Become a Somatic Sand Therapy™ Practitioner:
Begin your journey with an Accredited Level 1, 6 Week Training Program
Want to shift your clinical practice from Helping to Healing?
Want to feel inspired, creative, connected and gain a new mental health intervention for your counselling or psychotherapy practice? Or maybe deepen and expand your current use and understanding of Sand Therapy?
Want training that adds to your OPD points and registration as a Somatic Sand Therapy™ Practitioner (SST)?
Whether you work with adults, youth or children, Somatic Sand Therapy™ offers a gentle yet powerful, simple yet profound, creative and enjoyable way to work with the impacts of trauma and attachment wounds, as well as grief, loss & behavioural issues. With or Without Words.
Somatic Sand Therapy is a whole-brain approach to healing trauma. It not only supports your client’s narrative, their imagination and creativity, but it also allows involvement of the body, mindfulness and the implicit memory. Somatic Sand Therapy™ works below the level of consciousness and changes the brain in the moment, in the here and now. New neural pathways are laid down and the client’s neurology is changing as the tray is constructed.
With Somatic Sand Therapy™ you can literally see your feelings and touch your thoughts.
2024 Dates, Times, Venue & Costs
Lectures: Tuesday evenings: 6pm – 9pm (Qld time)
Tutorials/Case Presentations: Wednesday evenings: 6pm – 8pm (Qld time)
- 9 – 11 February, 2024 (live in-person on the Sunshine Coast, Qld)
- 13 February – 19 March, 2024 (live weekly lectures online)
- 14 February – 20 March, 2024 (live weekly tutorials online)
- 22 – 24 March, 2024 (live in-person on the Sunshine Coast, Qld)
Investment
- One-Time Discount Payment – $2,500.
- Payment Plans consist of 6 x $500 per month.
- Includes a comprehensive manual and 6 Key Bonuses to support your practice.
- All workshops will be recorded for viewing on an easy to use platform.
- Lunch, accomodation and travel are not included in the fees.
Please note: Enrolment is based on membership with a counselling association, ie. ACA, PACFA, AASW, APA, etc. This training is post-graduate training designed to support qualified counsellors or psychotherapists in their role with their current case load. It is not for students, nor is it a pathway to becoming a counsellor or psychotherapist.
Course Components
The six online modules and two, in-person workshops are outlined below:
MODULES & DATES:
Module 1: Introduction to Somatic Sand Therapy™
Module 2: The Six Elements of Somatic Sand Therapy™
Live 2-Day In-Person Training: Sunshine Coast, Qld
Module 3: The Theory Behind The Healing Power of Somatic Sand Therapy™
Module 4: Introduction to the Magical World of Symbology
Module 5: The Somatic Sand Therapy™ Psychic Change Process
Module 6: The Embodied Somatic Sand Therapy™ Practitioner
Live 2-Day In-Person Training: Sunshine Coast, Qld
Why train with me you may be asking? Great Question.
Not only have I been using Sand Therapy as a counselling tool with various populations for 22 years, I have 15 years of experience in teaching and refining this certified training. I understand the nuances of how and why it works, what doesn’t work, what can go wrong and just how transformative it is when it goes right. I know this modality. I trust it and I use it in nearly every therapy session with my clients. I also offer Clinical Supervision to graduates, so that you can keep your Somatic Sand Therapy™ journey going. You will not be left alone trying to implement this modality back into your practice.
Somatic Sand Therapy™ is for everyone! It can be used with individuals of any age from 6+, couples, groups; clients who are culturally and linguistically diverse, and clients with developmental delays or neurodiversity. I have had particular success in training therapists in Alice Springs who work primarily with Aboriginal clients who report the ‘miraculous’ power of Sand Therapy.
Want a more playful, enjoyable and safe way to work with trauma? Working with Trauma can take its toll on therapists, but not with Somatic Sand Therapy™. With this modality, we observe in silence, we hold space, we practice loving presence. We are the relational tool that is so important in working with clients with Complex Trauma. I guarantee you will love what you do. You will know what you are doing. You will enjoy going to work.
Are you an experienced therapist, or just beginning your therapy journey? This training is suitable for therapists of all orientations and levels of experience. We will start with the basics and over ten weeks we will expand your experience and skills. The more you already know, the deeper you will go. Why wait? With growing climate anxiety, family relationship distress, increasing violence towards women and gender diverse people, suicide rates on the rise, a reluctant government to support refugees and asylum seekers, our sovereign land owners continuously being subjected to white policy, we need this work now more than ever. This training is experiential. You will walk away laden with ideas, tools and excitement. And so will your clients.
What does experiential mean? It means we learn by doing. Throughout the training you will be encouraged to integrate your learning with current clients. We will engage in numerous somatic and symbolic processes. In the final workshop you will be involved in creating many of your own trays, observing, and facilitating other trainees with their process in the sand.
Why is this so important? Because, YOU are an integral part of the elements that help others heal. Your observations, your questioning, your instincts, your patience and your presence are vital to the success of each session and the overall series of sessions. The more time you have creating your own trays, being facilitated, practicing the process with others, the more confident and capable you will feel when you offer this modality to your clients. But best of all, it means you have an opportunity to experience the healing power of Somatic Sand Therapy™ for yourself. You will have time to process some of your own life events, and you will meet a tribe of like-minded therapists to practice and build strong bonds with.
DOORS OPEN again in 2024!! Make sure you’re on my mailing list to be able to enrol.
What Is Somatic Sand Therapy™?
Sand Therapy is a psychotherapeutic modality that was originally developed through the pioneering work of Dr. Margaret Lowenfeld, a physician who worked with children in London in the early twentieth century. Lowenfeld combined play, miniature figures and a tray of sand to create what she called, ‘The World Technique’, a place where individual children could build a miniature world.
Later Dora Kalff, a Jungian analyst, studied with Lowenfeld and soon recognised that what was taking place in the children’s worlds was what Jung had described as the individuation process. Kalff preferred to witness the child’s work without the interference of questions and dialogue used in Lowenfeld’s method, and so created her unique approach called ‘Sandplay’.
From this early development of sand therapy, it is not surprising that many diverse applications with a range of age groups would follow. Various clinical theories and adaptations of Lowenfeld’s and Kalff’s initial work exist today. Sand Therapy is a term that encompasses the integration of various therapeutic frameworks with miniature figurines in a sandtray.
Somatic Sand Therapy™ is a non-directive intervention conducted over a series of sessions called a ‘process’. It uses the combination of sand, water, a collection of miniature figures, a wooden tray, the client’s imagination and ‘felt sense’, and is based on the latest Neuroscience, as well as Somatic, Attachment and Jungian Psychology. Somatic Sand Therapy™ incorporates the use of directive intervention when needed, integrating Symbology with practices from Family Constellations, Gestalt Therapy and Internal Family Systems. More than an Expressive Therapy modality, Somatic Sand Therapy™ is a mental health intervention that supports nervous system regulation, healing and alignment with the Self, and development of the personality. Extensive training of professionals committed to personal and professional growth is required.
About Somatic Sand Therapy™ Training
This course provides a thorough introductory training, with extensive practical experience and supervision, in Somatic Sand Therapy™.
The play aspect of this approach makes it inviting and nonthreatening. Somatic Sand Therapy™ plays an important role in helping clients move from emotional chaos to secure relating with self and others and can be incorporated into traditional counselling with children, adolescents and adults. It can offer ways to help clients resolve family issues, contact and deepen personal resourcefulness, and promote emotional resiliency. It is an effective support for transpersonal exploration, trauma healing and to increase ‘earned security’. Somatic Sand Therapy™ has been found to support insight into relational attachment dynamics, emotion regulation, completion of defence cycles and internal resource building. It is also a great support for clients with limited access to verbal skills or language differences, ie. those effected by trauma, language barriers, and/or young people.
Based on twenty years of experience and development, this course provides introductory training in understanding clients’ sand creations. It provides clear guidelines that support therapeutic confidence in using this modality to access deeper layers of emotion and support transformation of unconscious processes in the psyche. This is a highly experiential, interactive program that will provide many skills to support your clients’ move from protection to connection, from the inside out. Participants will have the experience of following their own personal growth journey using the processes for personal growth at each workshop. A manual, slides and handouts will be provided in each workshop.
Becoming a Registered Somatic Sand Therapy™ Practitioner
This Level 1 Training course is the first step in becoming a Registered Somatic Sand Therapy™ Practitioner. On completion of Level 2 and having completed all requirements for both training levels, participants can apply to register as a Somatic Sand Therapy™ Practitioner and be included on the Registry for Qualified Somatic Sand Therapy™ Practitioners. This allows graduates to use the initials SST after their name and in their credentials.