The Play Zone is a balance of safe activation, safe enough to cause you to want to play, activated sufficiently to have the energy to participate. It offers an understanding of your emotional-biological experience and a model for peak performance that you can use on-demand, with the assistance of specific strategies, resources, and relationships. You can learn to physically contain your sympathetic nervous system (fight-flight reflex) and your dorsal vagal system (freeze reflex) by activating your ventral vagal system (engaged and connected) and increasing feelings of safety. Safety to turn your sport into play, like when you first started. The Play Zone is vital for developing your peak performance on any stage.

Your Vagus Nerve significantly affects your bodily state, influencing your ability to perform when it matters. Awareness of your body’s reactions is possible. Managing your bodily state can keep you out of survival states (fight, flight, freeze) and optimize your resilience and performance.

Whether you are an athlete, coach, leader of an organization, or performer of any kind – being in the Play Zone will improve every aspect of your practice, preparation, performance, and adaptability on and off “the court,” including your overall health, relationships, and quality of life.

Every aspect of performance, from power to endurance, to mechanics, to execution; even problem solving, creativity, confidence and belief - is all built on top of your bodily state. So more than getting faster, fitter, and more skillful, we can train for peak performance by developing our capacity to manage our bodily state in any situation. When you recognize what zone you are in, you can ramp up, calm down, and stabilize in the optimal “Play Zone” through “controlling” your bodily state. This process is what it means to be in control of your emotions, your mind, your body, and ultimately your performance.

The Play Zone was developed by Michael Allison, with the help of Dr. Stephan Porges, who developed Polyvagal Theory.