This weekend I had class Friday night and all day Saturday, which is admittedly kind of a drag after working all week. But the class was SandTray, and I came away from it absolutely in love with this process. Sand tray therapy basically stems from the Jungian theory that we all have the ability to heal ourselves by triggering our internal "self-healing" archetype. Jung also promoted the powers of the unconscious, and believed that by using abstraction--dreams, figurines in sand, art--we could freely express the things we were not even consciously aware of. Enter the 21st centuries take--sand tray.
Sand tray therapy can be used for work with children, adolescents, adults, couples, pretty much anyone. The basic premise is that you take a tray of sand and make a picture in it using a variety of figurines. The tray can be directive "make a picture of what hope means to you" or nondirective, "make a picture of your world".
I just thought it was amazing to see the process unfold. There were things I saw in my tray that I wasn't aware of, and other things that I knew were high or low points. The trays are very open to interpretation, but often reveal things to the creator as well as the therapist.
Wow. So awesome. I'm excited to have the opportunity to integrate this technique into my work with clients in the future. It may sound a little mumbo-jumbo, but don't discount it until you've made your own tray.
Plus, who couldn't use a little break to play in the sand?
