Sandtray therapy is a creative counseling technique that involves a standardized sand tray and figurines or miniatures to create images, scenes, and stories. Clients are invited to externalize their inner world, emotions, and experiences by creatively arranging these figurines.

Often, words are not enough to express the complex emotions and sensations you experience. This can hinder your self-exploration in therapy, leaving you feeling stuck in your thoughts and unable to move forward. Sand tray work helps you to visualize what you experience internally without verbalizing it, which increases the sense of control and safety due to its non-judgmental approach. This promotes the client’s autonomy, emotional release, self-awareness, and creative problem-solving. Anyone can engage in sand tray work using their innate creativity—imagination. Using imagination, images, and symbols involves the right side of the brain, which is responsible for intuitive, emotional, and visual functions, where trauma also lies. This is why sand tray therapy technique is often used to treat those with trauma.

A sand tray therapy session is structured into five stages: Introduction, Creation, Reflection, Integration, and Follow-Up. Each stage requires the client to actively engage with their emotions, intuition, imagination, and the personal meanings they assign to the symbols they select, fostering deep self-reflection. This clear structure ensures that the therapeutic potential of sand tray therapy is fully realized.

By JoonAh Nesbitt - MA, LCMHCA