Episode 056: Darryl Edwards, How One Man is Changing Your Relationship with Play and Cultivating Wellness through Radical Authenticity

In episode 057 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing I have a deeply authentic and powerful conversation with one of the leaders of the ancestral health movement, the creative mind behind Primal Play: Darryl Edwards.

Darryl has been featured on numerous podcasts, sharing his beautiful spirit and desire to change your relationship with exercise, interjecting movement and play into every aspect of our lives. Today, however, seeking to delve more into Darryl’s life story, we explore aspects of Darryl’s journey, starting in early childhood through his initial career pursuits culminating in a radical shift towards cultivating wellness in everything he pursues.

Hearing first about Darryl’s childhood and his original desire to enter medicine as a doctor, we then get a glimpse of the reframing and birthing of a new inner desire to explore computing and a relationship with technological intelligence.

Moving from here, Darryl continues exploring his early life and adulthood, sharing his original pursuits into investment banking and the financial arena followed by his awakening to begin modeling his life using an ancestral and evolutionary perspective.

Describing his “child like” and playful approach away from the jungle gym, Darryl outlines how his perspective has changed within the health and wellness field from one of dispensing of concrete knowledge, to one of playful curiosity, asking questions and holding space for others to cultivate their own questions and encourage openness rather than concrete certainty.

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Moving into a discussion of human behavior, Darryl offers some insightful wisdom taken from the observation of humans as we collectively pursue convenience, yet accumulate chronic health issues.

Sharing ways to positively avoid convenience, Darryl provides his approach to addressing chronic health concerns by encouraging a playful mind, body and spirit, positively avoiding convenience and including play where you didn’t think it was possible.

Getting into a necessary, but perhaps controversial topic, Darryl and I begin to explore how the greater ancestral health movement currently needs to change in order to become more inclusive and address the current barriers in education, language and accessibility.


Sharing a personal example from his own life, seeking to help his mother address type ii diabete, Darryl explains how he had to change and adapt his own educational approach to practically help his mother make the changes necessary to positively improve her health.

Darryl ends the conversation sharing some of his amazing resources educating us all on the practical ways we can cultivate play into our lives. From his website including blog and videos, to a recently released book and Animal Moves play card deck, Darryl has created some of the most enriching resources for anyone seeking to avoid convenience and cultivate joy.

And with that, let’s dig into the show!


Check out Primal Play: https://www.primalplay.com/

Primal Deck: https://www.primalplay.com/fitness-deck


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