A lovely lovely day

Today was the first day of a two day course I am on which is led by Dr Celia who has flown over from South Africa, she is well known in the world of Sandplay and works with the South African Sandplay Therapy Association. I've never done any training like this before as I see myself as very much a cognitive focused applied psychologist and this, although not a therapy in a strict sense, feels very therapeutic. The amazing thing is I felt much less out of my comfort zone than I anticipated!

I am learning about how to use Sandplay in Education and I can already see that some of my summer will be taken up in re-familiarising myself with the work of Carl Jung.

We had to participate in role play in the afternoon session (it was all rather serious) being client and practitioner. I quite enjoyed being practitioner and when it was my turn to be the client I loved picking the items to place in my tray. We walked around a large room selecting things that appealed to us (from a choice of thousands of items such as shells, pebbles, gems, figures, all kinds of animals, vegetation, architecture, religious and spiritual objects, cartoon characters, monsters, coffins, the list goes on . . .  and we then placed them in the sand and moved and moulded the sand to tell a story. I felt like I was 8 years old again when I was the client (really I did! It was very relaxing) and although I had no story planned I just placed items as I wanted and the story kind of came naturally afterwards.

I am not sure what my subconscious was trying to say but I think I was the glittery deer looking through the magnifying glass at a crystal heart on a mound at the other, opposite corner of the tray. I really wanted to place a light source behind the heart so it would shine rainbow colours like a prism across the tray, falling on all the characters.

I was fascinated on reflecting afterwards that I had inadvertently created my version of a caduceus symbol, which I associate with medicine and pharmacy (I'm not sure that that is an accurate iconic association). The one thing that has caused me stress very recently is an issue with ordering and collecting some medicine from a pharmacy and I was worried the course may not finish in time for me to collect some overdue medicine, so maybe my subconscious was really speaking up!

All the dolls have a good view of the heart but the deer gets a beautiful magnified view of the heart because of the position. The scarab was chosen because of it's symbolism as an Egyptian charm, the driftwood for it's beauty and nature, the toadstools because they are pretty in colour and design. The fluffy kiwi was selected because I thought it was very lovely to look at and I didn't want anyone else to have it but as it felt surplus to my off the cuff 'story' I hid it behind the driftwood, it would have been selfish to leave it out. I'm sure Carl Jung, if he were still alive, would have a field day with this!

Looking forward to day two tomorrow

A very very busy week!!!