Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based approach to trauma therapy. It involves activating information processing to integrate and assimilate traumagenic memories. Sandtray therapy offers a powerful symbol, image, and metaphor-based pathway to healing. In her latest book, EMDR-Sandtray-Based Therapy, Ana Gómez combines these methods, offering innovative ways to treat complex trauma and dissociation across the lifespan.

In EMDR-Sandtray therapy, creativity and symbols become the medium through which implicit experience meets conscious awareness for clients of all ages. The sandtray offers a projective, embodied space where inner experiences are expressed through figures, metaphors, landscapes, and spatial relationships. These symbolic constructions reveal layers of meaning that are often inaccessible through language—feelings, sensations, procedural memories, defensive templates, trauma shaped autonomic patterns, and relational blueprints that live implicitly in the nervous system.

During this webinar, Ms. Gómez explains how, as clients create sand worlds, implicit material can emerge safely and naturally in a concrete, sensory, and relationally held format. Through attuned presence and collaborative meaning making, the therapist supports the gradual movement from implicit processes to explicit understanding, allowing symbols to open portals into the internal world while consciousness, relationship, and reflective dialogue foster integration and healing.