Sand Tray Figurines: What They Mean and How Therapists Use Them
Sand tray figurines are the miniature objects — people, animals, buildings, and symbolic items — that a client arranges in a tray of sand to represent their inner experience nonverbally. Therapists don’t decode individual figurines like a dictionary; they pay attention to the whole scene, the choices made, and the story that unfolds around it.
Introduction
A child who won’t talk about what happened at home will sometimes build it instead — a fenced-in house, a lone animal in the corner, a bridge that goes nowhere. That’s the basic idea behind sand tray figurines: small toys and symbolic objects that let a person show what’s happening inside them, rather than explain it out loud. Therapists have used this method for nearly a century, but it’s often misunderstood as a kind of fortune-telling with toys. It isn’t. This guide covers what sand tray figurines actually are, how they’re chosen and organized, what the current research says about their effectiveness, and why the popular “every figurine has a fixed meaning” idea oversimplifies how the technique really works.
What Are Sand Tray Figurines?
Sand tray figurines are the miniature people, animals, buildings, vehicles, and symbolic objects a client selects and places in a shallow tray of sand during a therapy session. The client builds a scene — sometimes a whole world — using whichever figurines feel right, and the therapist observes rather than directs.
The technique traces back to British pediatrician Margaret Lowenfeld, who in the 1920s and ’30s developed what she called the “World Technique” to study how children’s minds worked as they arranged toys in sand out of her work with Margaret Lowenfeld, British child psychiatrist and developer of the World Technique and her own analytic training. Jungian analyst Dora Kalff later trained with Lowenfeld and rebuilt the method around Carl Jung’s psychology, coining the term “Sandplay” to distinguish her more interpretive, symbol-focused approach from Lowenfeld’s original observational one The word ‘Sandplay’ was coined for therapeutic use in the late 1950s by the founder of Jungian Sandplay, Dora Kalff. She used this term to distinguish her method from the sand tray methods of others, including the ‘World Technique’ of Margaret Lowenfeld. Today, “sand tray therapy” is often used as an umbrella term covering both traditions, while “sandplay” more specifically refers to Kalff’s Jungian approach.
Composite illustration: A therapist working with a 9-year-old after a divorce might offer no instructions beyond “build whatever you want in the sand.” Over several sessions, the child might repeatedly place a wall between two figures, then eventually removes it — a shift the therapist notes but doesn’t ask the child to explain outright.
The Psychology Behind Why Figurines Work
The core mechanism is externalization: turning an internal, hard-to-articulate experience into something physical you can look at, rearrange, and eventually make sense of. This matters most for people — especially children — who don’t yet have the vocabulary or emotional distance to talk directly about distress.
Kalff’s central concept was the “free and protected space,” an environment safe enough that a person’s own capacity for psychological repair can activate without pressure to perform or explain Kalff’s vision for Sandplay was that the therapist must create a “free and protected space,” an environment where there is psychological freedom for self-expression. In this context, Kalff believed, the patient’s creative capacity for change is activated, protected, and allowed to grow in the presence of the therapist. In practice, this means the figurines aren’t the therapeutic ingredient by themselves — the safety of the space and the pace the client sets matter just as much.
How Sand Tray Figurines Are Categorized
Most professional sand tray collections are organized by physical category rather than by “meaning,” since the same object can mean different things to different clients. A commonly cited framework groups figurines into a handful of broad categories: animals (wild, domestic, and prehistoric), people of varying ages and occupations, vehicles, natural objects like trees and stones, and explicitly symbolic or spiritual items A sandtray collection should include objects that represent: Animals – wild, domestic, prehistoric, invertebrates; People – different ages, races, cultures, occupations, characters from TV and movies; Vehicles – cars, trucks, boats, planes; Objects from nature – flowers, trees, shells, rocks, stones; Symbolic objects – religious artifacts, symbols of love, life, death.
Some practitioners also sort by the psychological function a figurine tends to serve rather than its physical type — for example, distinguishing nurturing items (families, food, caregiving figures) from protective ones (police, fences, guardian animals) and combative ones (soldiers, dragons, weapons) Nurturing – dolls, baby items, families, houses, food, medical, communication-based; Protective – police, parents, teachers, pets, symbolic animals, superheroes, nature; Combative – soldiers, superheroes, dinosaurs, dragons. This functional lens is useful for clinicians stocking a collection, but it’s descriptive of typical use, not a rulebook for what any one client’s choice means.
Do Specific Figurines Have Fixed Meanings?
This is where a lot of popular content overreaches. Plenty of blog posts present lists like “a bridge means hope” or “a fence means you need boundaries,” as if figurines work like tarot cards. Trained sandplay practitioners are considerably more cautious about this. Even therapists who compile symbolism references for their own reflection caution against taking such lists too literally or asking clients to explain what each object represents, noting that over-relying on a fixed dictionary risks missing what the client is actually communicating.
The clinical literature echoes this caution from the research side: the interpretation of sand pictures remains a debated topic within the mental health community, and interpretation of symbols, figures, or entire scenes by either the therapist or the client may be vague or ambiguous, sometimes leading to the neglect of alternative explanations. In the Kalff tradition specifically, many practitioners are trained to avoid interpreting the tray at all during the process, treating it more like an observed dream than a puzzle to be solved the therapist is not there to interpret any facet of the client’s tray, and understanding the symbols in the tray is not necessary — instead, unconscious material becomes activated while therapist and client connect within the symbolic field. The figurine choice matters far less in isolation than it does as part of the client’s own evolving story across sessions.
What Does Research Say About Effectiveness?
The evidence base has grown substantially in the last decade, though it’s still developing compared to well-established treatments like CBT. A 2024 systematic review of sand tray and sandplay approaches for childhood trauma found a meaningful reduction in post-traumatic, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms across the studies reviewed, along with better treatment adherence among adolescents The results show a significant effect of ST on post-traumatic, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms, as well as on adolescents’ adherence to therapy and on the well-being of children who have suffered collective traumatization. A broader theoretical review has similarly summarized sandplay as an approach with a documented evidence base worth taking seriously alongside more established modalities.
That said, the field’s own researchers are candid about its limitations. A 2026 narrative review found that only 8 of 130 identified studies on pediatric sand-based therapy actually met basic inclusion criteria for peer-reviewed, outcome-measured research, and flagged a near-total absence of research on newer digital sand-therapy tools A total of 130 articles were identified. After screening, eight articles satisfied the inclusion criteria; there were no studies included that used virtual or digital sand-based therapy. Common weaknesses across the literature include small sample sizes, a shortage of randomized controlled trials, and no standardized treatment manual that different studies can be measured against — which makes it hard to compare results across research teams or confirm that improvements come specifically from the figurines-and-sand method rather than general supportive attention. In short: promising, but not yet proven at the level of gold-standard trials.
Who Sand Tray Therapy Is Used With
Sand tray work is most associated with children, largely because it doesn’t require the verbal fluency that talk therapy assumes. But it’s used well beyond that population — with adolescents, adults, couples, and groups, particularly when someone is processing trauma, grief, or experiences that feel too overwhelming to put into words directly. It’s also been used with survivors of natural disasters and displacement, where group sand tray sessions have supported both individual processing and collective coping.
Because interpretation is genuinely difficult and easy to get wrong, sand tray and sandplay work is typically delivered by therapists with specific training in the modality — not simply added as a novelty activity in a general counseling session.
Composite illustration: An adult client working through generalized anxiety might spend early sessions building chaotic, crowded scenes with little open space. As therapy progresses, later trays might show more organized, spacious arrangements — a pattern the therapist tracks over time rather than reading into any single session.
What to Expect in a Sand Tray Therapy Session
Sessions can be directive, where the therapist gives a prompt (“build a scene about your family”), or nondirective, where the client is simply invited to create whatever comes to mind. Most sessions run 45–60 minutes and may include time afterward to talk about the scene, though in some Jungian-influenced approaches, verbal discussion is intentionally minimal. There’s no single “correct” way to arrange a tray, and a completed scene doesn’t need a tidy explanation to be therapeutically useful.
FAQ
What do sand tray figurines represent?
They represent whatever the client’s inner experience needs them to — a specific memory, a relationship, an emotion, or something less defined. The same figurine can carry entirely different meaning from one client, or one session, to the next.
Do therapists assign meaning to each figurine I choose?
Not in well-trained practice. Most therapists avoid interpreting individual objects and instead pay attention to the overall scene, patterns across sessions, and what the client says (or doesn’t say) about their creation.
Is sand tray therapy only used with children?
No. It’s most commonly associated with children because it doesn’t rely on verbal skill, but it’s also used with teens, adults, couples, and groups — particularly for trauma processing and situations where talk therapy alone feels limited.
How is sand tray therapy different from regular play therapy?
Play therapy is a broader category that includes many toy- and activity-based approaches. Sand tray therapy is one specific technique within it, built around miniature figurines placed in sand rather than open-ended play with a full room of toys.
Is sand tray therapy evidence-based?
It has a growing evidence base, including systematic reviews showing meaningful symptom improvement for childhood trauma, but the research is still limited by small studies and a lack of standardized protocols. Most researchers describe it as promising rather than definitively proven.
What kinds of figurines are typically in a sand tray collection?
Collections usually include people, animals, vehicles, buildings, natural items like trees and stones, and symbolic or spiritual objects — organized broadly by category rather than by fixed “meaning.”
Conclusion
Sand tray figurines aren’t a symbol dictionary you decode line by line — they’re tools for expressing what’s genuinely hard to say out loud, especially for children and trauma survivors. The strongest research support isn’t for any single figurine’s “meaning,” but for the broader technique: giving someone a safe, unpressured way to externalize an internal experience and gradually make sense of it over time. If you’re considering this approach for yourself or your child, look for a therapist specifically trained in sand tray or sandplay work, and don’t expect — or ask for — a tidy explanation of every object placed in the sand.
Key Takeaways
- Sand tray figurines are miniature objects used to build symbolic scenes in sand, tracing back to Margaret Lowenfeld’s “World Technique” and later Dora Kalff’s Jungian “Sandplay.”
- Figurines don’t have fixed, universal meanings — trained therapists focus on the whole scene and patterns across sessions, not individual objects.
- Collections are typically organized by category (people, animals, nature, vehicles, symbolic items) rather than by interpretation.
- A 2024 systematic review found meaningful symptom improvement for childhood trauma, but the overall evidence base still has small samples and no standardized protocol.
- The technique is used with children, teens, adults, couples, and groups, and should be delivered by a therapist trained specifically in the method.
References
Benito Herce, N., Ochoa de Alda, I., & Gonzalo Marrodán, J. L. (2024). Sandtray and sandplay in the treatment of trauma with children and adolescents: A systemic review. World Journal for Sand Therapy Practice, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.58997/wjstp.v2i1.74
Homeyer, L. E., & Sweeney, D. S. (1998). Sandtray: A practical manual (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Jankelowitz, R., Greeley, B., Medland, M., Zakani, S., & Jacob, J. (2026). Sand-based therapy in pediatrics: A narrative review of traditional and digital sand therapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, 1692537. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1692537
Kalff, D. M. (2003). Sandplay: A psychotherapeutic approach to the psyche. Temenos Press.
Kestley, T. (2001). Group sandplay in elementary schools. In A. Drewes, L. Carey, & C. E. Schaefer (Eds.), School-based play therapy. John Wiley & Sons.
Lowenfeld, M. (1939). The world pictures of children. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 18, 65–101. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1939.tb00710.x
Roesler, C. (2019). Sandplay therapy: An overview of theory, applications and evidence base. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 64, 84–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2019.04.001
Wiersma, J. K., Freedle, L. R., McRoberts, R., & Solberg, K. B. (2022). A meta-analysis of sandplay therapy treatment outcomes. International Journal of Play Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1037/pla0000180