Sandtray Therapy
Sandtray therapy
Jessica utilizes a powerful, nonverbal projective form of therapy called “sandtray”. Sandtray therapy uses small toy figures (called “miniatures”), which are symbols of many important life events. Some of these miniature figures are then selected by the client, and carefully arranged in a “scene” in a box of special sand. Clients are then able to interact with the material they observe reflected back to them in the tray, as if they are experiencing a microcosm of their inner world in 3D.
Some people think of sandtray therapy as a kind of play therapy used only for children; but sandtray is an incredibly powerful process for adults. Sandtray therapy helps clients to access the right-brain, non-verbal part of their traumatic memories, which is very important, especially for reprocessing developmental traumas, many of which happen before the capacity for language is developed.
Jessica enjoys using sandtray as a tactile, holistic method to assist people in reprocessing traumatic memory.
Sandtray may be helpful when:
the trauma occurred preverbally
talking about the problem is too difficult
tactile methods (grounding) feel helpful and appropriate
it feels better to have some control over the environment