09/23/2026
Beyond Words: Sand Tray Therapy
All three therapists at Reviving the Roots Counseling have formal training in Sand Tray Therapy and integrate it into sessions with clients.
What is Sand Tray Therapy?
Sand tray is an expressive therapeutic modality that uses a tray of sand along with miniatures, objects, and symbols to help clients explore and communicate internal experiences that aren't always easy to put into words. It draws on projective, symbolic work and is especially useful for material that feels emotionally complex, trauma- or attachment-related, or held more as a felt sense than a clear story.
Clients build a scene, choose figures, arrange objects, create boundaries, or simply notice what they're drawn toward, and the therapist follows their lead with curiosity rather than interpretation. The tray becomes a container for what's happening internally, offering another way in when conversation alone reaches its limits.
What Tulsi noticed from the inside: Part of the training involved each therapist building their own tray, not just facilitating them. Tulsi Andrews, one of the practice's therapists, went into hers with a conscious intention to "keep it safe" - choosing neutral, tidy imagery. Even so, she noticed the tray still ended up reflecting whatever was actually going on in her internal world. The unconscious material found its way in regardless of the story she was telling herself about what she was building. It's a pretty direct, embodied illustration of why this modality works: the symbolic process bypasses the same verbal defenses and self-editing that show up in talk therapy, whether you're the client or the clinician.
Why the practice offers this: Sand tray isn't a replacement for the relational, trauma-informed work the team already does; it's another tool within it. In the sessions run so far, clients have accessed and externalized material more quickly than talk alone tends to allow, discovering meaning in their own creation rather than having it handed to them.
Who it's for? Really, anyone open to trying this approach. Whether it involves trauma, attachment patterns, grief, or simply feeling stuck putting certain experiences into words, any of the therapists at Reviving the Roots Counseling can bring sand tray into a client's sessions.
If you're curious whether sand tray might be a fit for your work together, bring it up at your next session or reach out - the team is happy to talk through what it can look like.
