The Sand Therapy Training Institute

Instructor:

Tim Mewmaw, M.S., LCPC (Bio)

Course Dates and Hours:

This course has Five (5) 3-hour sessions and is offered via Zoom from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. ET on Wednesdays.

Course dates are:

• March 27, 2024
• April 10, 2024
• April 24, 2024
• May 8, 2024
• May 22, 2024

This course will be recorded for future distribution; Upon request, engagements with specific participants can be edited out before broader distribution to protect their safety and privacy.

Cost:

$395

Continuing Education Hours:

15 CE Credits will be awarded for full attendance to all sessions.

Course Description

Narrative Sand Therapy© (NST) is a projective psychotherapeutic approach that utilizes the lenses of social construction, existential, and narrative psychology. The process is collaborative, to understand and respond to client representations of experience. An experiential approach, NST supports play therapy and is a path to ground the therapeutic powers of play. There is depth and careful pacing, wherein therapist and client shift states of awareness, and explore symbol voices, the voices of the inner child, voices from parts that have not been heard, in silence and dialogue. NST is transformational clinical work engaging symbols and stories, a play therapy approach for clients across the lifespan. Active engagement of the client and therapist’s imagination is at its heart.

NST is not a “recipe” or “objective directive” for fixing problems. It is an emergent, immersive process. NST is an approach to explore deep wounds that distort identity, attachment, and connection, limit freedom, reduce options for life’s purpose, and misappropriate meaning. Symbol process is a careful exploration of developmental, cultural, and familial trauma, a safe container for play therapy and inner child healing. Narrative engagement activates client imagination, sometimes in silence and sometimes through I-Thou dialogues. Process balances permission and protection with spontaneity and free play.

In this protected space, clients can access emotions and experiences trapped in the body, hidden from memory, manipulated by others. Play allows representations of loss, rage, loneliness, and grief, experiences they were not allowed to express, remnants from childhood trauma and attachment wounds that continue to trap and alienate. Narrative play nests the process in deep presence, we witness, process and validate client experience.

NST is a play therapy approach that entails the integration of specific clinical competencies. The therapist attends with heightened presence, offering clients permission to break through damaging injunctions and shame. NST is collaborative, following the lead of the client, exploring a path of authentic being, balancing responsibility with freedom, reclaiming a congruent identity, and releasing devastating constraints of alienation. Narrative sand therapy offers a unique space and time for clients to explore symbolic representations of their world, and their experience, at their own pace.

Essential to this process is the therapist’s ability to resonate through deep empathy, to follow and protect shifting states of awareness, their own and the clients, to integrate metaphor and wonderment instead of interpretation, to empower the client and symbol voices with congruent validation, and to attune to cultural sensibilities — their own, the clients, and the world of the symbols in the sand scene. Narrative Sand Therapy is deep play.

Objectives

Participants will:

1. Explain two functions of client and therapist projections in Narrative Sand Therapy reflected in play therapy and expressive therapy.
2. Name the three foundational theories used to understand and respond to clients and their process with symbols.
3. Explain the meaning of NST as an emergent, immersive process in play therapy related to the scope of practice.
4. Describe four existential themes that underly client experience often represented in sand scenes and symbol dialogues.
5. State the four core principles for NST as these reflect the therapeutic powers of play.
6. Describe two different approaches that help reduce interpretation with symbols and sand scenes and protect the play therapy process.
7. Describe the scope of practice as an ethical consideration for the use of NST across the professions including art and play therapists.
8. Explain the meaning and purpose of therapist immersion in the experience of symbols, play, and sand scenes.
9. State an aspect of the power of social-cultural institutions, rules, myths, and constructions that alienate or empower client experience.
10. Explain one core idea from Narrative psychology that supports NST and is used in narrative play therapy.
11. State how the hermeneutic circle guides the symbol/story process.
12. State an example of client-led collaborative experience, especially child-centered play therapy.
13. Explain the use of metaphor and poetics in NST.
14. State the role of silence and dialogues in NST.
15. Describe one example of play therapist innovation-in-the-moment with a single symbol or with sand scenes.
16. Explain these terms: reclamation, constructionist integration, individuation, active imagination, wonderment, amplification, and collaboration within play and sand therapy.
17. Describe the neurophysiology of projection and its relevance to NST.
18. State risks, dangers, and problems with the use of symbols in play therapy and all sand therapies.
19. State the value of carefully pacing the amplification of symbol qualities for client-centered play therapy and process hypnosis in NST.

Format

This course will introduce the philosophy and theories that ground NST, as well as demonstrate a variety of clinical applications. Each three-hour workshop will incorporate core ideas, ethical considerations, a demonstration of the process, and an interactive play exploration with images, symbols and sand scenes. Suggestions for practice exercises between sessions will help ground core practices and stimulate questions for the next session. Time for questions will close each session.

Immersion

Narrative Sand Therapy has a defining feature; personal immersion is essential to fully comprehend this approach. As a virtual course, exercises will enhance participant experience beyond simple “how to” recipes for use. Participants are strongly encouraged to actively engage in the immersive, experiential play component of this course. 

Clinical Skills

Competencies flow from four principles – permission, protection, empowerment, and presence. 

This introductory course will briefly present aspects of competency in the following skills: 

1. Perspective: Understand the existential vulnerabilities that underly clinical symptoms. Understand the power of social-cultural institutions, rules, myths, and constructions that alienate and empower client experience.
2. Understanding that a play therapy process with symbols and stories entails a phenomenological perspective, and follows a hermeneutic circle for reclamation, validation, empowerment, and transformation.
3. Immersive play experience to build clinician insights and to better understand the experience of the client, 
4. Attunement to the physical and emotional impact of symbol work, 
5. Practice resonating with the energy and tone of the client’s story, symbol voice, and movement, 
6. Facilitate client-lead collaborative experience, 
7. Practice with amplification and congruent responses attending to layers of meaning, 
8. Pacing with poetics, play and metaphor, 
9. Develop concentrated focus and flow, 
10. Quietude accepting ambiguity and silence,
11. Leaning into spontaneity and innovation in the moment,
12. Creative use of countertransference and projections,
13. Balancing reclamation, integration, and individuation,
14. Ability to facilitate active imagination.  

These skills lay the foundation for competent, safe clinical application of Narrative Sand Therapy.

Brain-Mind-Body-Symbol

We will also touch on the role of symbols, myths, and rituals in the evolution of consciousness, the neurophysiology of projection, activating imagination through mindfulness, and process hypnosis. An emphasis will be on the process for safe, ethical practice, with examples of risks, dangers, and problems when therapists work outside their scope of practice.

Limitations

As an introductory course, no prior experience or knowledge of sand or symbol therapy is required. The course is designed to provide a foundation to guide and support participants as they consider this approach in their practice within clear ethical constraints. Competence is understood as a continual process rather than a static state to be achieved and will require ongoing professional development and immersive experience. Narrative Sand Therapy© is a complex, emergent process. This course is designed as a foundation and introduction to this process.

 

Related Links:

Origin and Theory for Narrative Sand Therapy

The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier (Author), Alain Gheerbrant (Author), John Buchanan-Brown (Translator)

The Power of Sandplay by Kate Adams,  Journal of Sandplay Therapy, 13, 89-100.

Ask Dr. Dee: Are there symbol books you recommend?

A full list of Resources for Symbols, Narrative, Amplification and Active Imagination, Sandplay, Sand Therapy, and Myths & Metaphor is available on our Resources web page.

 

 

This training is approved by APT Approved Provider 05-161 for 15 CE hours.

 

 

 

 

The Sand Therapy Training Institute (TSTTI) is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. TSTTI maintains responsibility for this program and its content.