Developmental Transformations (DvT)

Short Version

DvT is a therapeutic game—designed by therapists as a method for healing trauma, but now is open to everyone. It’s not confined to clinical settings or specific diagnoses. At its core, DvT is a strikingly fun way to rehearse for your life.

It’s playful, ridiculous, tender, profound, sometimes weird—and always alive. For something that can look so silly, it has a surprising depth.

Think of DvT as an improv game with no audience, where there’s no pressure to perform, and the only goal is to stay present. The play moves between absurdity, clarity, discomfort, laughter, darkness, and joy. Within the safety of imaginary play, you can engage with these states again and again—rehearsing new ways to meet them.

DvT can help you deal with everyday annoyances—and it can also reach deep inside and help heal powerful traumas that get in the way of living fully.

Long Version

"Animal play serves many purposes. It can be a dress rehearsal for adult life, as when young mammals play courtship games, war games, socializing games, motor-skills games… But consider this: ants don’t play. They don’t need to. Programmed for certain behaviors, they automatically perform them from birth. Learning through repetition, honed skills, and ingenuity isn’t required in their heritage. The more an animal needs to learn in order to survive, the more it needs to play."
— Diane Ackerman

If we play to learn, what is it we’re trying to learn through DvT?

The short answer is: to be fully ourselves.
The long answer is more interesting:

Many of our struggles come from resisting discomfort. We avoid difficult emotions, suppress impulses, and build walls around what we fear might overwhelm us. But avoidance shrinks our world. Therapy is supposed to help us expand—to face discomfort and reconnect with life’s possibilities… yet sometimes, it’s awfully boring.

And therapy should never be boring. It costs way too much.

If therapy is about learning to respond differently to difficult situations and emotions, wouldn’t it be incredible if we could recreate those situations in the room? Imagine summoning the fears, insecurities, and shutdown moments that hold us back—on purpose, in a safe, playful space. Instead of waiting for them to ambush us, we bring them to life here and now, where we can practice meeting them differently. Over time, they lose their grip. This works for little disturbances, but it can also weaken even our strongest triggers.

We play with fear, self-doubt, and the things that usually shut us down—but this time, we explore them with curiosity, humor, and spontaneity. And it’s not just about suffering. Just as often, DvT draws out joy, tenderness, absurdity, and laughter.

It’s a deeply playful experience. Improv with no audience. No pressure to perform. No goal except your own enjoyment, growth, and aliveness.

What you play with comes from your own mind, your own life. And honestly? When you really let yourself play with your life, boredom doesn’t stand a chance. In its place, you’ll find energy, imagination, and a surprising sense of hope.

Sometimes that hope and playfulness is buried underneath layers of regret, shame, and judgment. By letting the play evolve and then change without clinging to it, we rehearse a skill we don’t often get to cultivate directly: the skill of letting things go. We build a strong sense of “oh well.” Nothing is perfect. Bad things have happened. We’ve hurt and been hurt. We’ve wasted time and we won’t get it back. But we don’t have to punish ourselves for all the ways we come up short. We can recognize the flaws in our life, hold them lightly, and love ourselves anyway.

Play gives us a way to rehearse the kind of person we want to be—so we can meet the rest of our lives with more love, more hope, and more energy to create what’s next.

What DvT Offers

Through improvised, recursive play, DvT helps you:

  • Build a tolerance for discomfort
    Interact with difficult emotions in a manageable, even playful way. Over time, they loosen their grip.

  • Reconnect with your emotions
    Bring feelings into the body, making them tangible and easier to engage with.

  • Break out of stuck patterns
    In play, nothing stays rigid. Shame can turn into absurdity. Fear into a ridiculous game. What else might be possible?

  • Move on from the past
    Cultivate an embodied sense of “oh well.” Let go of what weighs you down and meet life with more energy and openness.

  • Strengthen your sense of self
    Explore different facets of yourself—contradictions and all. Identity isn’t fixed; it’s a living, dynamic process.

Who is DvT For?

DvT is for anyone who wants to expand their emotional and creative range. While it has deep therapeutic applications, it’s just as valuable for self-exploration, artistic growth, and personal development.

  • If you struggle with anxiety or emotional rigidity, DvT gives you a space to practice flexibility and resilience.

  • If you’re an artist, performer, or creative, it’s a playground for spontaneity and emotional depth.

  • If you’re feeling stuck, DvT invites you into a space where change and new possibilities are always emerging.

  • If you’re a seeker or experimenter, DvT opens a door into improvisation where anything is possible.

Come Play