Eyes-on-Trays

Sand therapy is a highly visual therapeutic intervention modality. The client uses miniature figures, sand, and perhaps water to create a scene in the tray. As most mental health practitioners are trained in verbal-dependent therapies, how does the new sand therapist make the shift to understanding client-created scenes in the tray? This article suggests that the fields of Visual Literacy (Debes, 1968) and Visual Thinking Strategies (Housen, 1983; Yenawine, 2013) can inform sand therapy educators, trainers, and supervisors in this vital area. Eyes-on-trays, an adaptation of Housen's eyes-on-canvas, is offered as a new byword for the importance of developing visual literacy in sand therapists.