When people first hear the words sandtray therapy, they sometimes picture a child playing in a sandbox. Even many clinicians with limited familiarity with sandtray mistakenly believe it is primarily a form of play therapy for children. While sandtray is used with children, it is also a powerful experiential therapy approach that can be used with adolescents and adults, as well as with individuals, couples, families, and groups.

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At its simplest, sandtray therapy involves a tray of sand and a collection of figures and objects that allow clients to create scenes reflecting their inner world. Clients are invited to choose figures and create something in the sand. What emerges may represent an experience, a relationship, an emotion, an internal conflict, a memory, or something the client cannot immediately explain.

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We experience the world through far more than words. Experiences are physical, sensory, visual, emotional, and relational, yet we often try to make sense of them later through language alone. Sometimes we become stuck in the story we have learned to tell about an experience. Sandtray offers an opportunity to literally see that experience differently by creating a world outside of ourselves and exploring what emerges.

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When Words Aren't Enough

Traditional talk therapy can be enormously helpful. Talking about our experiences can help us understand patterns, make connections, develop insight, and discover different ways of responding to what is happening in our lives. But understanding something intellectually and resolving it emotionally are not always the same thing.

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This can be particularly apparent in trauma therapy. A person may understand exactly where a reaction comes from and still find themselves having that reaction. They may have talked about an experience many times and yet continue to feel its effects in their relationships, emotions, body, or sense of themselves. Other experiences can simply be difficult to put into words. Sometimes people know that something is happening internally but cannot explain it. At other times, the words themselves may feel inadequate. Sandtray offers another way to approach that material.

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Rather than beginning with “Tell me what you're feeling,” the client can create something and experience what emerges from the process. The tray can make an internal experience visible and tangible in a way that conversation alone sometimes cannot.

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What Actually Happens in Sandtray Therapy?

A sandtray typically contains sand and is accompanied by a collection of miniature figures representing a broad range of possibilities: people, animals, buildings, vehicles, natural objects, fantasy figures, spiritual or religious symbols, barriers, bridges, weapons, household objects, medical items, and countless other representations of human experience.

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My approach is primarily based on the non-directive Sandtray-Worldplay approach developed by Dr. Gisela Schubach DeDomenico. In other approaches to sandtray, the therapist may offer a prompt related to a particular issue or concern. In non-directive work, the client has greater freedom to allow the world to emerge without the therapist determining in advance what the tray should explore.

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There is no artistic ability required, and because it is your imagination and your world, there is no “correct” way to create a sandtray.

Some trays tell an obvious story. Others are highly symbolic. Some contain many figures, while another client may place a single object in an otherwise empty tray. A person may immediately understand what the tray represents or may discover meaning while sitting with it and exploring the experience. Sometimes the most important part isn't what the finished tray looks like at all. The process of choosing, rejecting, placing, moving, burying, uncovering, separating, or connecting figures can itself become meaningful.

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Sandtray and Trauma Therapy

Traumatic experiences are not always stored or experienced as a clear verbal narrative. Trauma can show up through images, sensations, emotional reactions, fragmented memories, patterns of avoidance, relationships, and responses that seem to happen before we have had time to think about them.

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For many trauma survivors, repeatedly talking through what happened does little by itself to change the thoughts, emotions, and internal responses connected to the trauma. A person may be able to tell the story clearly, understand why they react the way they do, and have discussed the experience many times, yet still experience the same emotional and physical responses.

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Sandtray provides another way of working with the experience. Rather than only retelling what happened, the client can create an external representation of their internal world and interact with it in a different way.

Sandtray can also provide some distance between the person and what they are exploring. Instead of immediately having to say, “This happened to me,” a client can place an image in the sand and decide how close or far away to be from it, what surrounds it, whether it is visible, and whether they want to talk about it at all. That sense of choice matters in trauma therapy.

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The client remains in control of what is created, what is disclosed, and how quickly the work progresses. Sandtray can allow difficult material to emerge gradually rather than requiring the client to force an experience into words before they are ready. This is one reason I strongly favor a non-directive approach: it reduces the risk of the therapist directing the client toward material they may not yet be ready to address.

Sandtray can also help make patterns visible. Relationships, sources of safety, barriers, conflicts, losses, fears, and strengths can sometimes become easier to recognize when they exist physically in front of us rather than only as thoughts we are trying to organize internally.

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Does the Therapist Interpret the Symbols?

One concern people sometimes have about sandtray is that the therapist will look at the figures they choose and immediately decide what everything “means.” That is not how I approach the work.

 

Symbols can carry cultural, archetypal, and personal associations, but the meaning of an image ultimately belongs to the person who chose it. A snake, for example, might represent danger to one person, transformation to another, a beloved pet to someone else, or nothing particularly symbolic at all. The therapist's role is not to impose a predetermined interpretation on the tray.

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Instead, I approach the work with curiosity. I may notice something, ask a question, or invite the client to explore their experience of a particular image or part of the tray. Sometimes the client knows immediately what something represents. Sometimes meaning develops over time. And sometimes a figure is simply the one that felt right.

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As part of supporting the work in the sandtray, I find it important to understand the traditional meanings associated with symbols, the backstory of an anime character, or the mythology connected with an image. I can use that knowledge to expand an exploration or ask a meaningful question, but never to tell a client that their own interpretation is wrong. Not knowing immediately can be part of the process.

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Isn't Sandtray Therapy Mostly for Children?

Children often take naturally to sandtray because play and imagery are already important forms of communication for them. They may not have the vocabulary, developmental ability, or desire to sit across from an adult and verbally explain complicated emotional experiences.

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Adults do not stop thinking in images, symbols, metaphors, and sensory experiences simply because they grow up. Nor do adults lose the need for play, art, and creative engagement—we often simply stop prioritizing them.

Adults can be remarkably engaged in sandtray work, including people who initially look at the shelves of miniatures with considerable skepticism.

For an adult who has spent years analyzing a problem, telling the same story, or trying to think their way out of an emotional response, doing something experiential can create a very different therapeutic experience.

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What Can Sandtray Therapy Be Used For?

Although sandtray is often associated with trauma therapy and play therapy, its use is much broader. It can be incorporated into work involving depression, anxiety, grief and loss, relationships, identity, life transitions, family dynamics, substance use and recovery, self-esteem, internal conflict, and personal growth.

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It can also be used to explore strengths, hopes, choices, and possibilities—not only painful experiences.

Sandtray does not replace talk therapy. In my practice, the two work together. A session may include conversation, sandtray, expressive or somatic work, or some combination depending upon what is useful to the client that day. Some clients never use sandtray at all.

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The modality should serve the person rather than requiring the person to fit the modality.

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Do I Have to Know What I'm Making?

No.

One of the interesting aspects of sandtray is that people do not always begin with a plan. A client may be drawn to a figure without knowing why, begin creating a scene without knowing where it is going, or finish a tray and be surprised by what they see.

That doesn't mean every choice contains a hidden psychological message that needs to be decoded.

It does mean we can be curious.

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Sometimes the significance becomes obvious during the session. Sometimes an image takes on meaning later. Sometimes the process of creating the tray matters more than interpreting the final scene. Part of sandtray work is allowing room for something to emerge without demanding an immediate explanation.

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Is Sandtray Therapy Right for Everyone?

No therapeutic approach is right for everyone.

Some clients connect strongly with experiential approaches such as sandtray, while others prefer primarily verbal therapy. Some people are curious immediately; others need time before they are comfortable trying it.

Sandtray should be an invitation rather than a requirement.

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I use an integrative approach to therapy, which means sandtray is one of the tools available rather than something every client is expected to do. Whether and how it is incorporated depends on the individual, their goals, their comfort level, and what we are working on together.

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I offer in-person therapy in Fort Lauderdale as well as telehealth throughout Florida. Because sandtray is a highly experiential modality, opportunities for using it may differ between in-person and telehealth sessions.