Coach Play

The mission is real: Take conscious play into creative well-being spaces to increase our capacity to sit with and explore the dark and shade in our experiences.

Working with began intentionally as fun to gently invite opening that might reveal what the room was truly holding and how we might approach the staging of this play.

Writer & Director Mya Onwugbonu has written a sensitive contemporary play exploring grief. It is complex, layered and it lands on the tender nerves of our personal experiences. Understanding this and the possibilities of personal material coming into the space, she factored in care for both the production and performance team. That’s sensitive, human-centred, leadership.

I was brought in as a grief consultant and we spent time exploring various approaches to supporting the rehearsal, research and performance process. It was a pleasure to work with this team. It’s exciting and heartwarming to see more and more directors and production teams bringing us into the room as coaches and consultants to support in mapping out working practices that protect, promote and preserve collective wellbeing.

Well done Mya.

Big love,
Coach play!

Play | Altar by Mya Onwugbonu
A part of SHIFT+SPACE 2026

Creative team credits |
Writer/ Director Mya
Producer
Shadow producer
Grief consultant
Dramaturg
Associate Dramaturg
Associate Dramaturg
Movement Dircetor .w.a
Music Director
Co-Music Director
Lighting Designer

ACTORS
Playing Boy
Playing Girl
Pianist

Make time for friendships!

In healthy friendships we are brought back into connection with our authentic voice, our dreams, our achievements and an awareness of our capacity.

A GOOD FRIENDSHIP brings us into the present through enjoyable, meaningful interactions. They inspire us also to look towards the future as they lead the cheer for what they believe we CAN DO!

A GOOD FRIENDSHIP can reorient us towards signs and symbols life is throwing us, that we keep missing. They can sometimes be the eyes that detect our blind spots and turn us towards them with love.

We are not meant to walk alone.
Make time for your friendships and set up a play date today.

🖋️ Journal prompt 68 🧐

Talking about curiosity, building an alliance with our reactions and considering that criticism may be necessary to our growth on these healing journeys.

“But how do I reduce my reactions to criticism or slow them down so I can build more helpful responses?”

Check out this post and let me know your thoughts.

🔎 💚 If this raises something that you’d like to explore further comment / dm the word ✨explore✨ to arrange a call.

👋🏾🙋🏾‍♀️ Catch me in my stories today. I’ll have a little something to share.

Back with another journal prompt next Wednesday. 🗓️

BIG Love,
Coach Play
✨🤸🏾‍♂️🧩🤸🏾‍♂️✨


-motivation

🖋️ Journal prompt 67 😁

🧐I’m serious about this:
1. Identify!
2. Source!
3. Plant!
Those seeds of joy throughout your life.
⛔️ DON’T WAIT
⛔️ DON’T EXPECT

We have the power to curate a version of life that serves to lift our spirits when we least expect it.

✅ Diary the date with that encouraging, playful friend
✅ Start/ end the day with the songs that get up up and shaking that ass! 💃🏾
✅ Wear the shoes, the top, the hat that makes you walk a little taller, bolder, more confidently.

✂️ Cut out/ reduce interactions with energy vampires. Some people are not here for your joy, so they WILL 💩 all over it!
✂️ Cut down the comparison. Whoever they are and whatever they are doing… they aren’t you! Less looking over there and more looking at what YOU have available to make the changes you want to see in YOUR LIFE! If it’s not inspiring but draining your light… step back and leave the room.

We are worthy of JOY 🙌🏾
Go plant those seeds today 🥳

What’s your reflection on this journal prompt?

🔎 💚 If this raises something that you’d like to explore further comment / dm the word ✨explore✨ to arrange a call.

👋🏾🙋🏾‍♀️ Catch me in my stories today. I’ll have a little something to share.

Back with another journal prompt next Wednesday. 🗓️

BIG Love,
Coach Play
✨🤸🏾‍♂️🧩🤸🏾‍♂️✨


-motivation

Energise | Opportunities to learn something new appear in all our interactions.

Observing others can be a game.
I love people watching. Don’t you?
The thing is when we do we usually enter some form of reflection about ourselves. There is a process of comparison. That doesn’t have to be negative. I’ve been watching these young people do this click for about three months. I could not understand how they did it, so finally I just asked. I became a student of their game, and they were happy to teach me. One came, then another, then another and then another! Eventually there was a little huddle of us; them playing teacher or amused overlookers whilst I played the will-full, effort-full student. I didn’t master the click. I still don’t get it but…

For about ten minutes of that afternoon I bonded with a group of kids, engaged in play, learned something new, attempted it, failed and tried repeatedly, extended grace and humour to myself, allowed others to pick me up and guide me as I repeatedly made errors and strengthened the bonds within our little community.

This is a little memory we now have of us. Nobody else has it and it is precious. Play, curiosity and a willingness to move towards the uncertain expands us and brings us together. Somehow I always find a person or community that wants to play too!

In a time where so much is being taken away from our sense of humanity these simple moments of connective play across cultures, race, age, gender, language and bring us together.

These clips show Congo, Syria, Kuwait, Kurdistan, and England coming together.

It’s so much more than just learning a new way to click. We’re playing till we click…

🖋️ Journal prompt 66 ⚡️

Meet the basics before setting those big tasks. How do I find motivation to do something if I can’t event trust myself to take care of the simplest of my needs?? It’s the first indicator or success.

What’s your reflection on this journal prompt?

🔎 💚 If this raises something that you’d like to explore further comment / dm the word ✨explore✨ to arrange a call.

👋🏾🙋🏾‍♀️ Catch me in my stories today. I’ll have a little something to share.

Back with another journal prompt next Wednesday. 🗓️

BIG Love,
Coach Play
✨🤸🏾‍♂️🧩🤸🏾‍♂️✨


-motivation

I wasn’t born with an older sister but I was lucky enough life presented me with options and I chose a special one!

We have been adventuring through the ups and downs of life for 30 years now and I am so thankful. She gets me. She gets how I play and how I need it.

When she said I’d like to take you out for your birthday I she asked for three words to help her plan. I think I may have said water, outdoors and adventure and this… this is where we ended up.

I wasn’t good at it!
I was pretty bad actually, but she kept training me and giving me tips. When we were heading into a boat she took over re-steering in a safer direction. We shared the work and managed the river together. As we did so we talked about all the things we needed to catch up on and other more random “in the moment” things.

This wasn’t a yoga session.
It wasn’t a psychotherapy session.
It was a version of play that suited me well enough to open me up and build connection.

The simplest of things can bring us alive and into healing.

Play is medicine!

A reminder, with love and gratitude,
Coach Play!

⭐️✨🤸🏾‍♂️🧩🤸🏾‍♂️✨⭐️

🖋️ Journal prompt 65 👩🏼‍🎓👩🏽‍🎓👩🏾‍🎓

Life will teach us some things!
People and relationships will stretch our comfort zones!
Things may get challenging, so what can we take from those tough lessons?

Our deepest periods of growth can come from the toughest times. That being said the toughest times can also bring us to burnout.

Taking wisdom from what has passed, to inform what is to come is a useful way to support us in the now. It’s a useful way to figure out where we need to place, preserve and communicate boundaries so we don’t burn out.

Burnout taught me a lot about how expensive “overachieving” habits were on my energy pool. The fear of not being enough was driving dis-ease and ill-health. Hitting rock bottom had me thinking about what it would take to get back up and climibing but… steadily. This time I had no desire to rush, nor to get straight to the top. I wanted to feel the pleasures of the climb and enjoy the view along the way. When I look back I can track the different ways I had overworked myself and so now I am better at seeing when those patterns begin to emerge. I can introduce circuit breakers, rest, redirection and energy refuelling activities instead.

Over to you now. What’s your reflection on this journal prompt?

🔎 💚 If this raises something that you’d like to explore further comment / dm the word ✨explore✨ to arrange a call.

👋🏾🙋🏾‍♀️ Catch me in my stories today. I’ll have a little something to share.

Back with another journal prompt next Wednesday. 🗓️

BIG Love,
Coach Play
✨🤸🏾‍♂️🧩🤸🏾‍♂️✨


-motivation

Waiting to be perfectly placed to start the work is a symptom of the injuries that want tending to.

We don’t take the impulse to wait as a full stop.

We treat it as a comma or semi-colon and wonder … “hmmm.. what comes next?”

Considering “the work” as a writer might, we show up, pick up our pens and accept there will be scrappy, “not so perfect” drafts.

We are not meant to be one perfect draft.

Show up any way! 👍🏾

We have the right to fall just as much as we have the right to succeed.
One cannot exist without the other so we keep finding ways to show up.

My 50% today may just be equal to someone else’s 100%. I don’t need to push myself beyond that. We work within capacity when healing. So we can be proud that with the little we had available we showed up and did what we could. A win is a win.

I hope you win today 😃👍🏾🌱

🖋️ Journal prompt 64 🫀🤩

Once you’ve completed your journal entry why not go tell that person what makes them wonderful to you!

And congratulate yourself on being wonderful too. 😜

🔎 💚 If this raises something that you’d like to explore further comment / dm the word ✨explore✨ to arrange a call.

👋🏾🙋🏾‍♀️ Catch me in my stories today. I’ll have a little something to share.

Wishing you a well-resourced journaling session 📝

Back with another journal prompt next Wednesday. 🗓️

BIG Love,
Coach Play
✨🤸🏾‍♂️🧩🤸🏾‍♂️✨


-motivation

In the Autumn (my favourite season) I joined an art session

Using natural objects as our visual inspiration we proceeded to make “something” - anything.

I was processing grief at the time. I still am but at a different level and intensity now. At that time the grief was about my health and how it was creating limitations in the things I could/ wanted to do. I was shedding an old self and uncomfortably coming into relationship with the evolving self. It wasn’t easy and the old me often wanted to push back and take over… but she couldn’t. She didn’t fit any more. The space had changed and she was being asked to forgive the changes she perceived as betrayal. Forgive and let go.

🤓 | The 5 C’s of Healing Centered Engagement are classified by the Akerman Institute for the family as:

🌱 Compassion
🌱 Connection
🌱 Community
🌱 Curiosity
🌱 Ceremony

Working through the hands, and making things creates an internal environment for these healing pathways to emerge.

😮‍💨 | Once I relinquished the need to make something beautiful or perfect I leaned into making something true - something that reflected the me in the now.

🍁 I felt compassion for myself.
🍂 I grew connected to my internal story and myself in the present.
🍁 I settled in community as we shared appreciation for eachother’s process and outcomes.
🍂 I grew in curiosity about what was emerging and what it might teach me.
⭐️ The presentation of final creations acted as ceremony to honour the process and outcomes. It concluded this part of the story whilst inviting an opening for the next. I would leave the session to process and journal my downloads.

Grief and healing do not have to be experienced or processed alone. There is sanctuary in community and welcome through art.

✨Presence - flow - movement - play✨
I found some healing that day…

Have you used artistic approaches to move through or access your grief?