Sandplay
As children we delighted in playing in the sand, bringing our inner and outer worlds together through imagination. Whether in a backyard sandbox, a kindergarten play station, or a long summertime beach, sand has been an effective medium for creation. Different cultures have also used sand. The Dogon medicine men of Mali draw patterns in the sand and later read the paw prints left in the night by the desert fox to divine the future. Tibetan Buddhist monks spend weeks creating the Kalachakra sand mandala, which is used for contemplation and initiation into Tantric practices. Donald Sandner, in Navaho Symbols of Healing, wrote about the Navaho sand painting ceremonies in which images of world order are created to invoke the healing powers that bring the psyche of the people back into harmony with the universe. Upon the completion of all these rituals the sand is brushed away and dispersed. Whether the makers of these sand creations are children, healers, or priests, potent and ineffable energies can be stirred on an intuitive, non-rational level. Sand opens the door to the unconscious world. Sand is impressionable, mutable, and impermanent. We can "...see a World in a grain of Sand" as Blake wrote in Auguries to Innocence.
Using Sandplay in analysis, I like to emphasize the spontaneous and dynamic qualities of the creative experience itself. The essence of sandplay is non-verbal and symbolic. In what Dora Kalff (the founding mother of Sand Play) called the "free and protected place" provided by the tray and the relationship with the analyst, the analysand plays with sand and miniatures over a period of time, constructing concrete manifestations of their inner world. When energies in the form of "living symbols" are touched upon in the personal and collective unconscious, healing can happen spontaneously within a person at an unconscious level. As a more harmonious relationship between the conscious and the unconscious develops, the ego is restructured and strengthened. I experience Sandplay as a potent tool in my analytical tool box. Sandplay may open us to re-experience pre-verbal and non-verbal states. The elemental flow and balance that is created in the tray mirrors processes in the psyche as well as in the natural world.
Sandplay's efficacy comes from creating the sand picture itself, as a form of active imagination, not in focusing on cognitive processing or on the completed production. Sandplay pictures are generally not interpreted while a process is going on so that the maker can stay close to the living experience in their body and imagination. The analyst is a witness. In the midst of the thrust and rush towards the future, the simplicity and depth of sandplay may help it maintain its integrity as a place of sanctuary and healing.
Reference:
Sandner, Donald (1991). Navaho Symbols of Healing. Rochester: Healing Arts Press.
Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Volume 6, Number 1, 1977.
