Sand Tray Therapy

Sand tray therapy allows individuals to build their world using miniatures and sand. This experiential technique is helpful for all ages to visualize aspects of their current situation they may not have considered otherwise.

For kids and adults! We will explore your inner world, what is just below the surface of your consciousness, and bring to light what’s been here all along. Sometimes we need to get out of our analytical thinking mind and into our imagination to explore symbolism and see and feel how our patterns and mechanical ways of thinking and being impact us on a daily basis. Sandtray is a fun creative way to get distance between ourselves and the heavy gunk we’ve been lugging around in our psyches.

The Sandtray provides a safe, contained space to express and explore your inner world in a tangible way. The tray can be used with or without a prompt. Sometimes, the tray can help communicate or illustrate something words cannot. The scenes created with a tray can help clients experience emotional release, gain new realizations, and practice out fictitious change leading to real change in their life. I utilize sandtray therapy on its own as well as in conjunction with parts work and EMDR.

I am trained in both Foundations and Advanced Techniques in Sand Tray Play Therapy, including the use of Sandtray to resolve trauma, virtual uses of Sand Tray, and the combination of EMDR & Sandtray techniques. Trauma affects the area of the brain dedicated to speech and reason, making it hard to fully process using only words. Sand Tray is a great tool for all ages (children through adults) that can allow you to process past events using your creative right brain.

I have training in Sandtray through an online program called the Southern Sandtray Institute. I've also attended a Sandtray summit to get more hands on experience in sandtray. I have experience using sandtray with adults to help bring about deep change and healing. Sandtray helps clients use both parts of their brain, which can be especially helpful for grief and trauma. On top of this, sandtray can be a refreshing change to traditional talk therapy or when talking isn't working.

Certified Sand Tray Therapist

Sand tray is a great expressive therapy for all ages. Using sand, water and miniatures, the client is able to express repressed underlying thought patterns and world-view perspectives through this soothing creative expression.

I am passionate about using sand tray play therapy with my adult populations. Sand tray helps us get behind the words when talking about our “stuff” is difficult. Sand tray is also a very effective technique for trauma therapy that can help us externalize our experience to help us process it.

Through the use of the sand tray children, adolescents, and adults alike will be able to process some of their deepest concerns and traumas in the sand. It allows the individual a safe place to feel and uncover their past which is causing a stuck feeling in the present moment.

Sandtray is an expressive therapy that uses a tray of sand and a set of figures to create scenes that reflect one's inner experience including those experiences that are pre-verbal or the person may have no words to express. When these experiences can be expressed they can then be transformed.

I completed a 40 hour training on Adlerian Sand Tray Therapy and utilize this technique when working with individuals and couples.

Sandtray therapy has been researched through neurobiology. In many circumstances talk therapy can only take us so far and the need for the brain's implicit processes begins to shift to the forefront. This approach creates a safe container where there are are no right/wrong ways to create a sandtray image. The sand, an element from the earth, unconsciously resembles our psychic field, a realm where one can experience freedom from judgment as well as an unfiltered presentation of our inner life.

I received my training in Sand Tray Therapy from the Institute of Playful Healing and am working toward certification. I am trained and experienced in use of sand tray with individual trauma work, children and adolescents, couples, families and groups.