Monthly Trainings

The Heart Leaf Center provides low cost, high quality play therapy training for students and clinicians in the community to promote the education and training of future play therapists.

Neuroqueering Play Therapy: Building an Affirming Play Therapy Practice

Friday, September 13th, 2024 from 10AM – 1:15PM ET

VIRTUAL Play Therapy Training

This workshop will go back to the basics by reviewing the Eight Principles of Play Therapy by Virginia Axline and critically examine and update them in order to create a play therapy practice that is inclusive to all. Play therapy practice can often hold as standard ways of playing that exclude and pathologize natural ways of existing in the world. For example, Autistic and other neurodivergent brain types are frequently misunderstood, and this misunderstanding can lead to expectations within the therapy space that make it difficult for a neurodivergent young person to use the space to heal and learn to thrive. Rewriting the Eight Principles will allow participants to examine their own internalized biases that get in the way of providing true neurodiversity affirming therapy to young people.

Following the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the history and basic theory of non-directive play therapy.

2. Show an understanding of neurodiversity affirming play therapy.

3. Demonstrate the application of updated and inclusive play therapy principles in their own play therapy practice.

Presented by: Seven Corners Psychotherapy

This Might Pinch a Little – Healing Medical Trauma in the Playroom

Friday, October 18th 2024 from 9am-12:15pm

VIRTUAL Play Therapy Training

Illness is part of the human story. During the pandemic, we all witnessed how the fear of illness can take a powerful role in the lives of children and families.

When children and their families confront serious illness, injury, and health changes, it can cause medical trauma that play therapy is uniquely empowered to support.

In this workshop, we will sit with stories of medical complexity and serious illness and disability, using a strengths-based medical family therapy model to integrate resilience theory and play therapy. What does medical trauma look like in the playroom? How can the therapist provide toys, games, and other supports to promote healing, and beyond healing, post-traumatic growth and gains from experiences of medical trauma?

This workshop will cocreate dialogue and provide concrete tools to support clinician’s confidence working with children who have experienced health changes in themselves or their close loved ones in their family system.

Objectives:

Identify ways medical trauma and complexity present in children’s behavior in the play therapy room.
Describe how healing and coping processes emerge through play therapy in application to supporting families living with medical complexity.
Integrate resilience and play therapy frameworks in parent consultations working with families living with medical complexity.

Presenter:Masumeh Farchtchi, LMFT

Healing through Play: Using Play Therapy to Cope with Loss and Grief for Children and their Families

Friday, November 8th 2024 from 9am-12:15pm

VIRTUAL Play Therapy Training

Play therapy is an essential intervention in grief work with children because it is highly adaptable and can be modified based on age, cognitive understanding, and family/cultural traditions.

This play therapy workshop will focus on grief theory and how it presents in varying childhood developmental stages. It will provide play therapists with tools to assess appropriate grief expression versus complicated grief through a culturally informed lens, so that clinicians are best equipped to support clients through various forms of childhood loss including bereavement, divorce, friendships, etc.

Information will be presented through a combination of case studies, lecture, and experiential play therapy exercises.

Objectives:

1. Participants will differentiate between types of losses (death vs non death, complicated grief) that present in the playroom.

2. Participants will examine the unique role of the play therapist in the child/family’s navigation of grief.

3. Participants will assess bibliotherapy strategies in relation to the grief process as it pertains to play therapy.

4. Participants will demonstrate 3 expressive art/play techniques to strengthen a child’s coping abilities amidst grief and loss.

Presenter: Darah Curran, MSW, LCSW