Self-care, clinician insight, ability to resonate with clients, mindful presence, and deep empathy, these essential capacities to work with trauma are not required for licensure. They are however, essential capacities for competency with trauma, grief, identity, and social justice issues. They are also essential skills when using expressive arts and sand therapy. Clinician integrity regarding development of these capacities must be anchored in professional development and personal therapy. This experiential session is designed to provide participants with a day of immersion with sand scenes and narrative practices, to deepen one’s capacity to be present to neuro-emotional experience – a mind-body self-conscious practice, personal constructions of meaning, cultivate personal insights, and deepen one’s capacity to resonate and empathize with clients.
Narrative sand therapy activities will include the poetics of representation, therapeutic metaphor with three-dimensional images, symbol amplification and active imagination, and gestalt dialogues to enhance meaning-making. Our core concern is to anchor the clinician’s capacity to balance heightened self-awareness, compassion, and insight with strong boundaries and an authentic existential ground of being.
