When the Sand Stays Silent: Working with Nonverbal Stories

When the Sand Stays Silent: Working with Nonverbal Stories is a trauma-informed training focused on understanding and responding to moments in sand tray and expressive work when clients are quiet, still, or unable to put experiences into words. This training explores how silence, minimal movement, and symbolic absence can reflect dissociation, protective withdrawal, developmental factors, or emerging meaning. Participants learn how to attune to nonverbal communication, pace interventions, and use presence, containment, and subtle expressive strategies to support safety, regulation, and integration across children, adolescents, and adults.

1. Identify clinical meanings of silence and nonverbal expression in sand tray and play therapy.
2. Demonstrate at least three play or sand tray interventions that support nonverbal processing and regulation.
3. Apply developmentally appropriate responses to silence in children and adolescents using trauma-informed play therapy principles.
4. Analyze symbolic absence, stillness, or repetition in sand tray scenes to inform treatment planning.
5. Explain how nonverbal expression and silence function as adaptive trauma responses

My Crossing Paths Training Center has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7253. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. My Crossing Paths Counseling Center is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
My Crossing Paths Training Center is approved by the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy, and Mental Health Counseling. Provider # 50-37274.

My Crossing Paths Training Center has been approved by the Association for Play therapy, APT No. 23-705. Programs that do not qualify for APT credit are clearly identified.

My Crossing Paths Training Center, has been approved as an Association of Social Work Boards Approved Continuing Education (ACE) Provider. ACE provider approval number is 1877. Training that are ACE approved with be identified on the training material with correct CE credit and type.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Julia Knach, My Crossing Paths Counseling Center