The Healing Power of Play and Creativity in Adulthood

“When we are able to connect with our inner resources through creativity, we tap into a deep wisdom that goes beyond words.”
— Natalie Rogers

I’ve been thinking about this alot lately, and over the last few years since I worked with teenagers with complex needs. In some Dance Movement training recently, the instructor reminded me, “it doesn’t have to feel deep to be therapeutic”. It’s true.

In all the group sessions, I’ve run with adults and with teenagers, it’s been the playful sessions and moments that have chimed a chord somewhere deep inside. We can connect to our inner resources through creativity, but we can also connect to our inner child through play.

I saw a little boy skipping and jumping across some cobbles the other day, and I instantly wanted to follow suite, and skip across on one leg. Something stopped me. Maybe it was the cars and people passing by and the worry I’d look ridiculous. His mum told him to hurry up anyway. We’ve all told ourselves “there’s no time for play”.

Somewhere along the journey into adulthood, we’re taught to put play away. To be sensible, serious, responsible. To swap imagination for productivity — and silence the parts of ourselves that once found joy in colour, movement, sound, silliness, instinct.

What happens if I just skip instead of walk?

And yet… that playful part of us never truly disappears. It lies dormant waiting for permission to return.

I’ve witnessed it unfold in all sorts of therapeutic settings- we may arrive quietly, cautiously and gingerly pick up crayons or clay, but by the end we are laughing until our bellies ache and feeling so connected to each other and to our inner child.

I’ve felt it in my own body, too.

During a two-day expressive arts training I attended, I felt something primal go on. My left hand activated my right brain (the intuitive bit) and my inner child unleashed. I felt anchored and free all at once. My inner child — the one I hadn’t noticed had gone quiet — came alive again. Not through logic or analysis, but through play.

And I remembered:
Healing doesn’t always have to be heavy.
Sometimes, it can feel like freedom.

Why Adults Still Need Play

Play isn’t childish. It is human.

It is one of the purest ways the nervous system finds relief, the mind finds spaciousness, and the heart finds expression.

When we allow ourselves to create — not for performance or perfection, but simply for the pleasure of making — something softens inside us.

• We stop trying to get it right.

• We re-learn how to explore without judgement.

• Emotions we could never quite name begin to form themselves into colour, movement, texture, rhythm.

Play becomes a language beyond words.

Nothing to interpret, or hang on the wall, just pure expression in the moment.

Creativity as Emotional Language

"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain" Carl Jung.

This is one of my favourite quotes and it’s stayed with me since I first read it. I’ve definitely over used my intellect as a protection against feeling in the past. Recently, I’ve been overwhelmed by what my hands will tell me when I instinctively pick out a minature in personal therapy, or when a colour and my body tell me what my intellect just could not put into words.

A scribble can say I’m overwhelmed.
A collage torn apart and pieced back together can whisper I’m grieving.

A tiny figurine can tell me about my old wounds, or my hopes and dreams.
We can speak to each other without even uttering a word.

This is the power of expressive arts therapy:
It lets feelings speak in the way they need to — not always through conversation, but through creation.

A total primal release of my inner feelings through colour and movement across a page at a recent Expressive Arts Course.

How Play Lives in Therapy at RLS Therapy

At RLS Therapy, I offer expressive arts not as an activity, but as an invitation.

There is no expectation to perform. Some sessions are entirely spoken; others may involve paper, objects, movement, writing — always at your pace, always grounded in trust and curiosity.

It’s never about the final piece.
It’s about what stirs in you when you allow something inside to take form.

Some clients may choose to never work in this way, and that’s ok too. The invitation is there.

A Soft Invitation

If you’ve been feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or tired of trying to think your way through everything… perhaps what’s needed isn’t more effort. Perhaps it’s more play. More colour. More movement. More wonder.

Try it at home. Skip around for a bit. Open a packet of wax crayons and smell primary school and feel it all come back. Use your left hand and listen to some music and see what is unleashed with some soft pastels on a piece of paper. Switch off your mind and the feeling that you are making something ‘worthy’ or ‘beautiful’, and just let it all go.

Your inner child hasn’t left.
They’re simply waiting to be welcomed back.

🌿 If you’d like to explore therapy in a way that includes creativity, gentleness, and expression, I’d love to walk alongside you. You’re very welcome to get in touch.