Night Stories: Working with Dreams in Expressive and Play Therapies

Welcome to Night Stories: Working with Dreams in Expressive and Play Therapies! Join us at 2205 York Rd or online on November 18, 2025 at 10:00 AM for a transformative experience.

Dreams speak the language of the unconscious — a symbolic world that mirrors the playroom. In this training, participants will explore how dreams can be integrated into expressive and play therapy to deepen understanding, promote emotional regulation, and support trauma healing. Through art, sand tray, and storytelling, clinicians will learn to access the metaphors, sensations, and inner narratives that emerge from the dreaming mind.

Blending neuroscience, expressive arts, and play-based approaches, this workshop provides a framework for helping clients externalize and reimagine their dream experiences in a safe, creative space. Participants will examine the relationship between the dreaming brain and emotional processing, and how symbolic expression bridges the gap between waking and unconscious experiences.

Practical techniques will be demonstrated for working with children, adolescents, and adults— including symbolic enactments, sand tray representations, narrative dreamplay, and creative journaling. Emphasis will be placed on ethical and developmental considerations, cultural perspectives on dreams, and ways to integrate dreamwork into ongoing treatment.

Objectives:

• Identify the therapeutic powers of play (TPP) engaged when children recreate dream narratives through expressive play.
• Apply directive and nondirective play therapy strategies to address nightmares and recurring dream content.
• Identify foundational principles of dreamwork and their application within expressive and play therapies.
• Describe how dream symbolism supports trauma processing, emotional regulation, and self-integration in children and adolescents.
• Demonstrate creative interventions for exploring dreams through sand tray, art, storytelling, and symbolic play.
• Integrate expressive techniques that bridge the dreaming and waking worlds to enhance therapeutic outcomes.
• Evaluate developmental, cultural, and ethical considerations when incorporating dream material into treatment.

My Crossing Paths Training Center is an Approved Provider of Play Therapy #23-705.

My Crossing Paths Training Center has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, No. 7253. My Crossing Paths Training is an approved provider for Florida Board of Social work, Marriage and Family therapists, and Professional Counselors My Crossing Paths Training Center is approved by the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy, and Mental Health Counseling. Provider # 50-37274. Programs that do not qualify for CE credit are clearly identified. My Crossing Paths Training Center is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

My Crossing Paths Training Center has been approved as an Association of Social Work Boards Approved Continuing Education (ACE) Provider. ACE provider approval number is 1877. Training that are ACE approved with be identified on the training material with correct CE credit and type.

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