Trauma-Informed Sandplay Therapy Certificate Program

2025 Program Dates

INTENSIVE SANDPLAY THERAPY TRAINING PROGRAM:

NEW SPRING DATES: April 5, April 26, May 10, May 17, May 31, and June 7, 2025

Antidote to Trauma

About Sandplay Therapy

In this training clinicians will learn how to use Sandplay Therapy in tandem with the other expressive art therapies to help mitigate trauma and assist in healing and recovery.

Sandplay Therapy helps clients who have experienced trauma to express what their words alone cannot express. Because play (as sacred ritual) is a symbolic language, then “unspeakable” trauma can be safely accessed, witnessed, transformed, and healed. The sensory and elemental nature of the sand adds a tactile experience that assists in adding relaxation and peace to the experience for the client, by creating a “safe and protected” space for healing the emotional and psychological wounds of trauma.

Sandplay Therapy is particularly effective to use with traumatized clients because the process requires no prior artmaking/image-making experience. Looking at the figures and the placement that the client “constellates” in the Sand Tray, hearing the “Sand Story”, and witnessing the healing messages within each tableau created by their clients, clinicians will learn to access, through the symbols used, the client’s inner experience, including their conflicts, hopes, dreams, strengths, synthesis, and solutions.

WHAT:

Sandplay Therapy Training Program: Antidote to Trauma – consists of 30 professional development training hours. (6 hr. Selected Saturdays, September through December 2023). All participants earn a Certificate of Completion upon completion of the Program.

WHEN:

NEW SPRING DATES: April 5, April 26, May 10, May 17, May 31, and June 7, 2025

Time: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm (1:00 pm-2:00 pm lunch break)

CEUs:

If you are a licensed mental health professional and would like to earn CEU's for this program please read the following criteria to determine if you are eligible and if you are eligible, please and use the link below to register for CEU's through Antioch University.

This Course meets the qualifications for 30 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Antioch University is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for mental health professionals. Antioch University maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.

National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) - Antioch University New England - Clinical Mental Health Counseling Department has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 4338. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Antioch University New England - Clinical Mental Health Counseling Department is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

AFTER you register for the program you may register with Antioch University for CEU.

REGISTER for CEUs click here

TRAINING GOALS:

Learn the history and development of Sandplay Therapy as a therapeutic modality, particularly the “World Technique of Margaret Lowenfeld, and Jungian Therapy approaches.
From case stories, be able to understand the multiple uses, diagnostic, treatment, and healing uses of Sandplay Therapy as preferred therapeutic tool and extrapolate next steps and or new directions in treatment.
How to set up a Sandplay Therapy, what objects, forms, categories, and essential figures to include in the set up.
How to enhance and augment a Sandplay Therapy Therapy collection, determining “must-haves” for the specific populations with whom you are working.
Experience using Sandplay Therapy as “sequential practice” throughout the course of the program, to experience point to view of both client and therapist, in short and long-term practice.
How to use Sandplay Therapy with clients who have experienced trauma.
Learn how to introduce Sandplay Therapy to the client, witnessing, and skillfully processing Sand Story with the client.
Learn how to introduce Sandplay Therapy to the client, use psychodynamic techniques to understand the “world” and process its imagery, including the choice of dry or wet sand, form, color, figure choice, figure placement, narrative content, and progression of figures and themes will be explored, and the use of a simple tracking form demonstrated.
Learn how to introduce and practice Sandplay Therapy as a form of “Family Therapy.”
Experience the therapist role as “witness”/ “Hollow Reed” to gain understanding of the tray’s message(s), exploring myriad aspects, paying attention to the order and arrangement to make sense of Sandplay imagery.
Experience the therapist role as “chronicler” to assist clients in making sense of “Sand Story World.”
Learn the long-term utilization of Sandplay Therapy in treatment for both children and adults.
Learn the long-term utilization of how interpretative functions including cognitive understanding, intuition, affective response, and body response are gained from client’s Sandplay picture.
Learn how to interview clients, after Sandtray creation, using the “Four Quadrants Method” from the “World Technique” of Margaret Lowenfeld.
Learn how to interview and interpret the Sandtray, using the Jungian “Archetypal Method.”
Learn how to use Sandplay Therapy in TANDEM with the other Expressive Art Therapies, to help mitigate trauma and assist in healing and recovery.

“I worked with my adult client on another two sand-trays, and she is hooked. I am hooked!! After so many years as a practicing clinician, it is amazing to have another tool in my practice. I don't even know if I can call it a tool. It’s a practice, a "sacred space", a physical space to let creativity with the mind /body do their thing. Lucy, thank you for being THAT practitioner to teach this to other therapists. It is beyond meaningful to me.”

~Jennifer Walsh, LCSW-R

“You are a bright light in this world, Lucy! Thank you for sharing your tremendous wealth of knowledge, experience, and expressive playfulness with us. Your spirit is radiant, and our workshops make me feel buoyant, even across the Zoom screen!”

~ N.W. Child Life Specialist

“What I appreciated about your design of the course was the mix of theory, case study observations and hands-on explorations and you managed the dance between your "virtual" students and the group in the studio beautifully. You never shied away from asking us to plunge into the most personal part of ourselves and then to share it with others - both one on one and as a full gathering. I loved being a part of that group. You are a remarkable and generous teacher.”

~ J.M.G. Art Educator/Counselor-To-Be