Intimate Fun

Intimate Fun: the joyous being that we create by our being joyous together: the WE that we become when we are having fun together. The Tickled WE.

To aid you in your personal explorations of Intimate Fun, I present the following exercises.

Mutual ME-ditation

Hold each other's wrists so that you can feel each other's pulse. If you don't want to hold on to each other's wrists, any pulsing part of each other's anatomy will do. The stronger the pulse the better. On every other pulse, say the word 'Me.' Continue doing this until you hear the 'We.' Then start saying 'We.' Perhaps on every third pulse. Saying 'We' over and over again, listening, of course, for the separate and yet cojoined 'Me.'

Follow the Follower

Turn on some gentle music and sit facing each other. One of you is the reflector. The other the reflectee. The reflector simply does whatever the reflectee does. Continue in these roles for 10 inhales. On the 11th, change roles. Continue thusly for the next 8 inhales, and, on the 19th change roles again. Continue in like manner until you can't tell who is the reflector and who is the reflectee.

Air Theatre

You and your family, or with another couple of couples. Lie on your backs, with your heads together, ear-to-ear, and your feet at opposite ends. Put both your hands straight up in the air, above your face, so you can see each other's hands. Think of it as a stage up there, where your disembodied hands can carry on conversations, speaking in your disembodied voices. You're on our backs, hands in the air. You let your fingers do the talking. It's like shadow puppetry without the shadows. Hand shaking. Hand slapping. Hand music. Hand dancing. And whenever you need to thicken the plot, bring in the Foot Beings. So that feet in the air, hands in the air, you and yours create a world.

These are the kinds of games you can play with toddlers. They are born of that same sense of fun. Intimate fun.

How easily intimate we can become with each other, in a mere moment of fun. It’s a mystery how easily we do it. In fact, it’s two mysteries.

The first is the mystery of ME. This is the mystery with which each of us is most truly intimate. The mystery of self, of mind and body, of oneness and separateness.

The second is the mystery of WE. Of togetherness. Oneness. Of an intimacy that is beyond body. Of an embracing of minds and spirit, of ME plus.]

Me on one side. We on the other. The rest is choreography.

It is not about becoming the Other, or realizing the We of the Me or the Me of the We. It's about how often we cross the line. It’s a frequency thing. It’s the dance. When we transcend our separateness and affirm our togetherness often enough, something else happens. Something other is created. I think it’s called "love."

Author's Bio: 

Bernie DeKoven's lifelong belief that things can be made more fun led him to develop and implement new ways of playing, new games for groups of all ages and sizes, from singles, couples and families to schools, communities and cities, and, most recently, to the idea of "Junkyard Sports."

His Interplay Curriculum, a comprehensive program in self-esteem and social skills based on over 1000 children's games, was used in classrooms and playgrounds throughout the city of Philadelphia. For the Philadelphia Bicentennial, he designed and orchestrated Playday on the Parkway, a community games event involving hundreds of thousands of celebrants. He established The Games Preserve, a retreat center in Eastern Pennsylvania where teachers, therapists and recreators could conduct in-depth investigations of games and play. In his book, The Well Played Game, he voiced a philosophy of "healthy competition" that formed the core teachings of the New Games Foundation. He became co-director of the foundation, and has developed internationally successful programs in facilitating collaborative games, community events and business meetings.

Bernie is a lifetime member of The Association for the Study of Play and winner of the 2006 Iffni- Raynolds award from the North American Simulation