Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul

[RamboLiberal]

Experts say play time can relieve stress in bad times

Stuart Brown appears to be lighthearted and hooked on playing. He made his office in a treehouse in Carmel Valley, Calif. He is tan and fit. The 76-year-old psychiatrist plays tennis with his buddies every week and recently took a cross-country ski vacation with his adult sons and older brother in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
But his message could not be any more serious, especially during these difficult economic times.

Find regular time to play — or else, he warns in his new book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul (Penguin, $24.95).

Or else what?

A life of rigidity, lacking in creativity. A life without joy, minus sustained pleasure. The opposite of play isn't work, he adds, but depression. During his 40-year career, Brown has peered into the bubbling inferno, studying what goes wrong when people do not play. He has conducted more than 6,000 play studies on everyone from serial killers to substance abusers to career-driven CEOs.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-03-23-play-stress_N.htm

[soothsayer]

1. wolves pick their pack leader based on who initiates play best