The OGT Daily #50 Stories without words

 Wow fifty whole days!  One 7th of the whole year and one 200th of the entire length of this regime.Easy peasy. 

I did something fun today, which was to drive up to Boston and take a sand tray class from a former teacher. If you have never done sand tray, it's essentially playing in the sandbox for grown-ups (and kids too.)

My round blue sand tray 

Sand tray was started by pediatric psychologist Dr. Margaret Lowenfeld, during the London blizt to help children work through their war trauma through a nonverbal form of storytelling.  She established The Clinic for Nervous and Difficult Children and sand tray therapy has been used ever since. Often it is used by play therapists, but art therapists use it as well because the creating of images in sand is very similar to making art.

Basically, you have a wooden box on a stand that is 28" X 19" by 3" tall and the walls are painted cobalt blue (I happened to work in a round blue plastic tray today).  It is filled with clean sand and when you dig into it you can clear a space so that the blue shows through and can represent water.  The room of a sand tray practitioner generally has a several walls of shelves that are filled with figures, miniatures, rocks, seashells, etc... enough to present a wide range for storytelling. The office, where I was today, was no exception. There were literally hundreds of "figures" as they are called ranging from fairytales to thunderclouds and rainbows.   These stories, however do not need any words. Some who practice use a Jungian method that considers the figures represent archetypes or aspects of a person's personality. 

I was drawn to the elements today: fire (flames). water (seashells, waves, and fish), earth (rocks and trees), and air (numerous birds including a swan family. This is a great way to reduce stress and boost creativity.

What sparked your creative fire today?