Sandplay Therapy

EXETER – Sandplay Therapy is a hands-on form of psychological treatment for those affected by trauma and other mental health issues who are willing to play in sand with miniature objects to access profound healing.

“Sandplay Therapy uses sand and miniatures to encourage exploration and play in a non-verbal way that seems to reach a very deep level of the psyche, what (psychiatrist) Carl Jung would call the archetypal level of the psyche. And in going deep, even young children find a more stable ground,” said Sarah S. Sugatt, a licensed clinical social worker who has been facilitating Sandplay Therapy for children and adults in Exeter since 1993.

The Sandplay Therapy setting is magical for children and anyone who possesses a strong imagination, connection to symbolism or artistic flair. Thousands of miniature figurines line the shelves floor to ceiling of Sugatt’s Water Street office. The miniatures, as she calls them, are wooden or plastic versions of objects from nature, people of all ages and cultures in a myriad of dress, religious tokens and symbols of events that, when placed in the sand, can create a scene reflecting and honoring the deep issues a person is facing.

“Sandplay is a wonderful first experience for kids in therapy because they don’t have to put in words things they cannot put into words. So much of our human experience transcends words,” she said. “When we are playing, all of the research demonstrates that we are happy, we are filled and we are closest to our authentic centers and we lose ourselves. We lose our ego's need to differentiate, we need our egos of course, but we also need to get beyond the ego.”

Historically Sugatt has focused a great deal of her time working with children, but the majority of her practice today is facilitating Sandplay Therapy with adults. She admits some adults, when offered the opportunity to play in the sand, say, “I’m all set, no thanks,” due to the mystery behind it and the preference to talk things out. The one age group that often does not connect with Sandplay Therapy is younger teenagers, who Sugatt said see themselves as “too mature to play with toys.”

For anyone who does play with them, the miniatures evoke their symbolic nature and connect people to previous experiences and associations. Trauma is diabolical and separates humans from their experiences, leaving them unable to cope or make any sense of the traumatic situation, Sugatt said.

“By working in the symbolic we are bringing together again, giving narrative form to previously split parts of our experiences,” Sugatt explained.

Over time, the Sandplay experience can lead people deep into the past, sometimes pre-verbal and long forgotten. By playing with the miniatures and reconnecting with these deep inner wounds, Sugatt said she regularly sees people move through certain stages in their Sandplay journey, which Carl Jung called the Hero or Heroine’s Myth. Clients evolve through the process, she said, with greater self-knowledge.

“We return from that journey with all the learning, all the treasures that we can bring to the larger society and our families. With that deeper knowledge of our Self, Jung would say Self with a capital S, as much as we can know that, we are more integrated. Jung called it individuation, this process of coming to know one’s self in a deep way.”

Through play, children work through many types of life lessons, conflicts and mysteries. Play is a major way children learn and when playing in the sand with the miniatures they connect with their inner symbolic world and “do very deep soul work,” said Sugatt. After each session, Sugatt photographs the Sandplay scenes created in the trays of wet and dry sand to document the evolution of the individual’s work.

“The pictures reflect the inner sacred space of the person,” she said. “It is in this safe and protected environment that people can explore and sometimes re-experience in a safe way, very difficult early experiences.”

An important healing element of Sandplay is the sand itself. While touching the sand, the clients bring their body’s input and connection directly into the work. Sugatt said when she was becoming a certified Sandplay therapist and teacher she was required to complete many sessions of Sandplay with a certified Sandplay Therapist. She said when she put her hands in the sand it evoked a myriad of experiences and childhood memories that brought her to tears.

“And of course the sand is Mother Earth, so we return to that deep feminine archetype where we feel held, not in the personal level with the mother, but within the archetypal level of the mother and the feminine, which is in all of us, male and female. It is a place of great nurturing, rest and great reflection,” she said. “And the actual movement of the objects in the sand comes really from our archetypal masculine ability to take action.”

Integrating our connection to our feminine and masculine sides to become balanced, individuated human beings, Sugatt said is “our life’s work.”

“Sandplay Therapy can start this journey toward wholeness. Then people leave my office and do the work outside on a day-to-day level in their relationships and general living,” she said. “The Sandplay process is a very deep and poignant and life-enhancing experience, not without some difficulties of course, but certainly leading to happier relationships and inspired living.”

There is more than one kind of therapeutic work with sand. Some therapists offer clients sand-tray work, but the Jungian Sandplay Therapy Sugatt facilitates was created by Dora M. Kalff. Kalff based Sandplay on Jungian psychology, Buddhist traditions and her training with Margaret Lowenfeld, a British child psychiatrist who treated children traumatized by war. Sugatt said Lowenfeld learned about miniatures from H.G. Wells’ book "Floor Games." Wells, the author of "War of the Worlds," was a war gamer whose two sons created vast worlds with his sets of miniatures, the topic of his short book. The children in Lowenfeld’s care were the first to place the miniatures in sand in their play, paving the way for the work that she developed, which helps people worldwide return to a life of wholeness, balance and joy.

For information on Sandplay Therapy, visit www.sandplay.org.