I am Roxanne Rae (LCSW, BCD), and I welcome you to my website. Here I share my extensive experience and knowledge about Expressive Arts and Play Therapy with adults and children.

I grew up in a family that noticed and talked about our dreams at the family breakfast table. We would try to decipher what they meant to us. To me, creating a Sandtray is like a living dream.

I would come to do Sandtray thinking, “no problem, just see what happens,” and the way the work was processed was always relevant to my life. Sometimes I was floored as we processed my sand world, because it showed me exactly what I was going through inside of me but didn’t know it until I actually saw it in the sand, and then felt the experience resonate deeply within my life.

Sometimes I’d start working on something that was a global issue, and through our work together discover a profoundly personal connection that was useful. At times, I’d create my sense of feeling stuck about a situation in my world. As we went through the Sandtray process together, I would eventually find a way out or through my dilemma. Then Roxanne could help me apply my Sandtray work to my everyday life situation in a practical way.

I have discovered that Sandtray work enables me to go beneath my words to what is real inside me. I’m smart and can easily use words to hide in—both from others and from myself.

Sometimes I need to move sand and see things “out there” in the Sandtray before I can really understand what’s going on with me.

When the Sandtray option was introduced to me, I rejected it. Later, I decided to try it. I was hesitant and skeptical that it would do anything to help me, but I decided to give it a shot out of curiosity. It was a foreign idea – playing with miniatures and sand as an adult. How would that help ME?

I’m so glad that I took the chance. I was delighted to discover the depth of its healing. The Sandtray opened a whole new door of possibilities. I was able to tap into a new level of innate guidance that I can’t access by other means. Instead of thinking and talking about my issues, I could drop into deeper insights of authentic emotional intelligence. The results then carried over into my day-to-day life.

I continued to use the image resources afterward, receiving “ahas” every time. Each time I had a new Sandtray session, doors opened to profound surprises. To be honest, I still hold symbols in my consciousness from past Sandtray sessions as far back as five years ago. They gave me self-understanding on a core level. Even now, when I recall some of the trays, it taps me into grounded strength and self-awareness. 

A vast array of fun objects are available for hundreds and hundreds of options for play. With so many creative delights of visual representation, the sky’s the limit for learning! Roxanne uses her powerful skill in guiding the Sandtray process. She first steps back to let my own wisdom create the scenes. For me, that stage involves turning off my rational thinking as I choose and arrange the objects based on instinct. Her presence supports me dropping into a level of trust and surrender to my own wisdom. In later stages, she then uses her incredible innate ability to reflect and ask questions as we explore meanings of the world. I am empowered to discover insights of learning, as doors open for me from our dialogue. We may look at the objects and the setup of my tray with open curiosity. I am guided to connect the dots to see the value of what my subconscious is telling me. The subsequent dialogue leads to deep exploration, often leading to epiphanies. I’ve found life-changing value using Sandtray that I’ll continue to carry with me for years to come.

Some of the sand trays were sad. Yet to see scary past secrets and ,make connections was such a relief. I feel free to move on now.

I’ve been in traditional talk therapy, off and on, for 35 years. Once, I had the opportunity to experience a Sandtray session. It was the most powerful growth experience I have ever had.

I walked into the room filled with small objects of many kinds. I was asked to go around the room and choose whatever spoke to me and did so in a rather “free-floating” manner. Then I placed my items in the sand. What I recall most vividly was what emerged from the session, which was my life as depicted in the sand. This was an eye-opening visual for me. What  I saw was that I had created my life as the person who felt the need to take care of everything, even though that did not bring me joy or pleasure. I was able to literally see the person that I would rather be, physically and emotionally, and experience contrast between what I had formed my life to be and what I wanted it to be. 

I’ve thought about that single Sandtray experience many times. I believe that part of the reason this experience was so helpful for me was that I’m a “visual processor” rather than a “verbal processor.”