The Leelah Play
About Dov Blum-Yazdi
Hello.
Nice to meet you.
My name is Dovi.
I am in my fifties, a father of two, a drama therapist, clinical criminologist, lecturer and group facilitator. I am also the founder and researcher of Leelah — a drama-therapy model and a language for developmental work through play, character and group.
I dedicated my doctoral research to Leelah, and my book, Leelah – The Play Paradigm, is an adaptation and continuation of that research. For more than 20 years, I have been teaching, researching, developing and facilitating Leelah in Israel and internationally — in groups, academic settings, seminars, intensives, retreats and professional spaces.
More than any professional title, I think of myself as someone who listens to what happens when people are given permission to play seriously.
Leelah in Israel and Around the World
Leelah has developed over more than 20 years through research, teaching and ongoing work with people and groups. It has been studied and practised in Israel and in international settings — in universities, professional seminars, yearly groups, retreats and Leelah sessions.
Over the years, hundreds of participants have encountered Leelah. It has moved between languages, cultures, and groups, each time taking on a slightly different form — through the people who entered it, the characters that emerged within it, and the questions each group brought with it.
Today, after years of teaching and facilitation in Israel and internationally, the knowledge that has accumulated is being gathered into a home of its own: a Training & Deepening Program that offers a structured, responsible, and living way to study the method.
The Building Site That Became a World
"A man's maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play."
(Nietzsche, 1886, Beyond Good and Evil)
My connection to play began, as it does for many of us, in childhood.
In the 1980s, during Israel’s major economic crisis, my family moved to a new building in a new city. I was nine years old. During construction, the contractor went bankrupt, and the lower floors of the building were left unfinished — bricks, wooden boards, piles of sand, half-built walls, abandoned belongings of construction workers, and plenty of building materials.
On paper, it was an unfinished construction site.
For us, the children of the neighbourhood, it was an entire world.
We would split into camps of knights, fortify ourselves in the hollow spaces of the building, build castles from the construction materials, put on workers’ clothes that had been left behind, and set out on missions: to conquer the castle on the floor above, to defend a secret passage, to invent laws for a world that was being built as we played.
I remember the joy of those adventures in my body. The feeling that imagination had received walls, sand, stairs, the smell of concrete, friends, danger and laws of its own.
Even today, when I pass a house under construction, something in me wakes up. The imagination begins working before the mind has time to explain.
Perhaps Leelah began there: in the knowledge that play is a way of entering reality differently.
When Play Becomes Developmental Work
Leelah was born out of a love of play, but also out of years of therapeutic, clinical, academic and group work.
Over the years, I have seen that there are things that are difficult to reach through direct conversation. When a person speaks about themselves, they often arrive with the story they already know: their words, their explanations, their defences, the places where they already know what they think.
In play, something else can sometimes happen.
A person can try. Move. Exaggerate. Hide. Appear. Test a possibility.
And precisely through that distance, something can come closer.
From this place, Leelah developed: a method that takes play seriously, without turning it into performance; and allows process to unfold through role, story, relationships and time.
When I facilitate, I try to hold the conditions: rhythm, frame, attention, boundaries, story, and the possibility for each participant to enter in their own way. I am interested in what a person brings with them even when they do not say it directly — how they enter the room, what makes them laugh, where they withdraw, and what they allow themselves precisely when they are playing.
Therapy, Research, Death and Play
My work moves between drama therapy, psychodrama, clinical criminology, body-mind-spirit psychotherapy, spiritual care for people approaching death, teaching, research and group facilitation.
These are different fields, but they have all brought me into contact with situations in which a person meets their life from another angle: through the body, through role, through group, through pain, through imagination, through parting.
In my work with people approaching death, as in deeply playful work, I encounter a similar question:
What allows a person to be more present with what is happening to them now?
That question continues to accompany me — in the clinic, in academia, in groups, in retreats, and in the way Leelah continues to develop.
The Background from Which Leelah Grew
My background moves between therapy, research, teaching, play, and social engagement. Over the years, I developed Leelah as a way of working with character, group, and process — combining drama therapy, psychodrama, clinical criminology, psychotherapy, spiritual care, and academic research.
Academia, Research, and Leelah
• My doctoral dissertation was dedicated to Leelah and the play paradigm.
• Author of the book “Leelah – The Play Paradigm”, based on my doctoral research.
• Former Head of the MA Program in Psychodrama and Drama Therapy at the University of Haifa, Mivchar.
• Senior lecturer in the Psychodrama and Drama Therapy Program at the University of Haifa.
• Former postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory for Psychology and S.E. at the University of Crete.
• Former international representative of the Drama Division and former member of the Supreme Council of YAHAT — the Israeli Association of Creative and Expressive Arts Therapies.
• Developer of the Leelah method, with over 20 years of facilitation experience and more than 500 participants in Israel and worldwide.
Therapy, Facilitation, and Spiritual Care
• PhD in Drama Therapy, drama therapist, and clinical criminologist.
• Therapist in private practice, facilitator of process groups, individual sessions, and Leelah retreats.
• Graduate of the Body-Mind-Spirit Psychotherapy Program at the University of Haifa and Merkaz Shiluv.
• Graduate of the three-year Spiritual Care Program for people nearing the end of life, through Shutafim LaMasa.
• Senior supervisor and field expert at the Ministry of Education.
• Peace activist, guided by a deep belief in encounter, listening, and mutual responsibility.
A Way to Begin
After more than 20 years of research, teaching and facilitation in Israel and internationally, I feel it is time to pass Leelah on to more facilitators — as a language that can be learned, practised, carried and further developed.
The Training and Deepening Program was created for people who feel drawn to enter Leelah more deeply: to go through a process, study the ideas that hold it, observe case studies, and gradually develop the capacity to work with play, character, group and process.
If something in this way speaks to your curiosity, you can begin with an open session, read about the yearly program, or schedule an introductory conversation.