Back to Earth:

Sandtray Training Retreat

Southern Highlands, NSW

6th-9th February, 2025

Four Day Professional Development Training

Rural and remote scholarship opportunity

Do you want a restorative, educative and inspiring start to 2025

to reset for the year ahead?

This four-day professional development retreat in the picturesque Southern Highlands, offers you a calm and welcoming space to slow down, and learn and practice sandtray methods to enrich your counselling practice.

Our gentle practices invite you into deeper connection with yourself, your work and the earth. This retreat is a chance to revisit yourself in new and sustaining ways through sandtray, nature-based practices, reflective writing, and other creativity exercises. No prior skill or experience is needed to attend.

Learn and practice sandtray and other creative therapy processes that can invite insight and change to sustain yourself and others. Gain 20 CPD Certificate hours

From the moment you enter the winding drive, you begin to feel renewed, refreshed and inspired. Set within acres of trees on this property in the Southern Highlands, NSW, the tranquil Retreat Centre provides the space you need to relax and learn. Supported and practical training activities will allow you to deepen your therapeutic work and self-care practices.

You will have the opportunity to:

Relax, restore and reset in a beautiful, nature-filled retreat centre
Learn and practice skills in Sandtray Therapy
Identify the theory and evidence for Sandtray Therapy
Integrate the use of creative therapies into counselling
Experience therapeutic uses of Sandtray and Nature-Based Practices
Consider practical ways to build an appropriate symbol collection
Connect with like-minded colleagues
Work in the safety and support of a small group

Dates

6th - 9th February, 2025

Location

The Hermitage

843 Old South Road
Mittagong NSW
AUSTRALIA

Your Retreat Facilitator

Jacki Short

Jacki is the Owner and Director of Sydney Centre for Creative Change. She is a registered counselling psychologist who has been facilitating retreats and experiential training workshops for helping professionals for over 25 years. Using sandtrays, reflective writing, art, and other creative processes, she invites new perspectives, important rememberings and inspiration for renewal and change.

She believes in the power of metaphor and symbols to help express feelings and experiences that might otherwise be too hard to express.

What's Included:

Teaching - 4 day program from 3 pm Thursday 6^th to 12.30pm Sunday 9^th February, 2025
Three nights accommodation at the Hermitage from Thursday 6th – Saturday 8^th February, 2025
Daily Meditation or Yoga Practice
All meals from dinner Thursday 6^th February 12.30pm until lunch Sunday 9^th February 1.30pm.
The beauty and bush land of the Southern Highlands
20 Professional Development Hours
Certificate of Attendance
GST
Excludes flights and transfers.

Learning Overview

Sandtray therapy allows for the projective expression of one's personal inner world. Learn how to respectfully invite the creation of miniature scenes and stories that help clients see, know and change. Learn the fundamental theoretical and methodological concepts in the practice of symbols and sandtrays. It will include an overview of the major theoretical influences in this field, the existing evidence base supporting it and a review of contemporary applications. The focus of this training retreat will be experiential and practical sandtray work using both non-directive and directive methods. Elements of ecotherapy principles will also be woven into practice exercises.

Accommodation

Accommodation is included for the nights of the retreat with private, single, ensuited rooms offering breathtaking views of the property.

Meals

The 3 daily, homemade meals are not only delicious and generous in portion, but abundant in freshness and variety. The Hermitage caters for the following dietary requirements; lactose intolerant, gluten free and vegetarian meals.

Who Should Attend?

Psychologists, social workers, counsellors, therapists, all those working in therapeutic roles.

Level of Learning

Foundational. This training is targeted both to those new to the topic of sandtray therapy and those with some experience seeking to deepen their knowledge.

Feedback from Previous Sandtray Training Participants

Profound!

Professional, experiential, engaging, knowledgeable and lots of fun!

Value beyond anything I could anticipate!

Thank You - What a wonderful experience, I feel more confident to use Sandtrays!

Cost