Sandplay therapy training: Diploma in Integrative Sandplay

• You work as a counsellor, psychotherapist, clinical psychologist, play therapist, wellbeing or mental health practitioner.
• You are a professional, student or volunteer in an educational /mental health setting, e.g. school, nursery, SEN or CAMHS.
• Adding sandplay work and play therapy skills appeals to you

• If you are curious about or new to sandplay therapy, the Introduction to Sandplay Therapy is the best place to start
• The next level is the Certificate in Integrative Sandplay Therapy, which is our main key skills course.
• After that, you can go on to the Diploma in Sandplay Therapy, which builds on and expands the skills of the previous courses.

Check this general overview on how to become a sandplay therapist.

• We will firstly explore ways of using symbolic play to represent and heal ‘parts’ of our personalities.  Specifically, this includes Richard Schwartz’s ‘Internal Family Systems Theory’. In addition, we well as bring together sandplay research and the latest trauma models using symbols.
• In addition, we will look at systemic ways of working with sandplay with families, parents and children, couples and groups. Then we will relate sand and other forms of play therapy to the mental health world.
• Sandplay therapy is easily used alongside talking therapy and combined with other creative arts therapies. So, we will explore simple ways of using the sand tray to introduce mindfulness and meditation as part of a spiritual practice for both clients and therapists.
• We will also be using music therapy, dance movement and gongs.

• All courses can be used for BACP/UKCP Continuing Personal Development
• The Certificate will give you all the skills you need to confidently use sandplay therapy
• And the Diploma in Sandplay Therapy builds on those skills

• You can choose to do the Diploma the year after the Certificate, or take a break and come back to it. Many groups formed on the Certificate stay together for this second year of training.
• Emma Steadman teaches this course over five weekends spread out over a year. The cost is £1620 if paid upfront or £1800 payable in instalments. From this amount, a non-refundable deposit of £250 is needed at the time of booking
• There is no written work during this course, but there is guided reading set between the modules .
• In addition, you will use opportunities to present clients and take part in group supervision during the weekends.
• The Diploma helps you understand the theory and practice of sandplay therapy on a personal, professional and spiritual level. You are welcome to do the Diploma just for the nourishment (as many of us do). If you want to get the Diploma itself, like the Certificate, it is 50 hours of work with clients including some sandplay. We may be able to suggest suitably qualified supervision.

• Weekend One: Sandplay in a Wider Context. How creativity can help us to safely explore the superego and the unconscious rules that we face in our families as children. Introduction to key systemic writers such as Virginia Satir and Gregory Bateson. Using sandplay in families and in groups. The power of genograms as a way of seeing family patterns in our clients. Reading and supervisors lists.
• Weekend Two: Parent Child Work in Sandplay.  How to encourage a better experience of attachment between parent and child via joint trays. Enabling joint play in therapy. Techniques also suitable for sandplay in couples work. The existential crisis in the work of Michael Washburn’s regression in the service of transcendence.
• Weekend Three:  Being in the Moment.  The creative power of Presence explored through the Internal Family Systems model of Richard Schwartz . Simple, practical techniques to help clients and their dissociated parts stay present in the room. Ways of incorporating meditation and belief into sandplay therapy, using the Integral Model of the transpersonal writer Ken Wilber.
• Weekend Four:  Sand as a means of Alchemical Spiritual Change. A simple, practical exploration of the Jungian psychological process of turning lead into gold. Edward Edinger’s seven basic stages of change in seven sandtrays. Examples and case studies from our own practice.
• Weekend Five: Life and Death.  Looking at Stanislav Grof’s transpersonal ideas of consciousness before birth, which had a huge impact on how we treat pregnant women and the birth process. Relating sandplay to older clients – helping those with dementia to express themselves without words. Preparing clients (and ourselves) for a conscious death through creativity

• Closed online groups, webinars, podcasts and videos.
• Group supervision days in Colchester and Ealing