The Sand Therapy Training Institute

Narrative Sand Therapy Level I Certificate Program

Practice, Theory, Depth and Process: Portals for Expressive and Play Therapy

Cost:

$1,499

Instructor:

Dee Preston-Dillon, M.A., Ph.D.

Description:

In this advanced series we focus on the therapist’s skills for engagement with symbols and story in sand scenes. This narrative engagement is grounded in existential psychotherapy, social-cultural construction, and narrative psychology. Process is focused on engagement with symbols as the third presence in the clinical moment. Narrative Sand Therapy can be combined with other expressive and play therapies, such as dollhouse, storytelling, poetry therapy, drama, and art therapy.

The Narrative Point of View

From a narrative point of view, clinical process with symbols is a projective process. Activation of symbols relies on personification, an active imagination, wherein symbols are available to represent parts of the client’s story, their experience, protecting hidden, alienated parts of the self. This is a positive, organic use of projection, to convey and contain the complexity of story. 

The Narrative Sand Therapy Approach

Taking a Narrative Sand therapy approach, symbols are available for perspective on the client’s situation. Symbols hold the story until the client is ready to share. Symbols represent a part of the client’s experience – developmental and immediate. When engaged, symbols offer a voice for the unspoken, a voice for the client’s experience, an opportunity for dialogue. Importantly, symbols may remain silent, present in the sand scene to represent, to hold the space for transformation, but not yet ready to reveal.

From a narrative approach, each symbol contains parts of self – memory and experience held in the body, experience in awareness, and experience that remains unconscious. A therapist using Narrative Sand therapy protects the client’s process. We follow the lead of the client, while staying attuned, pacing, and always with invitation not prescription. Safety is primary for story elements that are not ready to be shared, for parts of the self and parts of the story represented and witnessed but not necessarily explored.

Symbols and Engagement

Part of the richness that gives way to symbol engagement is the symbol’s backstory, which is cultural and personal. Symbols have relationships with the other symbols in a scene and with the client. Each symbol has a purpose, a story, an experience to share. We remain mindful that symbols show up for the client in their sand scene and that is enough, no engagement is needed. However, engagement may follow the curiosity of the client, the beginning of a journey, including dialogues with those symbols that are ready to share. Not all symbols are present to share; some remain silent, to be seen and witnessed but not violated though manipulation.

Narrative Sand therapy skills are centered on wonderment instead of interpretation. We offer validation through amplification, and depth-work through process hypnosis and active imagination. Narrative therapists pace carefully. They balance silence and voice, protect client-symbol dialogues, and nourish imagination through wonderment. Engagement is an invitation. 

Facilitating Client-Symbol I-Thou Dialogues

Narrative Sand therapy is a phenomenological and hermeneutic process. The hermeneutic circle is activated at the start with clients who choose to share their sand scene. Instead of interpretation, psychological hermeneutics is a framework for process. When curious and interested in exploration, the client is given permission and support for discovery. During exploration, the initial story evolves through stages, moments of silent dialogue, reflection on areas of interest in the scene, client-posed questions and spoken declarations, wonderment, gestalt and I-Thou conversations, and client interviews with their symbols in sand. Meanwhile, the clinician is witness, offering open-ended wonderment, a non-invasive guide. This hermeneutic process gives way to emerging awareness, shifts in perception and perspective, new insights and decisions, the evolution of the story and meaning of the client’s sand scene and parallel meaning in their life.

Essential to this process is the therapist’s heightened presence, ability to facilitate client-symbol I-thou dialogues, a readiness and receptivity for potential, intuitive innovations, and patience with silence and not-knowing. Clinicians practice with boundaries to use their curiosity as wonderment and not inquiry. NST requires an open, collaborative attitude, and an ability to hold layers of meaning. Discovery is possible through Play and when the therapist has deepened their own imagination with projective practice.

Narrative Sand therapy is phenomenological discovery, it is immediacy and spontaneity. We witness, we pace and resonate, we attend and stay attuned, we offer permission, protection, and empowerment for the client’s story, their journey. We follow the lead of the client, validating their inner child, from three to 103.

Narrative Sand therapy is collaborative. Therapists cultivate the ability to be fully present to client experience and hold their own intuitive experience – visceral, emotional, existential, and inventive.

Client Validation

Competency requires focused immediacy and creative courage for innovation-in-the-moment. With Narrative Sand therapy, client validation takes priority over theory and interpretation. It is a process that necessitates safety with boundaries, therapeutic skills for culture-informed amplification of symbol qualities, facilitation and respectful private silent work, collaborative active imagination, and mindful use of projection and metaphor.

In the process, we suspend disbelief, protect silence, resonate as attentive witness, and facilitate following the lead of the client. Through wonderment, we give permission for inventive expression, protection for a deepening of experiential process, and validation for reclamation of stories held in safekeeping. 

Narrative Sand Therapy is an empowering approach to work with existential themes related to trauma, identity, relationships, and unconscious dynamics. It is a reclaiming of truth, externalizing and reframing story, balancing silence with active imagination, and validation for the emergence of meaning.

Connecting Theory and Practice

Participants will find their experience with modalities such as play therapy, expressive therapies e.g. art therapy, drama therapy, Sandplay, Sandtray, and therapeutic metaphor, gestalt and other projective therapies beneficial. The course connects theory with practice, the relevance of culture and social constructions, case examples, ethical considerations, practice exercises, and suggestions for work with varied age, issue, and client populations.

 

Required Coursework:

To earn the Level 1 Certificate, participants must complete the following:

• 5 Case Consultations – Five, two-hour small group consultations with sand scenes from your clients, past or current, or personal examples of scene you created. Time and date TBA
• 2 Private individual consultations – Two 90-minute individual consultations are scheduled individually, either virtually or in person according to preference.
• 6 Workshops – Six, 3-hour virtual, live workshops on February 12, 19, and 26 and March 4, 11, and 18, 2024.

What to Expect with the Workshops:

Level I: Theory, Practice Parameters, Specialized Skills, Ethics, and Therapist Preparation

6 Workshops are offered with the Level 1 Certificate. Each workshop is 3 hours long and is offered live, virtually.

• Workshops will balance core ideas with examination of sand scenes from a narrative perspective, participant experiential activity, and responses to participant questions.
• Knowledge from core theories will support intention, rationale for use, clinical purpose, case conceptualization, client engagement, therapist attitude and readiness, and safety. 
• Experiential work is intended to anchor participants’ experience with intuitions and personal/cultural insights using images, symbols, story structure, and metaphor. A specific prompt will be offered to explore with clients between workshop sessions.
• Participant questions will end each workshop to share experience and practice concerns. Suggested weekly exploration with symbols and readings from peer reviewed articles and books. 

Therapist Immersion: Therapeutic work with symbols, with or without a sand tray, is most effective when therapists have immersed themselves creating a sand scene. There is a vulnerability that is experienced with a safe witness that is a powerful insight into the client’s experience, and one’s connection to personal unconscious activity, active imagination, and intuitive depth. Immersion informs all areas of practice.

To maintain integrity of this virtual training an emphasis is on participant engagement, a parallel with the experience of immersion when face-to-face. Separate from this virtual training, participants are encouraged to obtain 4 to 6 private sessions using sand with a trusted colleague or therapist, someone informed in the use of Sandtray or Sandplay or Sand Therapy.

Problems, Caution: Special attention is given to problems that sabotage most all clinical approaches with symbols and sand therapies, such as: reification, concretization, misuse of projections, dismissal of social-cultural presence, objectification of the process-as-mere-technique, restraint and fear of creativity, presuppositions about expressive therapy and play, misunderstanding about depth work, hidden shame in supervision regarding therapist’s creativity, lack of protection during silent facilitation, lack of practice with imagination, and a search for rules vs organic flow in process. Narrative Sand therapy is not useful for all clients and may not resonate with therapists who prefer a behavioral approach.

 

Workshop Schedule and Session Descriptions:

1st Workshop – Feb 12
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm (EST)*

Scope of Practice and Competency: Clinical differences for Sandtray, Sandplay, and Narrative Sand therapy; the human story through neuro activity in the social brain, play, and metaphor; core ideas from Existential psychotherapy and Narrative psychology; boundaries, safety, therapist curiosity, and dangers of therapy-as-recipe; representations in sand scenes as projective process; an experiential exercise. Emphasis is on therapist presence, pacing, and resonance through here-and-now explorations. Suggested homework for practice and how to incorporate play therapy with narrative sand.

Objectives:

1. Define scope of practice related to use of narrative practice
2. Explain a process-related essential feature for play therapy, drama and art therapy, and NST
3. Describe three clinical skills for use of Narrative Sand therapy
4. Describe the central differences between Sandplay, Sandtray play therapy and Narrative Sand therapy
5. Explain the connection between therapist and client imagination for expressive therapies
6. Describe four existential concepts and two core ideas from social construction that ground NST
7. Name three play therapy principles relevant to NST
8. Name three risks for the use of symbols in sand relevant for play therapists, expressive therapy, when integrating NST

2nd Workshop – Feb 19
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm (EST)*

Human Story as Journey: Brain and evolution — play as an organic, natural healing. Exploring existential concerns through symbols and story in sand; layers of meaning through engagement; symbol dialogues through silence and voice, conceptualization of the journey to recover-reclaim-renew — congruent identity, challenge to freedom, authentic connection; representations of social construction-social justice; initiation of story and symbol Voice. Validating existential aspects of the client’s journey.

Objectives:

1. Explain the connection between the human brain, social-cultural evolution, story, and the use of symbols in sand.
2. Describe how NST protects a child’s natural healing through play.
3. Explain existential bracketing between birth and death during NST facilitating stories for meaning and purpose, to honor grief, and mortality.
4. Describe how NST parallels Narrative Therapy’s externalization, community validation, and recovery of an authentic, congruent story.
5. Explain three skills to facilitate client stories in sand.
6. Describe two social-cultural aspects of the human story as journey.
7. Name two play therapy skills transferable to NST.
8. Explain how silent I-thou dialogues between a client and their symbols is similar to play therapy’s use of gestalt.

3rd Workshop – Feb 26
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm (EST)*

The Therapist’s Imagination: Strengthening the therapist’s imagination calls us to be receptive to non-prescribed therapy explorations, make available energy and attention for being in the moment. We explore Ogden’s innovation-in-the moment, spontaneous play to access the inner child of the client and therapist.
We practice a calming patience, acceptance of ambiguity of process, and willingness to suspend disbelief. We practice trust, “stay in the question” with not-knowing. We curb therapist curiosity and practice fluidity and flow, safety and depth, and active imagination. We reflect on injunctions, judgments and shame that distort early creativity. We practice and explore preparation for play, the depth of play, acceptance of play, the inner child of the therapist in play.

Objectives:

1. Explain the idea of collaboration and co-transference relevant to play therapists use of symbols in sand
2. Describe an example of Ogden’s innovation-in-the-moment with NST
3. State two injunctions that limit therapists and client’s ability to resonate with the energy and dynamics of symbols in sand
4. Name three of play therapy’s Therapeutic Powers of Play that are validated during I-Thou dialogues during NST
5. Describe two ways to engage the therapist’s imagination, their ability to flow with play and spontaneity, and the relevance in collaborative symbol work
6. Explain the connection with the body, breath, and pacing for both therapist and client during NST
7. Describe two essential preparations for therapist competency with symbols in sand
8. State the meaning of staying-in-the-question, and curbing therapist curiosity during NST

4th Workshop – March 4
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm (EST)*

Silence and Wonderment: Our focus in session 4 is the therapist’s attunement with patience, non-judging acceptance, stillness with silence, how to guide a silent process. We will practice Wonderment while mindful of projections. How do we cultivate intuition, and discern and screen therapist emotions/ perceptions that are not useful in process? What is the creative work we must do to address concerns with countertransference, work with fluid boundaries? How do we stay focused and resonate with a sand scene during silence? What aspects of play therapy and mindfulness training ground I-Thou dialogues? Our emphasis is permission and protection, freedom and spontaneity, safety and trust to counter limiting injunctions. We explore the existential and consider the grief that permeates world cultures, personal experience, and transformation in the sand.

Objectives:

1. Describe the essential function of silence in play therapy and during NST
2. Explain how Wonderment changes the idea of interpretation in NST
3. State the meaning of co-transference and types of boundaries in NST
4. Explain two ways play therapists and expressive therapy clinicians can maintain presence and resonance with client-symbol engagement
5. Explain how therapists facilitate I-Thou dialogues during NST
6. Describe three play therapist competencies for safe facilitation of NST engagement
7. Name the four guiding principles that protect and ground grief during NST
8. Describe how existential psychotherapy and socio-cultural-political arrangements contain the process of transformation during NST

5th Workshop – March 11
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm (EST)*

Active Imagination and Process Hypnosis: Like dream work, drama therapy, collaborative play therapy, and gestalt therapy, engagement with symbols in Narrative Sand therapy requires a unique focus and flow, a stillness with deep listening and careful non-self-conscious pacing. Guided by process hypnosis we carefully attend, activate imagination, and stay mindful of shifting awareness for both client and clinician. We explore essential moments of silence and voice as engagement unfolds through metaphor, poetics, imagined journeys, play, and symbol dialogues. We conceptualize experience as existential, and practice immersion with images and sand scenes. We engage with internal voice, reclaim stories held in safekeeping, and explore aspects of play among symbols, between clients and their symbols, and among the three present to engage – therapist-client-symbol. We practice entering the stories for healing and renewal.

Objectives:

1. Describe a core competency for play and expressive arts therapists to facilitate active imagination during NST
2. Describe the function of projection, altered states of consciousness, and pacing during process hypnosis with symbols in sand
3. Explain the idea of NST as an existential and cultural journey
4. State the relevance of the therapist’s ability to connect mind-body- imagination to deepen therapeutic play with symbols in sand
5. Describe how symbols may give voice to client experience in the form of metaphors, stories, and dialogues during NST
6. Explain scope of practice for play therapists and expressive therapists using active imagination with NST
7. Explain two risks of amplification and active imagination
8. Describe the perceptual shift required of clinicians to conceptualize and engage symbols as the third presence available during NST

6th Workshop – March 18
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm (EST)*

Culture, Social Justice, and Existential Engagement: We are never outside the influence of layers of culture. Culture permeates therapy systems and institutions, the culture of psychotherapy, the cultures of clinician and client, and the many cultures of symbols that emerge during engagement with sand scenes. Culture is always present in a sand scene.

Cultural awareness includes concerns with power, political manipulation, perception and attitude, culturally enacted sensorial experience, survival instinct, and human relational experience. Culture is the context wherein our brains tell our stories. Culture is constructed/represented/externalized through myths, symbols, rituals, and imaginal stories. Through cultural representations we witness struggles with being and identity, with freedom and connection, with mortality, responsibility and being in meaningful ways. All these themes are represented in sand scenes.

We will examine the therapist’s awareness of symbol representations of social-cultural-political arrangements, client-symbol cultural connections, cultural stories, and the importance of play across cultures. We consider how existential experience is inseparable from social justice. We will explore how existential-cultural experience is represented and validated through symbol voices in sand scenes. We will also consider the culture of sand therapy itself, culturally relevant symbol categories, and cultural bias in marketing training and symbols for sand therapists.

Important to culturally attunement in NST is the therapist’s preparation including the experience of immersion in culturally relevant play, the study of cultural images, icons and symbols, and therapist exploration of the voices of the cultural Other. Story is the narrative of our lives, collective and personal. Reflecting deep existential meaning, we honor stories that heal and transform. We seek to balance responsibility with hope.

Objectives:

1. Describe four layers of culture present in sand scenes
2. State three aspects of cultural awareness essential for play therapists and expressive therapy central to NST
3. Explain how symbols and story help clients represent/ externalize cultural experience/ trauma during NST
4. State three aspects of existential experience potentially present in sand scenes
5. Name four symbol categories important to maintain culturally attuned representations for NST
6. Describe two connections between social justice and existential experience in sand scenes
7. Explain two essential aspects of play therapy dynamics and a play therapist’s preparation that are enhanced with culturally informed I-Thou dialogues
8. State two Play Therapy competencies essential for ethical scope using NST