Sand Tray Therapy with Teens and Adults: Integrating Neuroscience and Right-Brain Tools into Talk Therapy
This training is a hybrid workshop. Participants may choose to attend live via ZOOM or live in person. This is a workshop based class with group participation woven through out the event. Participants will witness live sand trays in real time! We are glad you're here.
You’re a thoughtful, growth-oriented therapist who values depth, creativity, and the power of meaningful connection. You want tools that not only work—but make sense with how people are wired, how the brain heals, and how your clients naturally process emotion.
This training offers a practical, neuroscience-informed approach to sand tray therapy with teens and adults.
Whether you’re a talk therapist looking to integrate expressive techniques, or a play therapist seeking to expand your work with older clients, you’ll leave with a solid foundation for using sand tray as a flexible, powerful tool for healing.
You'll Explore:
The neuroscience behind right- and left-brain processing and how symbolic, sensory experiences can help clients access emotions, insight, and healing that words alone can’t reach.
How to recognize moments in therapy when a shift into the tray can help clients deepen, regulate, or move through stuckness.
How to introduce and facilitate sand tray work with teens and adults, even if you’ve never used it before.
You’ll leave with:
A clear, practical framework for integrating sand tray therapy into your existing approach, no matter your theoretical orientation.
A deeper understanding of why expressive, nonverbal tools are so effective in trauma work, emotional processing, and insight-building.
Creative confidence and renewed energy as a therapist, knowing you have new ways to support clients who are intelligent, high-functioning, and sometimes emotionally guarded.
If you're ready to bring more depth, creativity, and neuro-informed insight into your clinical work, this training will meet you where you are—and help you go even further.
After attending this training, participants will be able to:
Describe how sand tray therapy can enhance depth, safety, and insight in work with teens and adults, even in talk-based sessions.
Identify at least three right-brain processes involved in emotional integration, and explain how these relate to the healing power of sand tray therapy.
Recognize clinical moments when symbolic, nonverbal tools may support clients who are stuck, overwhelmed, or emotionally shut down.
Facilitate at least two sandtray therapy interventions that can be adapted for adult or teen clients in individual therapy.
Explain how neuroscience and trauma theory support the integration of expressive tools into relational, talk-based therapy.
Apply a flexible framework for introducing and debriefing sand tray experiences, helping clients move between right-brain exploration and left-brain meaning-making.
This training is for therapists who want to deepen their clinical work and expand their expressive toolset.
It is ideal for:
Talk therapists who want to incorporate creative and experiential techniques in a grounded, thoughtful way.
Play therapists looking to expand their work with teens and adults.
Clinicians who work with clients who are emotionally guarded, disconnected, or “stuck” in talk therapy—and are seeking fresh ways to support insight and connection.
Therapists who are curious about how neuroscience and right-brain processes can inform meaningful change in therapy.
👩🏻💻Virtual Live Stream CEs (ZOOM)
3 non-contact APT & 2 NBCC CE
-OR-
🏢 In Person:
3 Contact APT & NBCC CE
Ridgetop Coffee & Tea: 21631 Ridgetop Cir, Sterling, VA 20166
Agenda (Eastern Time)
9:30 Brain Hemisphere Overview
10:30 Experiential Practice & Collaboration (live sand trays)
1:00 See You Next Time!(2, 15 minute breaks)