ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1991, while I was a student at the Minnesota Professional School of Psychology, I took a course in play therapy. During one particular lecture, my instructor, Dr. Jacquelyn Wiersma, brought in a guest lecturer, Barbara Weller, ACSW, who is one of the founders of the Minnesota Sandplay Therapy Group. I volunteered to help Ms. Weller put up the posters that were part of her presentation. Later, she gave us a brief introduction to sandplay therapy. This proved to be one of the most pivotal events in my life. I began to take more sandplay therapy seminars and workshops. In addition, I started my own sandplay therapy process, and I completed this process in April, 1992. Shortly thereafter, I was given the chance to work on a sandplay therapy project, sponsored by the MSTG. All the therapists who participated in this project were supervised by Barbara Weller, who is a certified member of the International Society for Sandplay Therapy. Prior to the aforementioned events, I had been exposed to sandplay therapy for the first time by another instructor, Dr. Alice Wagstaff, who taught client-centered therapy at the time. Again, I was inexplicably attracted to this therapeutic technique. Dr. Wiersma and Dr. Wagstaff are also both members of the MSTG. In retrospect, my contacts with Dr. Wiersma, Ms. Weller, and Dr. Wagstaff paved the way for my enthusiastic participation in the unique and intriguing world of sandplay. I believe that my encounters with these people were not coincidental. Rather, they were synchronistic events, or what the Taiwanese people would call u-ian-hun.
