Summer 2003

A Discussion About Training for Original Play

Part One & Part Two

DC: Daniel Caron   FD:  Fred Donaldson

DC:  People talk about training in the concept of play.  How does that work or how doesn't that work within the scheme of Original Play?

FD:  Probably the major difference between training in Original Play and adult training in virtually everything else is that in Original Play the training is conducted by children.  As an adult I can guide it, organize it but I don't do it.  That means that unlike other training programs it is not focused on adult-to-adult contact.  So we have to have access to a variety of different kinds of children for the training to have the kind of variety that allows a person to learn different kinds of touch, how to handle different kinds of situations.  For example, numbers of children, special needs children, children of different cultures, different ages, ?all of the variables that are there are attempted to be dealt with.  It seems to me that the best way to start is with younger children.  By that I mean from birth to three so that any aggression that comes from a child to the person being trained is more easily handled.  And the hurts are obviously very minor from children under three.  That enables adults to learn how to handle aggression without fighting back, without revenge, without resorting to their normal kind of adult activities, which are generally verbal in terms of order and "times outs" or saying "that hurts" or "don't do that."  And then with some adults that includes physical restraint and hitting.  So by starting younger you really find out about handling that kind behavior in a new way because that does require that one handles it in a new way.  You can't be an adult.  You have to step out of being parent, teacher, therapist and all of the other roles that cultures provide.  Obviously cultures provide, within those roles, sanctions on children for misbehaving or acting in ways that adults think are inappropriate.  Stepping out of cultural roles then the trainee doesn't use the cultural sanctions either.  Learning to adapt to playing with children with a whole new set of behaviors can be difficult so we start slowly with younger children.

DC:  If children are the primary teachers then it sounds like "training" is not something that is controlled by adults.

FD:  No. As an adult, for example, my role is to guide and try to assess the level in which the person who is training can play with what age of children and serve as sometimes a model mentor and then sometimes step back and just be quiet and watch from the outside.  It is really the children themselves who do the actual teaching and modeling of the behavior that is appropriate.  You will have any trainee, even within a small group of children, will have two different kinds of position that they are put in.  One is that for certain kids who are aggressive, they model kind touch, no revenge, no blame no fault, no victimization and no aggression for those kids for however long it takes for the child to feel safe and drop the aggressive behavior.  On the other hand there will be some children that the person plays with who models to them (the trainee) kind touch, gentle touch, how to move, so that the trainee is always in the position of on one hand learning from some children and modeling to other children.    And they (the trainee) have to be comfortable with that, sometimes both at the same time.

DC:  Does the pattern learning from children follow a similar pattern when you are learning from wild animals?

FD:  Yes in the sense that some will be your teachers and others you will model for depending on the animal's experience.  Also my experience is that it is much better for human beings to begin with animals that are not tame but much more gentle, like manatees, in environments that are safe.  Even with manatees the human being needs to feel comfortable and safe going into the water, needs to feel comfortable and safe with a large animal-even though they move slowly.  In all of the training situations the person who is undergoing the training is in charge of their own sense of comfort.  Another major difference, and especially you see this now in the United States, is that play is not "no pain, no gain" training. And it is not extreme sport.  What it means is that normally in many humans activities-especially extreme sports, you operate in an area of trust and then you throw yourself out there into an area of risk.  That is not what play does.  As a person who plays you stay in what I call "the playground."  The playground is an area of trust.  As you grow the area of trust grows around you.  It is not a matter of stepping out and risking to see if you can do it or to show off to somebody or to test yourself.  There's no testing.

DC:  So it is not about trying to go to other levels?

FD:  No, no.  You will know as you move through and play with, for example, with different aged of children, children of different cultures, different kinds of animals, you don't for example, approach going from manatees to wolves by saying "I am going to test myself with the wolf?"  That's not play.  What happens is that you will feel a sense of trust, a sense of comfort and you move within that sense of trust in the playground.  And them it will encompass wolves.  You'll know it.  So you don't try to make effort to make the wolves fit.  You'll know if they fit.

DC:  What does that say about the timing involved in this process?

FD:  Well, and I can specifically talk about mine.  It is over thirty years now and I consider play to be, in human traditions, to be like a craft that one learns and spends one's whole life learning.  So for me there is no end to learning play because my personal goal, a personal delight would be to be a playmate to all life on earth.  That's a big group.  So there is no sense of doing it for a year or two years and thinking "Well, I've got this mastered now I'll go on to something else."  There's no such thing as being "done" or mastered.

DC:  So, it is not a weekend workshop or a week long class?

FD:  No.  The workshops, and even classes, are designed to introduce people 1) to the idea, and 2) to a feeling of difference between play and not playing.  That's it.  And then if someone decides then "I want to go further" training involves very slow next steps.  I don't believe that people, I don't know whether it is individual or not but I don't believe that everyone would take as long as I've taken to learn the same things.  I think, for example, that you've learned faster than I have learned.  But there still is no end.

Part Two of this discussion on Training for Original Play.

FD:  Another difference between play training and virtually all other kinds of training is that there are no colored belts; there are no medals and no certification.  One doesn't finish by saying, "I'm certified by Fred."  Fred doesn't certify anybody.  And there's no standard that one can read on your body by the clothes you wear or the pieces of paper you carry around or the letters after your name.  Play doesn't have that.  It's for me more a matter of heart and spirit and the elegance with which one moves and the ability to use what one learns over time from the kids and the animals in living a real life and the grace to live that life without victimization, attack and revenge. 

DC:  So it is a matter of self-responsibility.

FD:  Yes.  Huge responsibility.  And it is for anyone that does play on the ground, it becomes very clear.  You're the one who is sitting there with the kids on you.  You're the one who has to handle it.  It does no good to blame anyone for your inability.  Nor is anyone else, including me, responsible for your skill.  Your skill in handling playing with wolves or kids is completely your own.

DC:  It sounds like a really different way of looking at the concept of training compared with the way most people look at it.

FD:  Yeah.  I think it is in reality, although I think to a certain extent it has certain kinds of models in traditional craft apprenticeships.  I think it certainly was modeled, as I understand it, O Sensei and his senior students and probably other master martial artists or master artists.  It wouldn't just be martial artists.  It would probably be pottery and calligraphy, flower arranging and tea ceremony?

DC:  Playing a musical instrument?

FD:  Yeah, yeah.  My guess is that in many of those arts and skills the person learning would spend years maybe just watching, maybe even doing things that didn't even seem to have to do with playing the instrument.   And you wouldn't actually get to what was called "the skill" itself until much later on.  I think there is in normal human activities, that one thinks of being trained in, with time and practice you increase your rank. And they have language that describes your level of achievement and symbols that describe your achievement.  In play, the reality is that at some point in that process of training you literally become a beginner.  Different from, in certain regards, but still a beginner just like when you started.  I think that the old pattern that many sages talk about the master eventually becoming the infant.

DC:  So the process is really circular and not linear.

FD:  Yes, it's not linear.  Right.  You come around eventually to the beginning and I think there's a stage that one goes through in this play training that, at the beginning, you focus on how to do something. How I move, what are my hands supposed to do, how do I touch, where do I touch, what is the technique with this, how do I stop a punch, how do I grab if I am not supposed to grab, what am I supposed to do with it?  After awhile the techniques become second nature.  We don't think about them but they are still there.  After (x) number of years there is no technique at all.

DC:  It just happens.

FD:  Yes, which is the way you started as an infant-no technique.  As far as I know no infant has a technique for standing up and walking.  You just do it.

DC:  Daily practice?

FD:  Yes and that's the same with play.

DC:  That's a really different description that what most of us are used to hearing regarding training.  I'd imagine that on at least some level it would speak to a commitment because it isn't a week-long or a year-long or just so many hours to do it.  It's something you do and you just keep doing it.

FD:  Right.  That not only speaks to a commitment in terms of time but given the nature of cultures at this point, it speaks to commitment in terms of income, standard of living and that sort of aspect of living because there is no cultural context.  There are no job slots, which is consistent.  I think you are being trained in play to have a vocation and not a career or job.  Certainly in our culture you don't look at want ads under "Vocations."  So it is going to take a while for people to be committed enough to create the positions that become important enough that have places in the culture.  Then you run the paradox that culture always wants to test and measure?

DC:  Certify?

FD:  Yes.  And it very easy to lose everything you've done.  So it really, ultimately as individuals, each in our own way, forces us to take a stand at some point about what we believe, how we live our lives, our relationship to money, our relationship to qualities like compassion and love and so on.  At some point, your working at a center for abused children, it then requires the center to make a commitment, a value judgment about what is valuable here?  Loving children, really loving children or money.  Then it moves right out.  The same kinds of commitments would eventually be required from the cultural on a whole, from employers.  From employers who employ parents, from employers who employ schoolteachers and so on.  It makes it quite a bit difficult if the culture creates contexts that don't value the kinds of personal commitments that you are making.  But I think that at some point it certainly makes it easier if the culture is congruent with your values.  If it isn't, the reality at a certain point is that it doesn't matter.  It doesn't stop you.

DC:  Thanks Fred.