Opengate Institute
Leading Training Centre and Advocates for Integrative Sand Therapy in Australia
About Us
Sandtray as an Expressive Therapy
Sand play is an expressive therapy and is used within the context of psychotherapy, counselling, rehabilitation, or medicine (Malchiodi, 2005). Shaun McNiff, writing about the connection between arts and psychotherapy, asserts that expressive therapies are those that introduce action to psychotherapy. Action within psychotherapy, he adds, is rarely limited to a specific mode of expression (1981). When two or more expressive therapies are utilised within the context of treatment, it is sometimes called an “integrative” approach (Malchiodi, 2005).
SYMBOL WORK and Integrative Sand Therapy
Opengate Institute has developed an Integrative Sand Therapy 18 week cours as a Specialist Sandtray Practitioner Training. Based on the work of Margaret Lowenfeld the developer of The World Technique and Jungian Sandplay therapy originally developed by Dora Kalff, who integrated Jungian psychology and Buddhist philosophy. We have integrated the Sand Therapies tapping into a rich history of over 75 years of clinical application by therapists from around the world. It is considered one of the most potent yet safe methods, and has been found to be effective in working with a wide range of issues, from existential inner conflicts to PTSD and trauma.
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What is Mindfulness?
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