Sandtray therapy
Some things are easier to show than to say.
Sandtray therapy for children (ages 6 and up), teens, and adults in Kendall, Miami.
What is sandtray therapy?
Sandtray therapy is a form of therapy that uses a tray of sand and a collection of miniature figures, objects, and symbols. Instead of talking through what's happening, you work with your hands, choosing objects and placing them in the sand to create a scene. The scene becomes a way of expressing things that don't always have words yet.
Sandtray grew out of early play therapy approaches that recognized that people, especially children, don't always process their experiences through words. Over time, it developed into an expressive therapy used with children, teens, adults, families, couples, and groups. In my practice, I use sandtray with children, teens, adults, and families.
I was introduced to sandtray ten years ago as part of my play therapy training, and over time I began using it with adults, too. I kept noticing that sometimes a client could spend weeks talking through something and then see it differently once they represented it in the tray.
One of the things that makes sandtray useful is metaphor. A figure can represent a person, a feeling, a memory, a part of yourself, or something else. This indirectness can create some distance from difficult experiences, allowing us to explore sensitive or traumatic material without requiring someone to immediately describe everything directly or in detail.
From a neuroscience point of view, working visually, spatially, and with your hands engages different processes than talking alone, which can help connect nonverbal experience with language, reflection, and meaning-making.
Sandtray also doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing approach. We can talk, move into the tray when it feels useful, and return to conversation afterward. For some clients, it's one tool among many. For others, it might be the primary way we do therapy.
As a gardener, I also find a natural parallel between working in the sandtray and working with soil, using your hands, planting something, moving things around, and paying attention to what comes out of it.
Not just for kids
Sandtray is used with children, teens, and adults. The way it works with each is a little different.
Children
Children are often better at showing than telling. In sandtray, a child can build a scene, place what feels scary in the corner, give the small figure an ally, or knock something over and rebuild it. The story they create tells us what they're carrying, without them having to say it directly.
Sandtray and play therapy and can be part of how we work together from the start.
I work with children 6 years and up.
Teens
The distance sandtray offers, working with objects and symbols instead of speaking directly, can make it easier to approach something real. Some teens take to it right away. Others need time. Both are fine.
It can be especially helpful for navigating identity, family dynamics, friendships, or anything that feels too complicated to say out loud.
Adults
Some adults sit down at the tray feeling a little unsure, and that's fine. You don't have to believe in it for it to be useful. Sometimes a figure ends up in the sand that you didn't plan to pick, or two things land closer together than you expected. We get curious about that together: sometimes it brings up something that hasn't come out in conversation.
What people bring to the tray
What sandtray can help with
Sandtray can support work across a wide range of experiences, including:
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Trauma and difficult past experiences
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Grief and loss
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Anxiety and worry
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Identity exploration
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Life transitions
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Relationship patterns
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Family dynamics
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Feeling stuck or disconnected
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Processing things that are hard to name
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ADHD and autism (as part of a broader treatment approach)
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Emotional overwhelm
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Self-understanding and inner world exploration
Why I use sandtray
I was trained in sandtray alongside play therapy, and over time I started offering it to adult clients too, sometimes hesitantly at first. What I kept seeing was that people would spend weeks or months working through something verbally, and then they'd sit at the tray and, in one session, give it a shape they hadn't been able to find before.
I think what happens is that the hands know things the thinking mind is still catching up to. Choosing a figure, placing it somewhere, and deciding what goes next to it is a different kind of thinking. And sometimes a different kind of thinking is exactly what's needed.
I'm a gardener, and I notice that a lot of the work that happens in sandtray reminds me of tending to something. You're not forcing it. You're creating conditions. You're paying attention to what's already there.
