Get out of your head.
Come back to PLAY
Presence In Play is a Los Angeles practice for getting unstuck. Through guided play, breath, and simple movement, we quiet the overthinking mind so the curious, creative, connected part of you can come back out. No scripts, no spotlight, no experience needed. It works because you can't think your way out of your own head: the way back runs through the body. And this exact blend exists nowhere else. It's led by Jet Eveleth, a Second City and iO veteran turned doctor of integrative medicine, who spent twenty years learning how laughter heals.
Find a Session Weekly in LA. Come as you are.
Four ways into the work
Clown Church LA
The weekly practice in Highland Park. One hour, no experience needed. This is where almost everyone starts.
Find a Session →Retreats
The deep end: multi-day descents at Esalen on the cliffs of Big Sur, all-inclusive.
See the retreats →Teacher Training
The 200-hour certification, taught by Jet herself. The founding cohort is forming now.
See the training →The Work
The story, the method, and the two people behind it. Read this if you want the why.
Meet us →You'll fit right in if...
- Your mind runs the same loop all day and you'd like it to stop.
- You used to make things, and you miss the person who did.
- You want to connect with people without performing a version of yourself.
- Talk therapy helped you understand your story. Now you want to actually feel different.
- There's a younger, lighter you in there somewhere. You'd like them back.
What actually happens in a session
Nothing weird, nothing forced, and nobody gets put on the spot. A session moves in four simple parts:
Arrive & land
You lie down, breathe, and let the week fall off. Guided, gentle, eyes closed.
Move
Music leads the body before the mind can object. Movement comes from impulse, not choreography.
Play
Simple games with the group. Eye contact, laughter, small discoveries. You cannot do it wrong.
Leave lighter
You walk out more present, more open, and usually still laughing. That feeling comes home with you.
Six doors into the same room
People arrive with different problems. The practice hands everyone the same medicine, just wrapped differently. And it meets you at many touchpoints: weekly sessions, retreats, and the teacher training, every one a door into the same room.
The overworked
You spend all day managing: work, your image, your own feelings. Here, nothing is being optimized. Your system finally downshifts, and you remember you're funny and warm when nobody's grading you.
You get: an off switchThe new in town
Surrounded by people, connected to none of them. Play skips the small talk and the three months of coffee dates. You laugh with strangers, and by the end of the night they aren't strangers.
You get: your peopleThe blocked creative
You used to make things, and you miss the person who did. Here you watch yourself be spontaneous and interesting with zero preparation, which quietly dismantles the idea that you have to be ready before you're allowed to begin.
You get: proofThe one in transition
A big chapter ended: a job, a relationship, a version of yourself. Talking helps you process what happened. This helps you meet who you are now, gently, at your own pace, with other people in the room.
You get: a fresh startThe seasoned meditator
You've done the apps and the retreats. You can get calm, but not joyful. This is the missing half of the practice: presence with other people, at speed, out loud. You already speak the language of the body. Come laugh in it.
You get: the yangThe curious
No crisis, no rut. You saw a video, a friend came back glowing, an article made you lean in. Curiosity is a complete reason to walk through the door, and the curious ones tend to go the deepest.
You get: to find outTalk therapy works on the story. This works on the state.
Here's the simple version. That stuck, overthinking feeling doesn't just live in your thoughts. It lives in your body. So instead of talking about it, we change it directly. Five things do the work:
Breath is the dial
Slow breathing is the one control you have over your own nervous system. A few minutes of it tells your whole body the emergency is over. Every session starts here, lying down, eyes closed.
A moving body can't spiral
When music moves you before your mind can plan it, the worry loop has nothing to run on. That's the "flow" people chase. You'll be in it within twenty minutes, no skill required.
Play means you're safe
Your body only plays when it feels safe, so playing works in reverse too: it proves to your system, from the inside, that the danger has passed. You can't talk an alarm into shutting off. You can play it off.
Laughter is glue
Real laughter, the kind you can't fake, relaxes the body and bonds the room at the same time. It's why the strangers at the start of a session aren't strangers at the end.
Calm is contagious
Nervous systems settle each other. It's how a calm parent soothes a child, and it never stops working on adults. A room full of people breathing, moving, and laughing together will settle you faster than any app on your phone.
Why it lasts past Tuesday
Most of us carry an old fear: if people see the real, unpolished me, they'll judge it. In a session, you test that fear. You're silly and unguarded in front of a room, and what comes back is warmth. Do that a few times and the fear stops holding up. You didn't learn an idea. You collected proof.
That's the whole design: a century of theater craft for getting people into these states, and the training of a doctor of integrative medicine for knowing why they work. Most places offer one or the other. This room has both.
The teacher who lived both halves
Jet Eveleth spent two decades in the top rooms of American comedy: The Second City, Chicago's iO Theater, and the Las Vegas show Absinthe. Then she went and became a doctor of integrative medicine, studying how presence, breath, and joy actually heal the body.
Presence In Play is where those two lives meet. Her students describe her sessions in language usually reserved for surgery and religion.
Find a Session"I've never experienced anything that has better shown me what I'm capable of as a human."Jess, workshop participant
Your inner kid is still in there.
Change how you feel from the inside out and learn to play again. One session is all it takes to remember what being present actually feels like.
Find a Session In person in Los Angeles.