how playfighting benefits your leadership skills

Last year, still on my nomad worcation journey, I found myself rather spontaneously in a playfight facilitator training close to Geneva. I was already introduced to it through my somatic network and always wanted to get to know it more profoundly.

Playfighting combines fighting with an intention of playfulness within a frame of safety to avoid injuries and maintaining connection the whole time. Basically, it trains very well keeping focus while interacting on a high energy level with another person aiming to pin each other down for three seconds.

Here are my most essential takeaways: 

1. Create and maintain constant connection

Closely interacting in a playfight that can be fast, powerful, or even overwhelming requires to cultivate a constant self-connection to manage my resources physically as well as emotionally. But the actual playfight just really happens when I engage and keep a connection in the same way with my opponent. That is when the real magic happens and something new emerges.

2. Competition can be beautiful

I once sad to a client “you can only compete with someone who has the same goal as you.” And it´s so true. There is true beauty in competition, in wanting the same thing and fighting about it. As long as you are able to empathize with you opponent while fighting over the same thing there is no real looser and you can even enjoy experiencing to see the other one winning.

3. Create and cultivate simple safety

Safety is one of the two pillars of playfight. I am fully responsible of my wellbeing and the expert of knowing what I need, what is too much or what I want to change. As you interact with several people of different levels of strength, intensity, emotion or even range of motion in a short amount of time it is necessary to be fast rather than overthinking. Using and sharing a common language of safe words helped me a lot navigating during the playfight. Not only cultivating my inner sovereignty, but also being able to relax into knowing that my limits are radically respected.

4. Sometimes emotions don´t just want to be meditated away

I am used a lot to take emotions in as I learned it´s better to harmonize instead of heating up the fire. Turns out with the right framing and a well agreed connection you can bring a lot of emotions on the table without losing focus. It was very liberating for me to experience a deep connection to my opponent even in dealing with difficult emotions like anger or fear. I learned that every emotion has its very own warrior quality.

5. Allow discomfort in a safe framework

In the last years I focused a lot on happiness, (psychological) safety and satisfaction for me, my colleagues, and my clients. Which brings the pitfall of preventing tension or disharmony. I learned even more that sticking with discomfort can reveal true insights about other peoples needs and my own as well. I can shift from taking care of everything into giving direction and offering a safe connection in case there is discomfort that needs to be addressed.

It was quite the learning opportunity for me personally, as a woman, but also as a facilitator and explorer of leadership skills. I think it holds a lot of potential for team building, developing self-awareness and thereof resilience as well. I am super eager to dive deeper into it as a tool for building more connection and body-mind awareness. And honestly it was a lot of fun, too.

Are up for a playfight intro with me? ! Let me know.

See you in your knee pads!