The Deep Play Institute's Fall 2026 Class Series
A 6-week semester of deeply playful curriculum for the post-disciplinary imagination
Sundays Sept 13 – Oct 18 |10 AM–12 PM PT / 1–3 PM ET / 7–9 PM CEST
[and recordings to watch later if you miss a class]
cost is by donation
A 6-week semester of deeply playful curriculum for the post-disciplinary imagination
Sundays Sept 13 – Oct 18 |10 AM–12 PM PT / 1–3 PM ET / 7–9 PM CEST
[with recordings available for those who are unable to join synchronously]
cost is by donation
Welcome back to school! And join the Deep Play Institute for our Fall Semester of deep play classes.
Our curriculum is more experiential than didactic, offering workshops that are experimental, playful, transformative mixtures of art, mindfulness, therapy and performance.
Classes will meet on Sundays from Sept 13th to Oct 18th on zoom, from 10am-12pm PDT / 1-3pm EDT / 7-9pm CEST
Participants must sign up for the entire series. Classes will be recorded, so if you can’t attend one you can still watch the recording. See below for our list of classes and facilitators.
Cost is by donation, taking inspiration from the dana practice in Buddhist monastic settings. We believe that this play is deeply important and liberatory, and offer the series as an act of service towards collective healing and transcendence. Please give what you can and find appropriate to support our organization and skillful facilitators, and we welcome you regardless of that number.
Class Schedule
Sep 13
Playing the Frame: Improvising Social Reality
Nina Jakobson
What possibilities emerge when we stop optimizing ourselves to make sense? This is an invitation to play together in the undone-ness of our psyche: in the watery inter-realms that merge and flow between us at the party, on the subway, and in the grocery store. This is also a conversational anarchy support group. This is also a space to practice bringing compassionate aliveness and impulse to the battlefront of our water-cooler interactions. Come scared, with your multiplicitous, riotous self. Expect meditation, movement, drawing, writing, authentic relating, and playful improvisation as we treat our own interactions as creative material. Stay for the realization that the water cooler has always been full of strange and wonderful creatures just like you.
Bio: Nina Jakobson is a mover, facilitator & organizer with a background in contact improvisation, Buddhist meditation, authentic relating, theater & performance art. In New York, Nina hosts contact improv jams with ambient open decks, but most often works semi-nomadically from the Bay Area with Dharma Gates. They are a student and playful researcher of improvisation as a political experiment, a spiritual experiment & a creative experiment.
Playing the Frame: Improvising Social Reality
Nina Jakobson
What possibilities emerge when we stop optimizing ourselves to make sense? This is an invitation to play together in the undone-ness of our psyche: in the watery inter-realms that merge and flow between us at the party, on the subway, and in the grocery store. This is also a conversational anarchy support group. This is also a space to practice bringing compassionate aliveness and impulse to the battlefront of our water-cooler interactions. Come scared, with your multiplicitous, riotous self. Expect meditation, movement, drawing, writing, authentic relating, and playful improvisation as we treat our own interactions as creative material. Stay for the realization that the water cooler has always been full of strange and wonderful creatures just like you.
Bio: Nina Jakobson is a mover, facilitator & organizer with a background in contact improvisation, Buddhist meditation, authentic relating, theater & performance art. In New York, Nina hosts contact improv jams with ambient open decks, but most often works semi-nomadically from the Bay Area with Dharma Gates. They are a student and playful researcher of improvisation as a political experiment, a spiritual experiment & a creative experiment.
Sep 20
The Inner Resource Laboratory
Christie Animas
Discover, embody and activate your resourceful inner gang. Within each of us lives an Inner Village: a community of distinct parts, each carrying its own qualities, impulses, intelligence and ways of meeting the world. Some of these parts hold resources we may only glimpse fleetingly: a moment of courage, tenderness, clarity, steadiness or fearlessness. In this experiential workshop, participants will learn an embodied process for following these glimmers of resource and discovering the fuller parts that carry them. Through guided games using awareness, sensation, imagination, movement and voice, we will allow these parts to become more tangible and available. Participants will experiment with embodying a part’s posture, rhythm, perspective and gifts, developing a conscious relationship with these inner presences and learning how to bring their resources into everyday life. No previous experience of Voice Dialogue, parts work or embodied practice is needed.
Bio: Christie is a playful human researcher exploring consciousness through embodiment, parts work and play. She is a Voice Dialogue therapist and Fool Expression Workshop Facilitator, trained in Body Informed Leadership. She works 1:1 with clients and offers group workshops in the UK and Europe. https://christieanimas.com/
The Inner Resource Laboratory
Christie Animas
Discover, embody and activate your resourceful inner gang. Within each of us lives an Inner Village: a community of distinct parts, each carrying its own qualities, impulses, intelligence and ways of meeting the world. Some of these parts hold resources we may only glimpse fleetingly: a moment of courage, tenderness, clarity, steadiness or fearlessness. In this experiential workshop, participants will learn an embodied process for following these glimmers of resource and discovering the fuller parts that carry them. Through guided games using awareness, sensation, imagination, movement and voice, we will allow these parts to become more tangible and available. Participants will experiment with embodying a part’s posture, rhythm, perspective and gifts, developing a conscious relationship with these inner presences and learning how to bring their resources into everyday life. No previous experience of Voice Dialogue, parts work or embodied practice is needed.
Bio: Christie is a playful human researcher exploring consciousness through embodiment, parts work and play. She is a Voice Dialogue therapist and Fool Expression Workshop Facilitator, trained in Body Informed Leadership. She works 1:1 with clients and offers group workshops in the UK and Europe. https://christieanimas.com/
Sep 27
Polyvagal Play
Daniel Rudolph
Polyvagal Play invites you to explore a playful approach to nervous system regulation, where the science of Polyvagal Theory meets the wisdom and joy of play. Together, we’ll experiment with simple, accessible practices – such as humming, laughing, shaking, yawning, breath, movement, and playful interaction – that can help regulate the nervous system and support a greater sense of safety, connection, and ease. Drawing on insights from Polyvagal Theory and play research, we’ll discover how intentional play can activate our connected, prosocial state and become a practical resource for everyday wellbeing. Alongside experiential activities, we’ll reflect on the science and our own lived experiences through discussion, journalling, and creative exploration, leaving with a toolkit of playful practices and perspective to weave into your daily life.
Bio: Dan Rudolph is the founder and chief developer of Unified Playfulness. Dan has been facilitating play-based interventions for individuals and groups for over fifteen years, including working with schools, teams, and individuals. Dan is a certified Laughter Yoga instructor and has trained with various clown and play-based teachers including Avner ‘The Eccentric’ Eisenberg, Mery Miguez, Anthony Trahair, and Barnaby King. He has over 10 years of meditation experience, including living in a rigorous monastic setting and training with an expert teacher for 2.5 years.
Polyvagal Play
Daniel Rudolph
Polyvagal Play invites you to explore a playful approach to nervous system regulation, where the science of Polyvagal Theory meets the wisdom and joy of play. Together, we’ll experiment with simple, accessible practices – such as humming, laughing, shaking, yawning, breath, movement, and playful interaction – that can help regulate the nervous system and support a greater sense of safety, connection, and ease. Drawing on insights from Polyvagal Theory and play research, we’ll discover how intentional play can activate our connected, prosocial state and become a practical resource for everyday wellbeing. Alongside experiential activities, we’ll reflect on the science and our own lived experiences through discussion, journalling, and creative exploration, leaving with a toolkit of playful practices and perspective to weave into your daily life.
Bio: Dan Rudolph is the founder and chief developer of Unified Playfulness. Dan has been facilitating play-based interventions for individuals and groups for over fifteen years, including working with schools, teams, and individuals. Dan is a certified Laughter Yoga instructor and has trained with various clown and play-based teachers including Avner ‘The Eccentric’ Eisenberg, Mery Miguez, Anthony Trahair, and Barnaby King. He has over 10 years of meditation experience, including living in a rigorous monastic setting and training with an expert teacher for 2.5 years.
Oct 4
Make Daddy Mad: Doing It Wrong As a Practice of Creative Liberation
Scout Rainer Wiley
When it comes to ritual, structure is everything–which is exactly why, in this 2-hour shadow-play workshop, we’re going to tear it all down (on purpose, of course). We’ll get a taste of the creative power and personal insight that can arise when we give ourselves permission to just chill out a little–and by ‘chill out a little,’ I mean give our inner brat full reign to show us just exactly where perfectionism, people-pleasing, and rigid adherence to formal rules has been stifling us creatively.
Bio: Scout Rainer Wiley is an Asheville-based poet, writer, and renegade alchemist whose work explores the relationship between the somatic, the imaginal, and the mysteries of nature. By weaving together threads of religious studies, systems theory, and somatics, they seek to inspire systems change and liberation for humanity through creative ritual expression.
Make Daddy Mad: Doing It Wrong As a Practice of Creative Liberation
Scout Rainer Wiley
When it comes to ritual, structure is everything–which is exactly why, in this 2-hour shadow-play workshop, we’re going to tear it all down (on purpose, of course). We’ll get a taste of the creative power and personal insight that can arise when we give ourselves permission to just chill out a little–and by ‘chill out a little,’ I mean give our inner brat full reign to show us just exactly where perfectionism, people-pleasing, and rigid adherence to formal rules has been stifling us creatively.
Bio: Scout Rainer Wiley is an Asheville-based poet, writer, and renegade alchemist whose work explores the relationship between the somatic, the imaginal, and the mysteries of nature. By weaving together threads of religious studies, systems theory, and somatics, they seek to inspire systems change and liberation for humanity through creative ritual expression.
Oct 11
How to Be an Octopus in the Here and Now
Miriam Simun
How to Be an Octopus in the Here and Now is an online participatory workshop that combines the embodied practices of the Institute for Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution (ITCE) with facilitated group dialogic inquiry. Through simple movement, sensory attention, imagination, and collective reflection, participants explore what cephalopod intelligence can teach us about presence, distributed cognition, collective sensing, and relating to uncertainty. The workshop moves between individual and group somatic exercises and “here and now” dialogue, inviting participants to notice how attention, perception, relationality, and group dynamics transform in real time. Some questions we may explore: How are we sensing collectively? How are we acting unconsciously? How can we use the body to shift ourselves and the group?
Bio: Miriam Simun is a multidisciplinary artist using science, somatics, poetry, and humor to create art works in various formats, including video, installation, drawing, performance, and communal sensorial experiences. The work explores the collision of ecosystems, new technologies, and human power structures. Trained as a sociologist, Simun conducts embodied research with diverse places and communities, from scientific laboratories to rewilded forests, which shapes the form of the final works.
How to Be an Octopus in the Here and Now
Miriam Simun
How to Be an Octopus in the Here and Now is an online participatory workshop that combines the embodied practices of the Institute for Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution (ITCE) with facilitated group dialogic inquiry. Through simple movement, sensory attention, imagination, and collective reflection, participants explore what cephalopod intelligence can teach us about presence, distributed cognition, collective sensing, and relating to uncertainty. The workshop moves between individual and group somatic exercises and “here and now” dialogue, inviting participants to notice how attention, perception, relationality, and group dynamics transform in real time. Some questions we may explore: How are we sensing collectively? How are we acting unconsciously? How can we use the body to shift ourselves and the group?
Bio: Miriam Simun is a multidisciplinary artist using science, somatics, poetry, and humor to create art works in various formats, including video, installation, drawing, performance, and communal sensorial experiences. The work explores the collision of ecosystems, new technologies, and human power structures. Trained as a sociologist, Simun conducts embodied research with diverse places and communities, from scientific laboratories to rewilded forests, which shapes the form of the final works.
Oct 18
Embodying Archetypes
Sophie Löschburg
Archetypes are an amazing tool for creating complex and authentic characters who behave unpredictably. Art is full of archetypes. Film directors and storytellers love to work with them because they are universal and cross-cultural, making their behavior instantly recognizable and relatable. According to Carl Gustav Jung and Caroline Myss, the needs, instincts, and potential of different archetypes influence individual behavior. The Lucid Body approach to archetype work is both personally enlightening and precisely practical. In this workshop, you will embody a wide range of archetypes and explore their powerful, universal intentions as an inner motor within fictional characters and scenes. Through physical and imaginative exploration, you will discover how archetypal energies can influence behavior, relationships, choices, and impulses. Discover the wild, voracious, and untamed pioneers of storytelling within you.
Bio: Sophie Loeschburg is an actor, teacher, and founder of Lucid Body Berlin. After training with Lucid Body founder Fay Simpson, she completed the Lucid Body Teacher Training at Lucid Body House in New York. Sophie teaches internationally through workshops and classes in Berlin, New York, Portugal, and Italy, and has performed in over 70 theatre and film productions.
Embodying Archetypes
Sophie Löschburg
Archetypes are an amazing tool for creating complex and authentic characters who behave unpredictably. Art is full of archetypes. Film directors and storytellers love to work with them because they are universal and cross-cultural, making their behavior instantly recognizable and relatable. According to Carl Gustav Jung and Caroline Myss, the needs, instincts, and potential of different archetypes influence individual behavior. The Lucid Body approach to archetype work is both personally enlightening and precisely practical. In this workshop, you will embody a wide range of archetypes and explore their powerful, universal intentions as an inner motor within fictional characters and scenes. Through physical and imaginative exploration, you will discover how archetypal energies can influence behavior, relationships, choices, and impulses. Discover the wild, voracious, and untamed pioneers of storytelling within you.
Bio: Sophie Loeschburg is an actor, teacher, and founder of Lucid Body Berlin. After training with Lucid Body founder Fay Simpson, she completed the Lucid Body Teacher Training at Lucid Body House in New York. Sophie teaches internationally through workshops and classes in Berlin, New York, Portugal, and Italy, and has performed in over 70 theatre and film productions.
“The Deep Play Institute has inspired me time and again in relation to my playfulness, honesty, and relationship to self. Every time I’ve participated in a DPI event, I’ve come out with new ideas for my work as a therapist, for my art, and for my personal relationships. The DPI is the rare organization that helps you know the traditional forms and find the courage to invent new ones.”
“I found the series such a unique and both fun and deep combo of so many ways to play and connect with oneself and others. It was amazing to get to understand and feel into various aspects and ways of playing that I hadn’t thought or explored before.”
“Deep Play Institute offers a unique experiential journey filled with rigor, whimsey, challenges for both the intellectual, the spiritual, and the deeply feeling. All this and just enough danger to make things interesting. I am still trying to figure out how they did that.”