© 2017 Sandplay Therapists of America/Journal of Sandplay Therapy

Virginia Bunnell (Bunnie) Graham is a Certified Sandplay Therapy Teaching Member of Sandplay Therapists of America (STA) and the International Society for Sandplay Therapy (ISST).

Barbara McCoard is a Jungian-oriented psychiatrist and Associate Member of Sandplay Therapists of America who co-authored the book “Sandplay: Silent Workshop of the Psyche” with STA founder Kay Bradway. PAINTINGS (pp. 4-8) © by Liana C. Kornfield.

REFLECTIONS: BOOKS & EVENTS JOURNAL OF

SANDPLAY

THERAPY® VOLUME 26

Number 1

© 2017

CONNECTING BODY, MIND & SPIRIT THROUGH SANDPLAY REFLECTIONS ON THE STA CONFERENCE

JUNE 2-5, 2016, CHICAGO

Virginia Graham & Barbara McCoard Daytona Beach, Florida, USA & Sebastopol, California, USA

Over 200 participants and presenters gathered from all over the world at last year’s Sandplay Therapists of America conference in Chicago. The hotel’s welcome gift of a warm chocolate chip cookie helped create an initial atmosphere of friendly camaraderie. The STA Program Committee provided us with a comfortable, protected container, and the many speakers offered a rich panoply of presentations. And there was plenty of freedom to move at our own pace and choose among them, in a collegial atmosphere of acceptance and good will.

***

CONFERENCE THEME AND LOGO

The conference’s main theme--connecting the opposites of body and spirit--arose initially out of a quote from Jung. “The secret is not hidden in the top, but in the roots of the tree. In psychological terms, this would mean that the self has its roots in the body” (1967, par.242).

Dyane Sherwood designed an elegant logo for the conference that illustrated this theme. Enclosed in an oval, two identical yet opposite trees (one black, the other white) are rooted in the earth. A luminous full moon

rises above them, containing a golden branch; it both unites the opposites of earth and sky and, at the same time, transcends them.

Jung wrote a major essay on this mediating force in the psyche that exists between the opposites, when they are both held in consciousness (1958). He called this force the transcendent function, and also described how it works in many other places in his writings:

Out of [the] collision of opposites the unconscious psyche always creates a third thing of an irrational nature, which the conscious mind neither expects nor understands (1940, par.285). The raw material shaped by thesis and antithesis, and in the shaping of which the opposites are united, is the living symbol (1921, par.828). The standstill is overcome and life can flow on with renewed power towards new goals (1921, par.827).

Many of the conference presenters spoke about different ways to hold these opposites together, until this transcendent third thing emerges and surprises us with a creative new perspective.

STA President Jill Kaplan warmly welcomed us and advised us to tend to our own inner calm and protect ourselves from being overly inundated by the rich multiplicity of offerings. I regret I was not able to participate in all of them! But here are a few highlights from the four keynote speakers, as well as from a couple of the other presentations that I was able to attend.

Martin Kalff said, “Sandplay brought the body to Jungian psychology.” When he looks at a sandtray he asks, “What does my animal see in these trays?” For him, animals unite the opposites of instinctual embodied presence and symbolic meaning. Today his Buddhist practice features meditating with actual physical animals. He showed a captivating picture of himself sitting in quiet spiritual contemplation beside a big pink pig, both well grounded on the good Swiss earth!

Martin Kalff

Denise Ramos suggested that sometimes our bodies create physical pain as an attempt to protect us from directly experiencing deep, even more painful feelings. Sandplay, with its symbolic figures, can help transform the client’s preoccupation with the concrete, somatic pole and bring in more awareness of the other psychological, symbolic pole. Then some of the feelings expressed by the symptom can become more conscious and available, and the client can begin to integrate them for their healing.

Lorraine Freedle showed a moving case of a client who did use sandplay figures to represent his physical pains and fears. She then reviewed some of the contemporary neuroscience research that shows how the brain itself can actually manifest physical changes in response to the concrete yet symbolic work in the tray.

Maria Chiaia and Lauren Cunningham led an experiential art workshop centered around the ancient symbol of the mandorla. The mandorla appears as the almond shape between two intersecting circles. It depicts another form of the opposites coming together to create a space where a third thing, a surprising new image, can sometimes appear.

Dyane Sherwood showed glorious slides of Renaissance alchemical paintings (Henderson & Sherwood, 2003). She interpreted their paradoxical imagery as symbolizing the value of the body as the very vessel of transformation, instead of being nothing but base matter that must be redeemed by spirit. She reminded us of another Jung quote, “Without the soul the body is dead, and without the body the soul is unreal” (1945/1954, par.316).

On the last day, Judy Zappacosta celebrated embodied consciousness, spirit animating matter, with her Body-Soul movements, once again uniting these opposites as we danced our container closed.

BUILDING OUR COLLECTIONS

Shopping therapy was available throughout the conference, both at the vendors’ tables and in the silent auction room. During the breaks we could hunt for figures that resonated with our delight and sometimes also with our darker emotions. Choice member-donated miniatures were sold to benefit the Journal of Sandplay Therapy. Bidding was silent but wildly competitive by closing time.

Anne Webb, Silent Auction Chair

COMMUNITY ART PROJECT

A tree wearing a hand-knitted rainbow-colored cozy stood in the common area throughout the meeting. We were invited to use the colored paper and yarn that were provided to express memories of what had initially brought us into the sandplay world, and reflections on where we might be headed next. By the end of the conference the tree was fully foliated and had become itself, like the conference logo, a tangible symbol of the roots and shoots that make up our sandplay community.

***

On the last day, the whole group seemed synchronized in its emotions. A collective “Awww!” or “Ohhhh!” of recognition arose like a Greek chorus in response to the images being shown on the screen. And then it was time to close the conference container and travel home, each of us carrying with us the essence of what we had distilled from all the many presentations. New ideas, old connections, fresh theories, and practiced interventions infused us as we returned with renewed enthusiasm to our sandplay, art, and play therapy practices in consulting rooms around the globe.

REFERENCES

Henderson, J.L. and Sherwood, D.N. (2003). Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis. New York: Routledge.

Jung, C.G. (1921). "Definitions." Collected Works 6. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1940). “The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” Collected Works 9.i. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1945/1954). “The Philosophical Tree.” Collected Works 13. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1958). “The Transcendent Function.” Collected Works 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1967). “Alchemical Studies.” Collected Works 13. Being Held II © Liana Kornfield Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Being Held © Liana Chenoweth Kornfield

Virginia Bunnell “Bunnie” Graham, PhD, ATR-BC, CST-T, is a Board Certified Registered Art Therapist, Certified Sandplay Therapist-Teacher and a certified Spiritual Director. She is a teaching member of Sandplay Therapists of America (STA) and the International Society for Sandplay Therapy (ISST). Her doctoral dissertation in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute explored experiences of the numinous in sandplay therapy. Dr. Graham’s most recent article “Dreaming the Dream Onward” was published in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy (2016). She presented Sandplay as Holy Ground: Embodying the sacred at the 5/29/13 STA Assembly in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Graham is particularly interested in working with persons in midlife to whom she offers sandplay, active imagination, and dream work. Dr. Graham maintains a private practice at The Presbyterian Counseling Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA. CORRESPONDENCE: Bunnie@PresbyterianCounseling.com

Barbara McCoard, MD, is a Jungian-oriented psychiatrist and psychotherapist and an Associate Member of STA. She has been seeing patients for over 40 years; currently she has a private practice in Sebastopol, California. In college, she majored in Comparative and English Literature, learning how to analyze and write papers about human stories and imagery. As a psychiatrist, she worked initially in a jail, ER’s, and psych wards, and saw a wide range of patients with severe “mental illness,’’ whose egos had been swept away by the destructive side of the unconscious. She became steeped in Jungian psychology, studying with senior “elders” at the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco as well as in STA/ ISST. She has also been certified in Embodied Imagination, Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, and Healing Shame, and will be certified in Don Kalsched’s “Trauma and the Soul” program next year. In addition to her clinical practice, she has worked with many sandplay therapists as an “editorial consultant,” teaching them how to write or re-write their symbols’ papers or case studies for presentation at STA meetings or publication in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy. She has also co-authored with Kay Bradway a now classic book called Sandplay-- Silent Workshop of the Psyche.

Pearl of Great Price - Cross of the East © Liana Chenoweth Kornfield

About the artist

Liana Chenoweth Kornfield, MA, AIWP, CST-T, is an artist, writer and certified Teaching Member of Sandplay Therapists of America and the International Society for Sandplay Therapy. She works primarily in watercolor and some mixed media. Her paintings have been published in books and journals and shown in numerous galleries. Liana Kornfield works with imagery and healing symbols arising from dreams and the archetypal depths, active imagination and daily life encounters. She writes: “With every painting I embark upon a journey that leads inevitably into the dark and unknown. I have come to trust and love this luminous darkness, because it is a perpetual source of new life and new courage. I hold and nurture each image as if it were a child, until it is old enough to enter the world of consciousness and speak in the sacred language of all of Earth’s life forms.” CORRESPONDENCE: lkornfield@aol.com Coyote Cross © Liana Chenoweth Kornfield

Cross of the West © Liana Chenoweth Kornfield CONNECTING BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT THROUGH SANDPLAY:

REFLECTIONS ON THE STA CONFERENCE

Virginia Graham and Barbara McCoard Daytona Beach, Florida, USA & Sebastopol, California, USA

KEY WORDS: Sandplay Therapy, conference, STA, Chicago, body, mind, spirit, Reflections:

Books and Events. ABSTRACT: The authors reflect on the STA Conference “Connecting Body, Mind and Spirit

Through Sandplay,” June 2-5, 2016, Chicago.