dr. Cates: We, uh, I have something with my kids. It started with what we call a freaky Friday, and I would pick up my kids from school and that they would know us, that I, they’d all have blind folds, bandanas. They put over their eyes and I would give them clues as to where was the first place we’re going. And actually the reason why it started is I had errands to run.
Jenny Ward: Oh, I love it.
Dr. Cates: I had little kids. I was like, how am I going to keep them entertained? I knew it would be like going through the car wash, but they have to guess where we’re going, you know, like sometimes I would get them to the park in between somewhere. I’d have their bikes hidden in the back or something, but it was making something that’s so mundane and could be so boring and a drag for everybody into something fun. And it does require a little bit of energy, extra energy, a little bit more creativity. My kids still tug of their teenagers now. And they still talk about it and like, my 12 year old will still say mom, can we do another freaky Friday? And what we would do is sometimes it would be, you know, it would be like, oh, Wednesday. And I like, okay, uh, so wacky Wednesday, you know, like this totally just come up with something new. And then their friends would start talking about it too. Can I come over for freaky Friday? Like, okay, I can’t just run errands if we’re going to go do something else. But I mean I think there’s, there’s a way to make seemingly boring things more fun, more interesting. And I think it’s the same way with, and not just with kids. So, so for people who don’t have kids, it’s also just adult activities like going and getting exercise, all the different ways that you could have fun with exercise. I took a group of my friends up and it was, it was funny cause they were like, what are we doing? Took them up on a hike and we slid it all the way down on this trail. And you know, it’s, and it was one of those things where they had so much fun and yes, you don’t really think about, Oh, you’re getting exercise during all of this, right? We should try and figure out what are the ways that we can play in the different activities that normally don’t seem like a lot of fun. And I really do think that’s a, it’s a great way to create more balance in your life.
Jenny Ward: Yes. And the cool thing is we forget that we’re capable of doing that and we really do. We forget like, oh wait, I could actually change my mind and shift my perspective and realize something different that I didn’t know about myself because I’m going to make this fun. I’m going to make this more enjoyable. And like maybe I like running sideways and I didn’t realize that, you know, like you don’t, and I think the more empowering you feel and the more play you have, it feeds into balancing everything. Because when you feel good, you approach every aspect of your life differently. So it’s, it’s really an extension of wellness and taking care of yourself. It is finding ways to bring play into and I think we all can do it. We just forget.
Dr. Cates: Yeah. I think singing is another thing that I think about that’s another great way to make something a lot more fun with kids. Sometimes you can, something that you’re trying to message you’re trying to get across if you sing it to them instead they were like, what’s going on here? And same thing with work. For a while I came up like kind of like a theme song for my company and I would just, you know, singing during one of our team calls and make everybody sing along with me and they’re like, oh my God, she’s crazy. She’s laughing and you know, they think it’s fun.
Jenny Ward: Yeah. And laughter really is the best medicine. It just makes you, makes everyone feel good. And it’s very, very simple, which is great. It’s free.
Dr. Cates: Right, right. What are some of the ways that you, what are your favorite ways to help people remind them to laugh? What are, what are some obviously telling jokes is, is an easy one.
Jenny Ward: Yes. I think the first thing is that I, especially with adults cause kids, it’s so easy to play with them primarily. But I find that in with adults especially is when there is to say something that I really like about them or I really appreciate about them most often than not, they’re kind of like, you know laughing and, and I i’m like what’s so funny about that? I really, cause I think we’re not used to doing that to each other. Not all the time pr in ways like, gosh, I really appreciate the fact that you think that way. That’s so cool. Like lightening up or reminding them that there’s something of value about who they are. I think that’s my invitation to getting the, just the light lightness of the mood. And it feels good and sometimes they’re awkward and they’re shy and you know, and I could keep playing with that. But really it’s coming in with appreciation. Most often is an entry for play for adults in particular, cause I don’t, unless it’s a holiday, you know, sometimes we forget to tell people, even people that we work with colleagues like, wow, that’s super cool. I love that you did it that way. That’s so cool. That’s amazing. And they’re like, Ooh. It just, kids do that with each other all the time. That was awesome. I love your outfit. You look so great. You know? That’s so cute. I love when you do that. And adults, we’re so scared of being vulnerable maybe in that way.
Dr. Cates: Well, I think too, people become, people start to think, at least, I think in certain, you know, culture is, and, and, and different ways that, that compliments, like it’s bad to take a compliment. You’re like, you can’t acknowledge a compliment. Like, oh no, no, no, no, no. I know. Really, really, you can’t just like, can’t accept it. So then it becomes this awkward thing of like, no, well then, I’m sorry I said that. So then people will just avoid compliments.
Jenny Ward: Yeah. Yeah, they don’t, and I think there’s play in that on some level. Like you can really play in there and be like, come on, you’re awesome.
Dr. Cates: So I love this idea of incorporating more play into everything that we do and into, into work and to family and to exercise into the things that we know are things that we’re supposed to do, but maybe our, we’re trying not to do like it. And it can be around eating healthy foods, like having fun, creating, playing, in making meals and, gardening and all of that. Getting outdoors and incorporating nature because I guess healing and all of that, right?
Jenny Ward: Yes. Yeah.
Dr. Cates: Yes. All right. Well, great. Well, I really appreciate you coming on today and talking to us more about creating balance and, and incorporating ways to, to play. Tell everybody where they can find out more about you, where they can find your books and, yeah. Were they find you?
Jenny Ward: Yeah. My website is Jennyward.com, and my books are, “Who Said So” and “101 Ways to Play”. And they’re both on Amazon.
Dr. Cates: Great. All right, well thank you for coming on. I appreciate your information. I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Jenny Ward and learn some ways to incorporate more play and curiosity in your life so you can achieve more balance in your life as well. So to learn more about Jenny, you can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information there. And while you’re there I invite you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. And if you haven’t already gone to theskinquiz.com you can go there to find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health, what you can do about it. Your skin is your magic mirror giving you great information. So this is a great tool to help you that I created just for you. Theskinquiz.com is where you can find it. Also, I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, youtube, Pinterest. Join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.