Course Description

The bihemispheric structure of the brain imposes on clinicians the challenge of therapeutically relating and strategically embracing the full biology of the human mind. For clients with developmental injuries, trauma left them in a constant state of physiological activation while unable to verbally tell their life accounts. Sandtray techniques provide distance and an entrance into the unspoken world that lays beneath the aware and conscious mind. This presentation by Ana M. Gomez, MC, LPC will show how to incorporate Sandtray techniques into the eight phases of EMDR therapy. In addition, it will address how utilizing Sandtray strategies can be a powerful portal into traumatogenic material.

Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be able to describe how to utilize Sandtray strategies to gather client’s history.
2. Participants will be able to describe how to develop resources during preparation phase using the sand tray protocol, including: Safe-calm-happy place, helpers and more.
3. Participants will be able to describe three levels of distance that can be used during processing in the EMDR-Sandtray Protocol.
4. Participants will be able to describe portals that titrate the entrance into the traumatic memory.

Presenter(s)

Ana Gómez, MC, LPC

Ana M Gómez, MC, LPC is the founder and director of the AGATE Institute in Phoenix, AZ. She is an EMDR Institute, and EMDR-IBA trainer of trainers. She is a psychotherapist, author, and an international speaker on the use of EMDR therapy with children and adolescents with complex developmental trauma, generational wounds and dissociation. Ana is the author of EMDR Therapy and Adjunct Approaches with Children: Complex Trauma, Attachment and Dissociation and several books, book chapters and articles on the use of EMDR therapy with children. One of the many programs and protocols Ana has developed is the EMDR-Sandtray Protocol.