What is Healing Expression?
Healing Expression is the integrative therapeutic work that I offer to clients. It includes Sandplay Therapy, Expressive Art, and Body/Soul work. Healing expressions are witnessed and assisted by me with direct participation when that is useful. They are interwoven with dialogue (i.e., "talk" therapy) in a therapeutic process. Clients are never forced or pressured to use one of these expressive techniques. When invited, they may always decline. Healing Expression is not about being artistic in any way. One does not need artistic gifts to benefit from Healing Expression. The activities of Healing Expression are helpful to meeting goals for healing of emotional wounds and transformation of quality of life.

What is Sandplay Therapy?
Sandplay Therapy is an expressive technique that allows a sandplayer to use small trays of sand and miniature objects to represent ideas, feelings, and questions. Sandplay is helpful for all ages. The sand may be used alone or with objects, silently or with dialogue. The sandplay room contains hundreds of objects that represent the world of nature, myth, humanity, inner and outer space, spirituality, everyday life, etc. The scene created by a sandplayer is not interpreted by me. Instead I share in the experience by observing, participating in any dialogue, helping as needed, and recording via photography. Generally, sandplay is a process–a sequence of scenes created over time along with other activities of therapy such as dialogue, expressive art, movement, and voice work.

The photo below shows a scene example. It was not created by a client in therapy. It was created for instructional purposes. Client scenes are held in confidence as is all therapeutic experience. Actual sandscenes created in therapy are varied. No two are ever alike. The goal is not a "pretty" scene, but an expressive scene that satisfies the maker. There is no right or wrong way in sandplay.

What is Expressive Art?
Expressive art is a means of expressing feelings, ideas, and questions with or without words. It may be helpful in therapy by allowing the creator to clarify and/or change personal experience. In the art room are supplies for painting, drawing, sculpting, and making collage. The resulting creations are not interpreted by me. Rather, we engage in dialogue with the creation and each other to discover its message. I record the creation via photography to preserve the image for future reference as some creations are fragile or may later be transformed in further process. Creations are held confidential.

What is Body/Soul Healing Expression?
Body/Soul Healing Expression is my interpretation of the work of Jungian analyst Marion Woodman and her colleagues, Mary Hamilton and Ann Skinner, with whom I trained. It integrates dreamwork, movement, and voice expression to tap the deep inner wisdom of the psyche for healing and change.

Dreamwork explores the dreams the psyche gives each night as teaching, comfort, challenge, and creative inspiration. In dreamwork we review the dream in detail, explore the dreamer's associations to key images and characters, and sometimes, further the dream through active imagination. Active imagination may use sandplay, expressive art, movement, vocalizations, and dialogue to elucidate the images and characters of the dream. Movement is using the body in space to express feelings, ideas, and energies. Through movement, large muscles, small muscles, the limbs and sections of the torso may be isolated or combined to create an expression. The movement may use music or sound as a catalyst. It may resemble dance, pantomime, or abstract expression. Levels include sitting, standing, and reclining on sofa or floor. Voice expression uses the sounds of words, songs, and unformed vocalizations to give expression to feelings, ideas, and energies. It may be used independently or in conjunction with movement and expressive art to assist in clarifying feelings or ideas and in expressing energies that may be causing physical and emotional discomfort.

What is "talk therapy"?
"Talk therapy" is the dialogue between a client and me in which a relationship is developed and through which the processes of healing expression are negotiated. It is a dynamic exchange based in the client's ideas, feelings, questions, and other verbal expressions and my responses and other communications. The "talk" is like the roots of the therapy tree that support growth, blossoming, and harvest time and are grounded and stable in the earth.

Jungian Definitions &
a guide to locating symbols and symbolic expreience