The Playground
You can come home.
Imagine a space where you don’t have to explain yourself.
Where, instead of performing, pushing through, or shutting down,
you get to breathe, move, and play in a way that feels right for you.
Do you long for relief, authentic connection, and a way forward that doesn’t rely on words alone? Are you hungry for more freedom and wholeness in your life and relationships?
The Playground is an experiential group designed for people who have been through hard things, who may feel stuck in their healing journey, or are looking for a different way in. Drawing from interpersonal neurobiology and theater, The Playground uses gentle movement, sensory imagination, and group connection to offer a space where you can reconnect with your body, release emotional weight, and rediscover your capacity for trust, presence, and play.
What to Expect:
Unlike traditional talk therapy, The Playground uses guided movement, sensory awareness, and interactive exercises to help you:
Reconnect with your body in a way that feels safe and grounding
Rewire unhelpful patterns through play, imagination, and embodied expression
Rebuild trust in yourself and others through authentic connection and communal synchronization
Who it’s for: Anyone feeling stuck in their healing journey, looking for a somatic approach to trauma recovery.
What to expect: Guided exercises drawn from interpersonal neurobiology, somatic therapy, group process work, and theater
Led by: Katie Lin (MA, LMHCA), a licensed psychotherapist and experiential group facilitator.
No performance. No expectations. Just space to breathe, play, and heal at your own pace.
Ready to experience healing beyond words?
What past participants have said:
"I loved attending The Playground with Katie! Katie is an incredibly skilled facilitator and guide. Her grounded, and loving presence made it comfortable and easy to experiment with something new and get playful. She made it extremely comfortable to participate in what you wanted and leave what you didn't feel up for. I showed up feeling tired and a bit down and I left feeling connected and grateful - it was just what I needed!" - Amy
“The Playground workshop was a truly transformative experience for our Transition Age Youth (TAY) cohort, a group of young adults with lived experience of homelessness. Many of our participants, including those with disabilities and varying levels of mobility, had not had the opportunity to tap into 'play' or childlike joy for a long time. Yet, during the session, we witnessed a profound shift—introverted individuals came out of their shells, the entire group softened, and by the end, we were all giggling, grounded, and fully immersed in the joy of the moment. This workshop was more than just an activity; it was a gift that continues to resonate weeks later. It reminded us that play and joy are always within reach, and it gave us practices we can carry forward and share with others.” - The Doorway Project
“I think this is fantastic for folks wanting to bridge any gaps they feel with their own intuition, in the presence and collaboration with others. It balances structure and freedom in such a way that, like a playground, you get to choose how much challenge is right for you." - Rachel
“The playground is a playful guided meditation, allowing you to explore ways of being human, explore ways of being embodied, individually and in a community of sorts. The playground is a potent addition to individual therapy." - Eileen
"I left feeling refreshed at having made contact with some parts of myself that I haven't gotten to play with much." - Judy
"Stepping outside of the unspoken rules of polite, everyday social encounter to enter the world of The Playground can call up some nervousness. But Katie and Emma offer a profoundly spacious and supportive container for this work, and the power of the ensemble is undeniable. Seeing other people be brave can offer us new permission to be brave; seeing others be playful can unveil a part of us that has been longing to express our sacred silliness. At the Playground, you get to practice giving and receiving, saying yes and saying no, risking and resting, within a circle that values boundary, consent, and collaboration. Let yourself risk showing up with curiosity - there's so much to enjoy and explore!" - Susannah
“I wasn’t fully sure what to expect, but I enjoyed being guided through the exercises of The Playground by Katie. I realized during why it’s called The Playground; you are able to try quite a few different things and can start and stop at-will - a very unique experience of mindfulness and intentionality.” - Waverly
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is The Playground?
The Playground is a space to get in touch with your younger, freer, more intuitive self. To explore play, move, and connect - with yourself, with other people and with God (or whichever name the One who holds everything in Infinite Love has revealed themself to you).
Each session lasts 1-2 hours and is an experience of thoughtfully selected games and exercises inspired by theater and informed by mindfulness practices, somatic therapy, trauma therapy, and group process work.
The Playground invites people to inhabit their full personhood - body, emotions, story, voice, and relationships - without pressure to perform or expectations to get it right. We live in a society that has come to prioritize left-brain processing (logic, language, linearity), and much of The Playground aims at shifting the balance toward accessing more of our right-brains (body awareness, emotional awareness, imagination, creativity, sensory processing, intuition).
Who is The Playground for?
The Playground is for people who want to deepen trust, belonging, creativity, and authenticity in their own lives, teams, groups and organization.
People who want to deepen their trust of themselves, their own sacred inner wisdom and intuition.
People who long to get unstuck from trauma and rigid defensive and patterns so that they can live and relate to themselves, each other and their community with creativity, fluidity, playfulness, delight, and joy.
People who want to spark life, creativity and willingness to risk within their team rather than keeping it safe within narrow boundaries.
People hungry to feel their own bodies as a cherished part of who they are, not as a machine to maintain or improve performance.
Why do groups, companies, or organizations use The Playground?
Human beings flourish when we have a sense of belonging and trust.
The Playground uses techniques that allow people to experience being present in a non-performative way, to experience authentic relating and belonging.
Through The Playground, groups, teams, and organizations cultivate deeper intra-group belonging and trust. When people trust themselves and one another more, they have more access to their intuition, are more willing to share ideas and communicate together more effectively and powerfully.
When we fear rejection (the fear of being cast out of the tribe), it shuts down joy, creativity, ideas, dreams, and play, this can create shame. Children innovate brilliantly because they’re less worried about getting it right - less worried about criticism, being shut down, they have less shame.
Every human being is born with the innate, sacred gift of intuition. Our intuition is our most valuable, intelligent, treasured resource. We lose touch with it through trauma which overwhelms our resources and capacity to fully process it in the moment. The Playground brings the opportunity to resolve this and build belonging and trust.
Can you describe how it works?
Most typically The Playground is an 8 session series, where each session usually lasts 1.5 hours.
In the first orientation session the facilitator shares with the group what to expect and basic ground rules to create a greater sense of safety and freedom. Then there are guided games and exercises drawn from theater, mindfulness and psychotherapy spanning intra-personal, inter-personal, and group relating.
Intra-personal exercises are designed to help a participant get more in touch with their body and their inner world, deepening a sense of safety, autonomy, and integration. Some examples might be a guided meditation, gentle yoga, breath work, sensory exercises that involve connecting the body, imagination, and emotional landscape.
Inter-personal exercises guide participants in paired activities, where they are invited to be present with another person while remaining present, anchored, and grounded to themselves. The goal of these exercises is to build relational trust, flexibility, and attunement. This could look be the classic theater “mirror” game, where partners stand face to face and mirror one another’s movements or sculpting your partner into a statue that represents something from your life.
Group-as-a-whole exercises involve bringing one’s attention to oneself as participant in the greater whole to cultivate communal belonging through synchronization, witnessing, and shared meaning-making. This might be building a nonverbal “machine” altogether, or inviting one person to stand in front of the rest of the group and be witnessed without needing to explain anything.
Each session ends with a chance for processing and take-home activities.
How long does it typically take/last?
The Playground can be experienced as a stand-alone 90 minute workshop.
However, to benefit from the community and trust-building aspects of The Playground, an 8-week series gives participants time to build presence, play, authenticity and trust.
A closed, year-round weekly group represents the best of what The Playground can offer, in terms of cultivating robust wholeness and belonging.
What are the outcomes for participants?
Participants deepen their relationship with their body, increase their ability to remain present in the moment with themselves and others. Participants report experiencing transformation, tapping into play and “childlike joy,” coming out of their shells, softening, feeling grounded and “immersed in the joy of the moment.” They leave feeling “connected and grateful.” It helps them to connect more deeply with their own intuition. One participant described the experience as “sacred silliness.”
About the Facilitator
Katie Lin (she/her) is passionate about weaving together the mind and the body. She is an artist, licensed psychotherapist (LMHCA), and certified BodyTalk practitioner (CBT) who loves to ponder and play at the intersection of the body-mind-spirit, trauma healing, and theater. Katie grew up between the Czech Republic and the U.S., and feels most at home when she is weaving together diverse ways of being in the world.
Want a sneak peek at what we do?
In these videos, co-creators Katie and Emma describe their inspiration for The Playground and demonstrate some of the exercises we do together.
Katie and Emma share their inspiration behind creating The Playground.
We demonstrate a mirror.
Emma and Katie demonstrate a roll down.