SANDTRAY...
A note on sandtray...
I learned about sandtray as a modality to add to my tool kit as an art therapist at St.Jude's Ranch for Children back in the summer of 1992. I was in graduate school at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in their Masters program for Art Therapy. I applied for a paid summer internship, with Dr. Elizabeth Blake, a practicing Art Therapist and Sandtray Therapist who was the Clinical Director at St. Jude's, and was accepted.
This began my journey into the world of sandtray. I have come a long distance as I have apprenticed and worked as a sandtray therapist in a variety of capacities ever since, including training other therapists. I have implemented sandtray programs in a variety of agencies with a variety of populations, including my own private practice and extended my use of my sandtray skills to workshops, classes and retreats here on the Big Island of Hawai'i.
It is 2020 and we on the planet are all in a retreat of sorts and I am once again pausing to review my adventure and my experiences as a sandtray therapist, group facilitator and artist. I have worked with my large sandtray collection since 1992 when my 1st sandtray was built by the generous carpenter from St.Jude's Ranch. I feel so blessed to have been introduced to sandtray from many different perspectives and theories and by so many talented practitioners.
I have been looking at where my career is taking me and feeling so many feelings about my sandtray collection and sandtrays, which hold so much mana as Hawaiians would say, prana, chi, life force energy... as one could imagine having had people of all ages and backgrounds and of so many places on the planet... in my sandtrays over 28 delicious years!
I can feel the sweetness of my sandtrays and their sand, my collection that includes 7 handmade trays, 6 of which my carpenter bee hu-bee built for me. And then there are the objects that many people have adopted as their personal symbolic vocabulary over the years. "Old Standards" as one of my clients calls them. They still, after 28 years, speak to me in their voices I have given them, cranky, seemingly fogotten after not being used in a long time... or excited to be considered V.I.P.'s among the thousands of objects.
And there are those few that are my sage, wise figures that I use to bless every sandtray office I have ever opened. And the Angel that fell & broke during a large earthquake that I feel took the fall for all the other objects that stayed put on their shelves! Her wings broke off and I glued them back on as her story and meaning grew to include this piece.
During the last few years I have been looking at closing my sandtray services and focusing primarily on painting my mixed media large Medicine Prayer Paintings. I have felt the need to go inward and bee alone. Bee Quiet. Connect deeper with my own mystical bee-ingness. And I have.
The quarantine pushed me further in and I am surfacing now, offering my sandtray novel again, my tribute to my Love Ladies who were and are so much a part of my upbringing as a sandtray facilitator. I have taken their words to heart, even entertained opening a school here in Hawai'i for alternative sandtray facilitators, for those square peg sandtray facilitators who just do not fit in completely to the round holes of Sandtray and Sandplay. I am excited about who I bee-came though my personal sandtray journey and I do not fit into the world of sandtray as it appears now... And I know my creator made me this way and at 50 years old I am at peace with that. I have been responsible, creative, I have thought outside the sandtray box, I have helped many and been so grateful to have been given the honor to learn from my clients who have trusted me with their sacred inside worlds.
I do not know what the future holds for me as a sandtray facilitator but I do know I am better for sandtray... I have built many worlds with many holders and broken rules and honored structure... and lived a bee-youtiful life as a sandtray facilitator. I have made my mentors proud and respectfully passed on what they freely gave me.
I have come a long way, bay-bee! And I am buzzing with excitement to see where I will fly!
I hope you enjoy my book, Love Ladies, as it was written over 7 years and, through a lifetime with mystical human bee-ings! I am now blessed to share it with other mystical human bee-ings who are ALSO in the Sandtray/Sandplay worlds!
May Peace Bee with You ALL and May You Thrive in Your Hives!
Much Aloha & Bee Well, Selvy
