Creativity and imagination come up against injunctions very early in life; you can’t – sing, draw, play music, create, invent. Family, social, and cultural expectations require a shift away from being inventive to a so-called “practical” reality. For many clients, the shelf of symbols, the tray of sand, the invitation to draw or activate an image evoke strong anxiety and activate a lifetime of social judgments and constraints.

This highly experiential course demonstrates how a basic understanding of neurophysiology combined with simple but powerful projective exercises can help clients overcome internal barriers and experience the profound power and depth of collaborative active imagination. Externalizing narratives and experiences of shame and trauma through therapeutic metaphor and symbol activation provides an opportunity to process, heal and reclaim lost, missing or damaged parts of the self.

Emphasizing the four basic principles of Narrative Sand Therapy (Presence, Permission, Protection and Empowerment), this 3-hour live virtual training provides a practical approach for normalizing uncertainty and reservation while utilizing clinician spontaneity and deep Rogerian presence to help clients immerse in their own projective process.