Suzanne Askham

Wellbeing notes: Let your inner child play this September

Yes, we’ve long moved on from the days when librarians told you to ‘hush’ in the library. But for older people like me, the conditioning runs pretty deep. Which was why what happened last week felt so very liberating. 

The Thursday Club, which meets in Chippenham Library, was set to discuss ‘Favourite forms of exercise, then and now’. Well, in the middle of the session, in a nice space between biographies and cook books, we all got up and took turns hula hooping. Even the librarians had a go. There was so much laughter. And afterwards, one of the group members took us through some simple line dancing moves, which hadn’t been planned but certainly added to the fun. 

Hula hoops, like the one shown here, carry the magical ability to make the person using them smile or even laugh, and it seems that line dancing has a similar effect. Maybe the laughter, the sheer feeling of wellbeing, isn’t in fact down to the hoop, or the dance steps. Maybe it’s simply because we’re having fun, we’re playing, in the company of friends old and new. It’s in those moments that our inner child emerges – because whatever age you might be chronologically, in the very heart of you lives your child-self, the being who loves to play, explore and generally have fun. 

This September, how might you let your own inner child out to play?