Integrating Sandtray in Play Therapy into the 8 Phases of EMDR

Join us for this 2-day experiential training for EMDR-trained clinicians who want to integrate sandtray into EMDR therapy with greater depth, clarity, and fidelity.

Some trauma experiences cannot be reached through words alone.

They may live in the body, in images, in fragments, in sensations, in protective responses, in silence, or in story.

They may come from early experiences, attachment wounds, dissociative states, overwhelming events, or places in the client’s system that have never had language.

Sandtray in play therapy gives these experiences a way to emerge, organize, move, and integrate.

Through symbols, miniatures, sand, movement, metaphor, distance, and story, clients can begin to access material that may feel inaccessible. The tray can help hold what feels too big, too hidden, too confusing, or too overwhelming to approach directly.

When sandtray is thoughtfully integrated into EMDR therapy, it can support readiness, regulation, dual awareness, trauma processing, somatic awareness, and integration across the lifespan.

This training will guide participants through all 8 phases of EMDR therapy using sandtray in play therapy.

Participants will learn through teaching, demonstration, clinical discussion, and experiential practice. They will explore how sandtray may support history taking, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan, closure, and re-evaluation.

Participants will also practice ways to bring sandtray into EMDR therapy while maintaining fidelity to the EMDR model and honoring the clinical purpose of each phase.

Why this integration is so powerful

EMDR and sandtray are both powerful approaches for trauma treatment.

Together, they can offer clients a way to process experiences that may be difficult to reach through verbal processing alone.

Sandtray can help clients represent inner experience symbolically. This can support access, distance, containment, regulation, and integration.

It can also support the clinician in tracking themes, protective patterns, resources, stuck points, shifts, and emerging adaptive information.

Within EMDR therapy, sandtray can help clients stay connected to the work while having a concrete, symbolic, and relational way to organize what is happening internally.

This can be especially meaningful when working with clients who process through images, body sensations, play, story, metaphor, silence, or movement.

The purpose of this training is to help clinicians understand how sandtray can be integrated into the 8 phases of EMDR in a way that supports the clinical purpose of each phase and preserves the integrity of the EMDR model.

Who this training is for

This training is for EMDR-trained clinicians who work with children, adolescents, adults, families, or clients across the lifespan.

It may be especially helpful for clinicians who work with trauma, attachment wounds, complex trauma, grief, anxiety, dissociation, protective parts, developmental trauma, and clients who communicate through image, metaphor, movement, body sensation, story, silence, or play.

Participants do not need to be advanced sandtray therapists.

Participants should have a willingness to learn experientially, reflect clinically, and practice integrating sandtray into EMDR therapy with care and fidelity.

What makes this training different

This is an experiential training.

You will not only learn about the integration.

You will see it.

You will practice it.

You will work with miniatures, sand, symbols, story, and clinical decision-making as we move through the phases of EMDR.

The training is designed to help you understand what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to stay connected to the clinical task of each EMDR phase.

You will have opportunities to observe demonstrations, participate in guided practice, and reflect on how this integration may apply to your own clinical work.

Participants will leave with

A foundational understanding of sandtray therapy within play therapy

A clearer understanding of how sandtray can support trauma treatment across the lifespan

Practical ways to integrate sandtray into each of the 8 phases of EMDR therapy

Greater confidence using symbols, miniatures, metaphor, movement, and story in EMDR therapy

Ways to support clients in accessing material that may be difficult to reach through words alone

Clinical tools for preparation, resourcing, dual awareness, trauma processing, closure, and re-evaluation

A stronger understanding of how sandtray can support emotional regulation, somatic awareness, and integration

More clarity about how to integrate creative and expressive methods while maintaining fidelity to EMDR therapy

Eligibility

Because this training focuses on the integration of sandtray into the 8 phases of EMDR therapy, participants should have completed an EMDRIA-approved Basic EMDR Training before attending.

Register

If you have been wanting to bring sandtray into your EMDR work in a way that feels grounded, clinically clear, and connected to the 8 phases, I would love to have you join us.

This training will help you understand how sandtray can support EMDR therapy across the lifespan, especially when the work needs more than words.

You will leave with practical experience, clearer clinical reasoning, and a deeper sense of how powerful this integration can be when it is done with care, creativity, and fidelity.