Retreat Center

May Retreat

Join our facilitated retreat May 24-26 at Bon Secours in Maryland. We will reflect on ways of being and explore time as it flows through our lives through symbols and story. An option to earn 14 CEs is available.


Sand Scene photo

Intro to Narrative Sand Therapy

Our foundation course begins on March 27 and costs only $395 for five, 3-hour sessions. Join Tim Mewmaw for this exploration of NST. Classes are live and offered virtually mid-day on Wednesdays.


Consultation with Dr. Dee

Consultations with Dr. Dee focus on your interests, questions, exploration of new techniques, reflections on ways to engage your client’s sand scene, and work with just a few symbols. Each consultation is for 90 minutes.

What’s New

What is Narrative Sand Therapy?

Narrative Sand Therapy© (NST) is a symbol-focused therapeutic modality for clients throughout the lifespan and across cultures. A collaborative approach to engage individuals, couples, and groups in a deepening process, narrative symbol engagement emphasizes the importance of symbol voice and dialogue.

Grounded in existential and social construction, the therapist attends with heightened presence, facilitates permission, protection, empowerment, and active imagination. The process validates client experience through metaphor, wonderment, and process hypnosis. 

Based on more than four decades of research, clinician training and feedback, our focus is to support clinical competencies, mindful of scope, to understand and respond to client symbol process and sand scenes.

Rigorous and immersive training for mental health professionals.

Our courses are designed for psychologists, counselors, marriage and family therapists, and social workers and are built from research-based and clearly articulated core clinical competencies.

Ask Dr. Dee

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The Poetics of Symbols in Sand

by Dr. Dee Preston-Dillon

Image and Symbol are the third presence in the consulting room.

When we are fully present to the image, the symbol, the metaphor,
When we Activate Imagination,
We become fully present to Existential Experience,
We Immerse and Encounter 
Intersubjective Dialogue,
We open a Way to Transformation, Validation,
Meaning-Making

Competencies . . .

It is not the Approach we use with Symbols in Sand,
It is not how many symbols we have,
It is how we Understand and Respond,
How we handle Depth, how we Validate, how we are Present,
How we Resonate, balancing Silence with Voice and Wonderment,
It is how we Witness Meaning-Making,
For clients, their story, and Symbols in the Sand

Immersed in the I-Thou Encounter . . .

Grounded in Interpersonal – Intersubjective Meaning-Making,
We Witness in Silence . . .
Engage in Wonderment 
With Invitation . . .
Innovation-in-the-moment
Through Collaborative Active Imagination . . . 
Symbols have Voice to tell their Stories,
We Validate, Honor, and Pace
Freeing clients to Encounter, Reclaim, Recover,
Rejuvenate

Narrative Sand Therapy. . .

Wherein Cultural Worlds Come Alive . . .
Landscapes fill with Myths, Symbols, Ritual, History . . .
A Safe Space, where Being . . . becomes Visible
We attend Social-Cultural-Political Constructions . . .
Clients . . .
Explore . . .
Reflect . . .
Give Voice
Reclaim Identity, Freedom, Connection, Power

Narrative Sand Therapy. . .
A Hermeneutic Circle

Depth, Discernment, Discovery
Revealed through
Symbol, Story, Silence . . .
we
Attend, Amplify, Activate Imagination
Wonderment . . .