The 'Safe and Sheltered Space' of Sandplay

The 'Safe and Sheltered Space' of Sandplay

Many sandplay students rightly concentrate on learning all that they can about understanding and interpreting sandplay pictures. However, this may lead them to neglect the importance of the therapeutic frame with in which the sandplay takes place. Many of us will have visited art galleries where we admired interesting and beautiful paintings. Chances are we did not even notice that they were framed. In fact, the frame of a painting can subtly enhance and complement the picture, or utterly distract, conflict and even destroy the beauty of the image. Of course, in sand play 1 am not talking about a literal frame, but rather a symbolic one. It is the container in which internal exploration and growth can safely take place. This container does not happen magically by itself we have to consciously cultivated and craft the container for our work. In this paper 1 will explore material that will hopefully make sandplay students and practitioners more conscious of a particular aspect of the therapeutic frame or container.