Finding My Way Back to Play | Let the (Astro) Games Begin!!

Stephanie
12 minutes ago
3 min read

Play was my pathway back home to myself — deeply unexpected and profoundly healing.

I realised that my favourite way to learn is through play, laughter, and creativity. So it has become my favourite way to teach!

When we play, something very specific happens:our nervous system feels safe.

Safe enough to be present.

Safe enough to be spontaneous.

Safe enough to simply be.

Play is the gateway to creativity.

Different parts of the brain come online, and suddenly we have access to inspiration, insight, and intelligence that can’t be forced or figured out. There is an ease.

A remembering.

But this didn’t come easily for me.

Until a few years ago, I felt a deep sense of shame around play. I didn’t know how to release myself into it — how to surrender and be at ease. I was vigilant… so painfully vigilant. Mostly afraid of doing something wrong.

I remember standing in a room full of adults immersed in playful somatic exploration — laughing, moving with one another, uninhibited — and I felt awkward, frozen, unsure how to engage. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play, or engage, though it must have looked like it. It was that play felt like a foreign state of being.

Through years of somatic trainings and explorations, one of my greatest healings has been gently repatterning this. Slowly. Steadily. But surely.

And now — I feel so much joy in play, in facilitating play, and in witnessing what becomes possible when people feel safe enough to soften.

If this is you too… I see you.

I truly do know how it feels.

I often joke that my containers are shy-people-friendly, curated by an introvert, for introverts. You will not be put on the spot. You will not be forced. You will be met exactly where you are. This, I give you my word.

A beautiful crone once shared this with me:

You cannot solve the problem with the same mind that created it.

So we make ritual.

We cradle our inner child – the fearful one.

And together, we step outside the prison of the survival mind and into the wider field of consciousness —

where creativity, solutions, and inspiration already exist.

My devotion has always been to know myself more deeply — to uncover my blind spots, to meet my shadow with love. Because not doing so keeps me captive in unnecessary suffering.

I want to live this life fully.

To go as far and as deep in the experience of being alive as is available to me.

Astrology has been one of the most powerful tools in this journey. It gave me language, permission, and reverence for who I am — my embodiment, my choices, my desires, and my way of moving through the world.

This is why I am so deeply excited for this weekend’s Somatic Astrology Retreat in Ubud.

We will learn astrology through play, laughter, music, movement, games, art, creativity, and rest.We’ll learn astrology through embodiment and pop culture.

You will embody your chart rather than analyse or memorise it.

In fact, there is no memory work at all —

but a deep trust in somatic intelligence and integration.

This is the kind of school I have been longing for —

so I am creating it.

This is how we marry lightness with depth.

Joy with meaning.

Fun with profound self-knowing.

There will be stomach-hurting laughter.

And you’ll also leave with greater courage, boldness, and permission to be fully — unapologetically — you.

Nothing brings me more joy than witnessing this homecoming.

There is one final twin-share room available.