♠ Book-Game Challenge for March 2019 ♠

To briefly recap, I chose to play and read this month:

Game	Book
Playne: The Meditation Game	Stress Reduction for Busy People by Dawn Groves

As a reminder, I am not doing straight up reviews of either the book or the game; you can find plenty of those easily online. Instead, my wrap-up posts are focused on how the two forms of media portrayed the same ideas and how they meshed for me personally as a consumer who enjoyed them concurrently.

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“Many of these changes may seem small. However, as they accumulate you will find yourself breathing more easily and smiling more often.” - Stress Reduction for Busy People

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Now just as a quick overview of both products for any reader who is not aware of their basic premise, courtesy of their storefronts:

Stress Reduction for Busy People shows that by starting with a few simple changes, anyone can find a few minutes each day to take care of their bodies with exercise, sleep, and good food; their souls with meditation and prayer; and their minds with pursuits that challenge and please.

Playne: The Meditation Game is a game designed to reduce stress, increase well-being and to promote personal growth by helping you build a habit of mindfulness.

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There is apparently a Chinese proverb: “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” And this, my friends, is as good as summary for my month of delving into meditation and stress relief techniques as any.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, 74% of people have felt so stressed that they have been overwhelmed and unable to cope. All of us have had to deal with various degrees of crises - whether from work, school, environment, society, family, health and finances. It’s something that we all can agree is simply part of existence - and yet as sentient beings we also have the capacity to develop the tools necessary to effectively deal with those situations instead of becoming paralyzed with panic.

I’m going to state now that my experiences this month are incredibly personalized to me and my own lifestyle, so while some suggestions talked about below may or may not have worked out, they could create different outcomes for other people. Take it all with a hefty grain of salt.

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“Life doesn’t have to be a process of ongoing damage control.” - Stress Reduction for Busy People

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March was a month of experimentation with this month’s challenge - and despite the topic, it turned out to be slightly more work for me than the previous challenges (and why this wrap-up is a few days late.) This is because the crux of this challenge relied on me testing out real changes to my life.

I walked into this as a relatively happy person with regular joe sort of problems. Like many adults with modern western lives, I’m overscheduled and never seem to have enough resources to do everything I’d like to do. I don’t have the most profound struggles in life, yet stress is still something that gets the best of me.

I’ll admit that underlying chronic tension was causing exactly what the author of Stress Reduction for Busy People stated as symptom in the first chapter: “You stop relating to family members as partners in life, instead seeing them as just another set of obligations.” Extrapolate that out to friends and acquaintances of all sorts, and I found myself constantly striving to meet external expectations. The perceived neediness had become a burden and I was not always the most pleasant person to be around.

Real suggestions for improving your ability to handle stress begin in chapter two of the book, and all of it is common sense stuff that pretty much everyone knows: eat healthily, get some exercise, and make sure you sleep enough. Strong body, strong mind: “You’re teaching your body to handle stress and recover from it quickly.” However, I already do eat fairly well and am a regular gym goer. It is true that I feel stronger, more confident and clearer headed when I’m hitting the weights hard and eating clean.

Where I can improve is getting enough sleep; I frequently stay up later than I should. As the book says, “Sleep is a form of surrender. The last thing a stressed out mind wants to do is let go.” So I tried those tips on successive nights: no electronics or reading in bed, trying a full-body stretching routine before bedtime, not taking naps, cutting back on caffeine, and oddly enough, wearing thick wool socks to sleep (warming the feet promotes blood vessel dilation.) I liked the socks thing - that was nice and cozy on a chilly night so I do think it was mildly helpful in getting more deep REM sleep - but in the end my sleep shortage is due entirely on stretching out my freetime longer than I should. I simply need to go to sleep earlier.

Meditation and spiritual practice (prayer) are key features of the book’s stress-busting plan. Luckily I was also using Playne to learn meditation in tandem, but I took the book’s mention of yoga’s benefits and decided to try it out. My gym conveniently offers yoga classes and so on two early Saturday mornings, I tried my best to maintain a very humbling one-legged, limbs askew pose for long enough to not be embarrassed, preceded and ended by shorter sitting sessions with eyes closed, chanting ‘omms’ while bells chimed and flower oils filled the air. This concluded with the willowy blonde instructor slowly bowing to us with a rather chipper voice saying, “The light within me honours the light within you.”

My friends, I respect yoga practitioners and understand that millions of people enjoy the tradition. There is nothing wrong with it and more power to you lithe flexible folks who manage to look good while doing happy baby pose. But personally, I just found it all very awkward. I did not leave either session feeling relaxed or exercised. I remain steadfast to my own weightlifting routine, where I can zone out to my music and leave feeling accomplished.

Later in the book, the author talks about breaking down enormous worries into smaller, workable problems to be handled step by step. This is solid advice as it’s very easy to become overwhelmed while looking at the big picture, but by narrowing your focus you can actually roll up your sleeves and get to work on chipping away at it. Part of this process is goal-setting, and the best idea I got from the entire book came from that section: extending your goal by adding a charitable action. An example of this would be setting a goal of saving enough money to buy a brand new mountain bike, and then contacting the neighborhood association about organizing a ride for kids.

I’m really stuck on that awesome suggestion and so I’ll go ahead and give two of mine:

• When I complete this goblet squat challenge, I will donate a catcher’s mitt to the newly forming kiddie tee-ball league in my area.
• When I finish a freeCodeCamp program over the summer, I will subsidize the cost of a new STEM book for my local library.

I realize that this post is long, but I still need to talk about the game!

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On the flip side of things, Playne: The Meditation Game is largely devoid of spiritual practices and New Agey spiels. It does have a bit of an esoteric story you can unlock piecemeal with continual sessions and it features quotes from philosophers to inspire you, but nothing I saw really stood out as being mystical. On starting up your game, you are given the scientifically validated mental and physical benefits of daily meditation. You are coached on how to do it - how to breathe, how to be aware, how to let go of your thoughts but not limit them.

That was huge for me, because I honestly cannot comprehend how some people are able to empty their minds completely, or become one with the universe, or whatever it is that my yoga class ‘omms’ were supposed to do for me. Playne introduces you to meditation that is ridiculously easy to pick up: it’s just sitting there quietly, being aware of your breathing and not forcing anything. Your screen fills with the scenic view of your choice, you select the timing for your session, and the game shows you a pulsating bubble to help guide your breathing pace.

Although the game suggests that 10 minutes is recommended and 20 minutes is ideal, I started my month long consecutive meditation sessions at only 5 minutes because I thought I was just too fidgety to handle more. From there I worked incrementally up, adding one minute a day, intending to reach the full 20 minutes later in the month. However, at 17 minutes I was losing all focus on the meditation. It was just too long for me as a meditation noob I suppose. I’ve since dialed it back - I try for 10 minutes, but on days when I’m rushed or sick I go for 5 minutes, or even just 1 minute.

The more you meditate on the game, the more new things will very slowly appear in your meditation space on the screen. Trees, fireflies, birds and more become a part of the experience, and your on-screen guide, Fox will tell you more of his strange little story of how Playne came to be. You earn ‘streaks’ for consecutive daily sessions and the game keeps track of all your numbers: total time meditated, thoughts you’ve recorded by tapping your spacebar or mouse, sessions and levels.

By day 3, I was starting to look forward to my few minutes on Playne that evening, despite also playing far more exciting games like Tomb Raider this month. I knew it’d be a few minutes of calm at the end of the day - not a huge investment, but enough to feel recharged. By day 6 I found that my breathing had naturally adapted to the program’s guided breathing pace and I was hitting the spacebar slightly less than before. I genuinely was happy to see my first tree saplings appear for my 8th day session. Later on in the month I added in a stress ball for my meditations, which seemed to work out okay, though for the first minute or two it was distracting. When I adopted a squeeze pattern identical to that of the breath bubble of the game, it was easy to autopilot its use.

I will say that if you’re considering picking it up on Steam and have an active friends list there, be sure you disable notifications before you meditate. Nothing worse than being halfway in, relaxed with even breathing, then hearing a ding with a pop up that says “hey want to trade ur packs”

Now Playne is still an “Early Access” game, meaning that it is still in active development and will continue to change as the developer works on polishing it up. My experience this month will likely change with future updates. It’s probably premature of me to make rigid critiques of the program knowing that this is not a final version. But I will mention my one caveat for certain potential players: I feel that the gamification of meditation has the potential to actually induce stress in itself. In particular, the “streaks” aspect of Playne, where you grow your campfire and earn achievements for continuously loading up and meditating with Playne for a consecutive number of days - all the way up to one year. If you miss a day, your campfire extinquishes and you lose your days towards your achievement.

Unfortunately, life happens - we get sick, we get tired, we have emergencies, or vacations and holidays, lose power at home, and so on. While you don’t lose your overall progress as far as unlocks and evolution, I can imagine logging in after perhaps a very stressful situation which prevented you from using Playne like a hospital stay or funeral, and then seeing your fire has gone out for circumstances out of your control. If you suddenly lost your sixth month streak, would that motivate you to start all over again or frustrate you? I’m sure there’s some sort of higher message in that, maybe something along the lines of accepting impermanence, but for many perfectionist game players and beginning meditators the lesson may be a harsh one.

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“What you dwell on, you empower in your life. Energy follows attention.” - Stress Reduction for Busy People

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The most important question: was this worthwhile?

Yes and no.

The book was less useful to me, as many of the suggestions given were either already in place for me or were not ones I particularly wanted to implement. The few tips I took to heart - the ‘goals with giving’ notably - I feel could have been found by browsing some free self-help websites.

I would like to pursue more information on mindfulness in book form eventually, but for now, a good friend recommended I look into Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist author of many books on the subject. I’m not sure if that author will scratch my itch for deeper understanding due to their spiritual slant, but for the short term I plan on watching some of their free Dharma Talks to decide if it’s for me.

As far as the game, a big yes. Playne was able to bring me into the practice of meditation without the trappings of spiritual traditions or New Agey spiels. Although I see the use of Playne as a short-term one (once you know how to meditate, you don’t really need any special prompts or props to practice it), the fact remains that it taught me quite easily and effectively how to incorporate mindfulness every day. I’ve felt measurable results from its practice already.

I did get the opportunity to test out all this stress-busting with an unexpected real life situation involving a very expensive repair bill and also having my grandmother moved to hospice care. Happy to report that I took it in stride, and did not feel my blood pressure rise immediately as is typical for me. I did have a lot of extra thoughts during my next few Playne sessions, but nothing that upended my daily life. I felt at peace with things.