Play & Mental Health

May 8, 2024

A reflection on Heart & Power: Utilizing Play for Your Mental Health

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.


200 people from 23 countries from Latin America, North America, Europe/UK, Asia and Africa participated in Global Play Brigade’s first Global Playshop of 2024, HEART and POWER: Utilizing Play for Our Mental Health, this past March. 


As is the GPB’s DNA, we are trying a new experiment (yes, we really believe in experimenting!) with our three large global playshops this year. We have chosen specific themes that highlight important play discoveries in different aspects of life. For this past March, we chose the theme of mental health. We wanted to see if we could provide an opportunity for people from around the world to come together and explore the power of play as a tool for addressing mental health challenges.

So many of our fellow human beings are experiencing emotional difficulties. A 2023 study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Queensland shows that half of the world’s population will experience a mental health disorder in their lifetime. While we don’t need an academic study to tell us that we and friends and families are experiencing emotional pain, reading about the scope of this is upsetting and alarming.  The Global Play Brigade, along with many other organizations, and thousands of creative teachers, therapists, activists, artists, and community organizers have made innovative breakthroughs for mental health by bringing strangers and friends together to play, improvise, co-create stories, art and poetry in ways that are providing incredible support with emotional challenges. Play can, and is, creating communities for social connection, thoughtful conversation, and nourishing support.

Heart & Power Playshops

The "HEART and POWER" playshops clearly resonated and impacted. 200 people from around the world came ready to share, wanting to learn, needing to connect, eager to be with people who were different from them. The diverse selection of workshops, led by a wonderful team of facilitators/Brigadiers, and co-created with all who came, ensured there was something for everyone:


  • Pause-Observe-Connect led by Mana Mukaiyachi (Japan) and Sean Kwan (China/UK) 
  • Creating Our Mental Health led by Jessie Fields, MD (USA) and Hugh Polk, MD (USA); 
  • Happiness Unlimited led by Ishita Sanyal (India) and Kaseina Dashe (Nigeria) 
  • Loving Listening led by Cathy Salit (USA) and Kahlil Bagatsing (Philippines; 
  • Embodied Empathy led by Christopher Ellinger (USA) and Jacek Kukluk (Poland); 
  • Yoga for Emotional Wellness led by Jennifer Bullock, LPC (USA);
  • Discover Your Superpower led by Manuela Kelly Calzini (Italy), Kate Kennedy (USA), Alicia Laucirica (Argentina), and Nyree Robinson (Gibraltar);
  • Playful Imagination led by Cristina Gioveni (Argentina) and Margot Escott (USA);
  • Quien Canta, Sus Males Espanta led by Ruben Reyes Jirón (Nicaragua/Spain), José Carlos Barbosa (Brazil), and David Gómez (Nicaragua)


Impact on Mental Health

What was the impact of the Heart and Power sessions on people’s mental health? A sampling of comments shared by participants give us an idea. Watch this video to hear what people had to say:

Playing with Social Construction: GPB at the Taos Institute Symposium

By Danielle Speciale • June 9, 2026
Author: Sarah Filman, GPB Director of Programs

GPB and Linking Circles Academy Collaborate on Project TECI

June 9, 2026
GPB and Linking Circles Academy Collaborate on Project TECI We love a good partnership. And we really love a partnership that puts play where it belongs, in a classroom. So when Linking Circles Academy came with a vision to transform how teachers in Nigeria show up for their diverse learners, we opened the door. Fewer than half of teachers in Nigeria do not receive any training on inclusive education, and there are a lot of learners with diverse learning needs and abilities. Founded by Elizabeth Adams, a brigadier, Linking Circles is an education-focused organization on a mission to improve learning outcomes in African schools through teacher development. They've already trained over 50 teachers through virtual and in-person workshops. Project TECI (The Equitable Classroom Initiative) is their boldest move yet, aimed at training and mentoring at least 1,000 primary and secondary school teachers to design and sustain inclusive, equitable, student-centred classrooms. It's ambitious. It's necessary. And it has GPB's name all over it. Inclusive classrooms need teachers who know how to meet a room full of different minds, different stories, and make every single one of them feel like they belong. And play is one of the most powerful tools for developing exactly that. That's why GPB is stepping in as a curriculum partner for Project TECI. Through our Educators Ensemble, we're bringing our play-based and experiential learning methodologies directly into the teacher training design. GPB will be providing play-based learning resources and frameworks to shape the TECI curriculum, offering advisory and technical input, and delivering a virtual training session for TECI facilitators on how to integrate play and performance-based approaches into their work. We'll also introduce GPB's work to the educators coming through the TECI programme — because once a teacher catches the play bug, there's no telling where it spreads. We're happy to be walking this road with Linking Circles Academy. We're bringing play into spaces where it has been absent for too long. And we can't wait to see the classrooms and the children that TECI helps transform. Let's play it forward!