25.10.17

Get To Know More About Sand Tray Therapy

By William Kennedy


There are many techniques that therapists use to get through to their clients and this technique is increasingly becoming popular as time goes by. Instead of verbally communicating during counseling, the clients are allowed to express themselves using sand and miniatures in an environment that they find less threatening or intimidating. This can be empowering to them as they choose to manipulate the ministries as they would like. This fosters a gradual healing process. Thus, sand tray therapy is effective in removing barriers that offer resistivity to opening up.

It is a technique often used with adolescents and children as they usually find it difficult to express themselves through words or properly articulate their feelings and thoughts. The therapist provides a sand tray, eater, and miniatures of different kinds. They include cars, human figures, buildings, trees and other natural objects, fantasy and many others. These miniatures allow the client the chance to create an entire world that expresses their creativity.

Nonetheless, creativity is not the major motive of the exercise. Sometimes patients can voice their creative inabilities but it is said that no standard forms of creativity is actually required. The key objective is the revealing the story behind their world. Once this is complete, a therapist will provide assistance in relating the depictions to the real experiences that a client has undergone.

This therapeutic tool is effective in expressing of non-verbal forms of communications such as the portrayal of images that are in the mind. A client does not need to talk to the therapist but can express their thoughts, feelings, perceptions and emotional conflicts through the use of playing with the soil type and the miniatures. It fosters personal development as well as increases the scope of imagination.

This technique is useful in revealing conflicts that the client may not consciously recognize as being existent. This allows the therapist to discuss the existence the emotional conflicts and how to solve them effectively. The clients become more self-aware of the causative agents of their problems and are able to communicate further through this technique.

It is often utilized with kids who may not yet be in their stages of being able to appropriately articulate words or even those who may not be mature enough to articulate their feelings through spoken word. It becomes effective because kids are usually enlightened with the ideas of playing using toys and sand provided in some safe space.

As much as it is more beneficial to children, it is also an efficient activity for teenagers and adults. This becomes it allows the client and therapist to create a deep relationship faster as compared to the use of words alone. It opens up a way that struggling adolescents and adults can freely express themselves about any traumas, unresolved loss, and intense family issues among others.

It is just not used on individuals but also remains applicable to married couples or even groups of people. It assists in paving the way for discussions that clients may previously have wished not to talk about. Therapists allow clients to remain in control hence creating some safe place for clients to relive trauma as well as establishing gradual healing processes.




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