What is Sandplay Therapy?

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Sandplay Therapy

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Sandplay Therapy and symbol work is one form of counselling allowing the individual to participate in a non-verbal creative process. In a safe and protected space, and using miniature figures in a small sandtray, you use your imagination to create a three-dimensional expression of your 'inner world'. Bringing this inner world into the open can aid in reducing emotional causes behind difficult behaviours.

All the while the therapist stays nearby, to help when needed as "The Silent Witness"

With an extensive research and literature base, Sandplay is a powerful therapeutic method. Sandplay Therapy can be used with children, adolescents and adults, in schools, welfare agencies and private practice.

 

Sandplay Therapy is  a creative and effective way of working with children, young people, adults and families. The therapy uses miniature figures which the client places in a box of sand in order to tell their story and process feelings. Sandplay is widely used in schools as well as counselling and mental health settings.

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Sandplay as an Expressive Therapy

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Sand play is an expressive therapy and is used within the context of psychotherapy, counselling, rehabilitation, or medicine (Malchiodi, 2005). Shaun McNiff, writing about the connection between arts and psychotherapy, asserts that expressive therapies are those that introduce action to psychotherapy. Action within psychotherapy, he adds, is rarely limited to a specific mode of expression (1981). When two or more expressive therapies are utilised within the context of treatment, it is sometimes called an “integrative” approach (Malchiodi, 2005). 

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