Sandplay Therapy & How it Works
Sandplay therapy and its various forms is a special therapeutic approach for working with children, adolescents, couples, their families, and/or care providers. Sandplay, art, and play are natural mediums for children. Usually, children have not developed the cognitive or verbal skills that adults use to discuss feelings, emotions, and experiences in therapy. A safe and structured playroom environment is established where children are encouraged to play in ways that reveal concerns, problems, and issues they are struggling with.
A sandplay therapist is able to guide the clients in ways that are therapeutic and healing. This allows the sandplay therapist to observe and interpret the full range of systemic/relational dynamics that are important to the client. The sandplay therapist is then able to enter into the intrapsychic and systemic reality of the child, resulting in appropriate suggestions/interventions.
Sandplay therapy allows:
- Clients to communicate ideas, feelings & experiences.
- Clients to recreate and resolve events (such as trauma, divorce, abuse, or death of a parent or family member)
- Clients can rehearse and master life skills and other techniques.
- A window for adults, including parents, caregivers, and foster parents, into a child’s world.
- Clients to integrate the left brain and the right brain for insight and healing.
- Clients to integrate conscious and unconscious material.
Certificate Program:
The Colorado School for Family Therapy is approved and regulated by the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Private Occupational School Board. The School maintains responsibility for the program.
The School offers weekend classes to complete the Sandplay Therapy Certificate requirements. Students may also earn a Certificate in Sandplay Therapy from the School through an independent study format.
Courses include:
- Sandplay Therapy I: Introduction to Sandplay Therapy
- Sandplay Therapy II: Clinical Practice
- Sandplay Therapy III: Sand World Builder & Observer
The certificate program student can also earn play therapy credit with the Association of Play Therapy for Play Therapist credentialing. Students will learn to do sandplay therapy with adolescents, adults, couples, families, and groups. Three (3) classes are required for the certificate. The total program cost is $2,100.00.
Instruction will be conducted via vitual/distance learnin. Graduates of the School’s program will learn to apply sandplay therapy in the clinical practice of psychotherapy as legally defined in the Colorado Mental Health Statue, particularly CRS 12-245-214.