Traditional sandplay therapy, also known as physical sandplay, refers to the set of physical equipment used in sand tray therapy, including the sandbox, sand, and miniature figures.
Traditional sandplay therapy was developed by the Swiss psychoanalyst Dora Kalff. She improved upon the "miraculous box" introduced by British pediatrician Margaret Lowenfeld through her floor games, integrating Carl Jung’s analytical psychology theories on symbolism and archetypes. Kalff placed sand into a child’s play box to create a sandbox and expanded the variety of toys used in children's play. This marked the official birth of sandplay therapy. Traditional sandplay is widely used in various aspects of mental health education and psychological treatment—such as correcting problematic behaviors in preschool children, improving school avoidance in elementary students, and providing psychological interventions for special populations.
In primary and secondary school mental health education, counselors use sandplay therapy to guide students in using traditional sandplay to externalize their inner worlds, helping them achieve a certain balance between consciousness and the subconscious, thereby achieving therapeutic effects. There are two fundamental elements in sandplay therapy: sand and miniature models of people or objects. Sand is one of the most beloved play materials for children, and nearly everyone has had the experience of playing with sand in childhood, regardless of country or era.
The fluidity and moldability of sand allow individuals to unleash their imagination freely, using it to build castles, villages, mountains, rivers, and anything else they envision. Since sand grains are formed from the weathering of surface rocks, sand is also considered an ideal medium for casting and shaping symbolic representations of the world. As William Blake wrote in *Songs of Innocence*, we can “see a world in a grain of sand.”