Prerequisite: Level 1

In this training we will explore how early childhood experiences influence relational capacities and how they can be healed in play therapy using the sandtray. We will dive deeply into attachment styles as a way of understanding relationship challenges over the lifespan. Using Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Developmental Stages and similar theories as a guide, we will identify ways developmental strivings might show up in play therapy using the sandtray. Continuing the expansion of your sandtray therapy skills, you will experience different ways play therapy clients use the sandtray. This practice will serve to deepen your capacity to witness and hold whatever play emerges. Throughout the training you will be adding to your understanding of how playing, within the context of a safe and secure relational play therapy environment, can rewire the brain and lead to healing.

  • Refine their practice of play therapy using the Body-Brain Approach to Sandtray Therapy.
  • Reinforce concepts of Relational Neuroscience which support the play therapy process.
  • Identify the importance of safety in the play therapy encounter and describe ways sandtray therapy promotes safety.
  • Define implicit memory and explain why non-verbal play therapy methods, such as sandtray therapy, are essential in healing implicit wounds.
  • Review Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages from an attachment perspective and describe ways developmental themes may appear in play therapy using the sandtray.
  • Experience attachment themes in sandtray worlds during a play therapy process.
  • View sandtray worlds with an eye for recognizing unmet developmental needs.
  • Describe how an experience of secure attachment may be created in a play therapy process.
  • Integrate a deep understanding of attachment trauma and how it may be healed in play therapy using the sandtray.
  • Recognize attachment themes in the therapeutic relationship between play therapist and client.

Daily Schedule:

  • 8:30 AM – 9:00 AM  Registration (first day only)
  • 9:00 AM – 10:45AM  Instructional time            
  • 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM  Break        
  • 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM  Instructional time                                                 
  • 12:30 PM – 1:30  PM  Lunch (provided)
  • 1:30 PM – 3:15 PM  Instructional time
  • 3:15 PM – 3:30 PM  Break
  • 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM  Instructional time

Dates    Register