What is Sandtray Therapy?

Playing with sand can be a deeply calming and comforting experience. Whether it is running your hands through the sand on the beach, spending time tracing shapes, or building sandcastles, it can bring a sense of relaxation and even ground us. No wonder the beach is such a popular place during the summer months!

And sand doesn’t just need to belong at the beach; it can also belong in therapy. Let me share three things you need to know about Sandtray therapy.

What is sandtray therapy used for?

Sandtray is an evidence-based therapeutic technique or tool involving kinetic sand and mini figurines/objects that opens up many possibilities for growth and healing. It can complement talk therapy by engaging the mind-body connection, or it can be done quietly to help a person process their internal world and emotional experiences. It is hands-on, expressive, and immersive. It invites a person to express their understanding of themselves, their world, and aspects of their reality. There can be a lot of structure or very little structure, meaning the therapist may give prompts to help a client process through something specific, or it may be offered to a client without much instruction or agenda. In other words, it can be directive (when the therapist leads the therapy), nondirective (when the client leads the therapy), and verbal or nonverbal. The scenes created in a sandtray often reflect the person’s past and present inner thoughts, feelings, and hardships.

Therapists may have materials such as:

-human-like miniatures

-fantasy figures (knights, dragons, wizards, etc)

-animals

-nature objects (trees, rocks, flowers, etc)

-vehicles

-household items (cups, popsicle sticks, etc)

-objects with words 

-random objects (marbles, coins, etc)

-spiritual symbols (optional)

Who is it for?

Sandtray is generally well-suited for all ages, however, just like any therapy tool, some people may appreciate and enjoy it more than others. For children and teens, it is a natural way to help them express themselves and their emotions without the need to use words. For adults, it is a way to process internal conflicts and frustrations, solve problems, find emotional release, self-reflect, and see situations from different perspectives. Sandtray can also be used in couples therapy as a way to explore conflicts, explore family of origin, express thoughts and feelings, and more. Couples might work on a sandtray separately or together. 

How does it work?

Sandtray creates a safe environment that allows people to release their feelings, conflicts, and emotions and bring unconscious fears, thoughts, and memories into their conscious awareness. The tool can help therapists climb inside the client’s world and gain an even deeper understanding of what might be happening for them. From this point, the therapist can then better care for and help the client heal and move forward. 

Sandtray can also create a helpful visual and a place to begin the therapy journey or a way to address any stuckness. For example, if a client is having a difficult time sharing about what anxiety is like for them to live with, sandtray gives them a different way to communicate it. They may choose figurines they resonate with the most and arrange them in a way that feels right to them. By creating a scene in the sand, the client can see their emotions in a tangible way, which may help them understand them better and can lead to new insights about themselves and their experiences. It’s like having a mirror that reflects their inner world, making it easier to understand and work through thoughts and feelings.

The therapist will observe the figure choices and the client’s arrangement of them. They may look for certain themes, symbols, and patterns that they will highlight or note for later. They may give prompts or keep it open and ask the client to discuss their figurine choices, arrangements, and symbolic meanings during or after the sandplay. A prompt might sound like, “Build a scene that describes your relationship with…” or “Build a tray about your happiest/saddest childhood memory…”. The client has full agency to choose whether they would like to describe their creation verbally or not. Choice is vital in the process. Sandtray can be used in consecutive sessions or as a one-off experience whenever the client may find it helpful. 

Some last thoughts:

1. Sandtray therapy will often bring up uncomfortable emotions and sensations when scenes are connected directly to the client’s experience. However, sandtray also offers the option of the client using metaphor to describe their experiences, and this distance between reality and metaphor may bring relief to the parts that feel too painful to directly address. 

2. A non-directive approach to sandtray may mean the client’s creation doesn’t make immediate sense to them, which is completely okay! It doesn’t actually need to. Often, the process of sandtray facilitates inner processing that the mind may not realize right away. Eventually, the therapist and client may begin to recognize the relationship between the creation in the sand and the client’s own inner world, although this may come in time.

3. Ultimately, sandtray is best experienced in a playful and non-pressured way!

If what I shared resonates with you, or if you are curious about whether counselling involving sandtray could be healing for you, please reach out! It would be my joy to connect with you. As I am pre-licensed and under supervision, I am offering sessions at a low cost in both Surrey and Langley. If you are unsure, I welcome you to book a free 15-minute phone consultation with me and we can figure out if sandtray is a good fit for your needs.