How Does the Sand Tray Help Clients in Play Therapy?
Cathi Spooner 
Ever feel like your clients are trying to move forward but something beneath the surface keeps pulling them back? Like an engine with misfiring spark plugs, they might look okay from the outside—but internally, something just isn’t clicking.
That’s how I think about healing in play therapy.
Especially when we’re using sand tray therapy through a neuroscience and attachment lens, we’re not just facilitating play. We’re working under the hood—unclogging those circuits, reworking how memories are wired, and supporting neural integration so clients can operate at full capacity.
In this post, I’m sharing three powerful ways the sand tray making process supports healing, grounded in neuroscience and attachment theory.
1. Sand Tray Gives Voice to What the Brain Can’t Explain
Some experiences live deep in the nervous system—below the level of words or logic. These are implicit memories: sensations, emotions, and body responses stored in the lower brain regions that may not be fully integrated.
When clients create a scene in the sand tray, they’re tapping into this implicit world. The symbols and sensory experience of the sand help externalize feelings and beliefs that the client might not even consciously understand yet. These symbolic expressions give play therapists an invaluable window into what’s happening beneath the surface.
Sand tray offers a safe medium for clients to "speak" their inner world—even when language falls short.
2. Co-Regulation Happens in the Sand
The sand tray process isn’t just symbolic—it’s relational.
As play therapists, our regulated presence helps the client’s nervous system begin to shift. Think of it like jumpstarting a battery: when we hold space in a calm, attuned way, our clients begin to access the safety they need to rework stored emotional pain.
When families or children build scenes in the sand, they’re not doing it in isolation. They’re doing it in relationship—with us. That co-regulation is what makes play therapy different from traditional talk therapy. It’s not just about what they create; it’s about how they feel while they create it—and who’s with them as they do.
Through co-regulation, clients experience being seen, soothed, and safe—laying the foundation for long-term emotional repair.
3. Sand Tray Accesses and Rewires Implicit Experiences
Let’s go back to the car metaphor. If neural integration is like a well-tuned engine, trauma is what clogs the filters, scrambles the signals, or shuts down circuits completely. What’s needed isn’t just talk—it’s hands-on, sensory-based repair.
Sand tray provides the sensory and symbolic access to help the brain revisit old memories with new wiring. Clients may not need to explain what happened; they can simply show it in the sand. Over time, this rewiring supports more integrated neural functioning, emotional flexibility, and relationship repair.
It’s why I only teach my neuroscience and attachment-based sand tray training in person—because therapists need to feel that process for themselves to fully understand it.
Final Thoughts
Using sand tray through a neuroscience and attachment lens isn’t just about techniques. It’s about understanding the why beneath what we do.
We’re creating conditions for implicit experiences to surface, emotional safety to be felt, and integration to take root—so that our clients can move forward with a new sense of self, safety, and relationship.
If you’re ready to explore this more deeply, I’ve got an in-person training coming up:
Using a Neuroscience and Attachment Lens with Sand Tray in Play Therapy – a 2-day intensive designed to help you experience, learn, and integrate this approach. We do hands-on sand tray work, theory application, and case conceptualization through this lens.
Categories: : Neuroscience of attachment, Play Therapy, Play Therapy Model, Podcast, Sand Tray Therapy
