A Hero's Welcome Podcast

EMDR Sandtray based Therapy by Ana M. Gómez

• Maria Laquerre-Diego, LMFT-S, RPT-S & Liliana Baylon, LMFT-S, RPT-S • Season 2

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When words collapse under the weight of trauma, symbols step in with clarity and care. We sit down with Anna Gomez to explore how EMDR and sand tray therapy, used together, create a safer path into memory networks, one that honors culture, protects against flooding, and invites healing to unfold at the nervous system’s pace. From the first touch of sand to the choice of a miniature, the tray becomes a living map of autonomic states, attachment patterns, and dissociative parts, allowing clients to express what feels unsayable.

We dive into implicit reprocessing, the crucial phase in which a client can work through terror and shame without immediate ownership. Think “the llama is scared” before “I was scared.” That gentle distance isn’t avoidance; it’s precision. With a polyvagal lens, we track state shifts and titrate EMDR activation like microdosing, choosing backdoor entries to memory when the front door overwhelms. For migrants, bilingual clients, and anyone facing loyalty binds or language fragmentation, symbolic work respects the realities of identity and safety while building a bridge back to words.

Clinicians at every level will find both depth and practicality here. Anna shares how to blend EMDR protocols with relational attunement, moment-to-moment decisions, and culturally grounded meaning-making. We discuss composite case patterns that reveal disorganized attachment in the tray, show how ownership often arises organically over time, and underline why therapist regulation is the anchor for complex trauma. If you’ve ever wished EMDR felt less flooding or talk therapy less confining, this conversation offers a humane, research-aligned alternative that is as structured as it is spacious.

Ready to rethink how healing begins? Listen, share with a colleague, and if it resonates, subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more therapists and clients find this work.

A Hero's Welcome Podcast © Maria Laquerre-Diego & Liliana Baylon

Maria Laquerre-Diego:

Welcome back, listeners, for another episode of O Heroes Welcome podcast. I'm your co-host, Maria LaquerreDiego, and I'm joined by my lovely co-host, the one and only crazy one, Liliana Baylon.

Liliana Baylon:

And we are here with the special guest. Um, I'm stretching my hands as if you can see me. Um, why not? Uh, we are here with Ana Gomez. Hey, Ana, how are you doing today?

Ana Gomez:

I'm good. Very excited to be together. Thank you for inviting me. It's it's an honor and a privilege to be able to spend time with you and your audience. So thank you.

Liliana Baylon:

Welcome. And we are here. You have two books out there, but today we're gonna focus on one, correctly? So we were gonna be talking about the EMDR a and Sand-based therapy book. That's your baby.

Ana Gomez:

That is a baby. Yes, it's a big baby, it's a baby that I have nurtured for many, many years. So I was trained in the EMDR, it's gonna be 26 years ago, and shortly after I started to put them together because I was using just sand tray therapy before I was trained in the EMDR.

Maria Laquerre-Diego:

Okay.

Ana Gomez:

But because I was working with very complex clinical presentations, I was trying to figure out what would be the best way to work, especially with children, and then started to combine them both.

Liliana Baylon:

Yes. So um when you um share your your book, your your baby, with all of us um in the field, um, I mean, everything about the book um was beautiful, but like for myself and and and we were gonna take turns, but I wanted to say like thank you because when you're working with migrants and either language is an issue, issue, uh, family loyalty is an issue, um or uh you know, other systemic issues come in the way, like this book, because we're focusing on Santray, um, is giving uh clinicians um uh a gateway, a path where uh verbal story uh maybe fractured, um a way of how to do EMDR a um through uh externally, and then you and you talk in the in the book beautifully about it, but um I thought for all of us, either if you're working with migrants or if you're working across cultures and language, it's an issue, it's a barrier. What a beautiful way in this book to describe how to do the work with.

Ana Gomez:

Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Because our native language really is symbols. I mean, think about how we dream. See, we we don't dream in well-organized verbal narratives, but instead uh our dreams are full of stories, metaphors, and symbols. That is really our native language and is the language that we use to communicate at such deep level with self. So, yes, definitely, you know, a symbol can encompass a nervous system pattern, for example, without having to verbalize it. You may have an angry tiger fighting everyone. See, that in itself is a representation and a physicalization of a nervous system state. Uh, a dissociative part may show up, may show up in in the sand world. Patterns of attachment and connection, the relational template of the the child, the adolescent, the adult may show up as a figure that is distant. The caregiven system shows up in the sand world in in the form that is developmentally appropriate, especially for children, but also it provides a pathway to the mind that feels completely overwhelmed. And the symbol provides a level of distance that allows the mind to express what otherwise would be so overwhelming, but also it it provides uh a mirror to the mind, a way for the mind to dialogue with itself through symbols.

Liliana Baylon:

Yeah. So um, and again, right, like uh I think the book makes it where new clinicians, if they're just starting, if they just took the basic training in EMDR a and they're just starting in their centre, like you're able, after reading the book, to have confidence and making meaning and making sense of. And then for all of us who are seasoned therapists, it was a really nice um validation of the work that we're already doing in regards to what is it like to have a gateway, like to just put it into making um implicit uh the memory networks, um, or or how um as we are uh when we're working on the centre, how we're working on that moment-to-moment strategies, like what happens when we move between EMDR faces and centre conversations. Um again, uh I think when I first read it, um, and for all of you who know that I love reading, um I take notes. Um, for that reason, because first of all, I don't want to highlight books anymore. Because one, then I become aware later and tell me if this is for both of you too. Then I become later aware of what was I thinking before that was important, and then like what I think is important now. So then most of the books are highlighted like in different colors now. And as a book lover, it hurts now. I'm getting into that age now. So now I make notes um about what I'm reading. But I I as I was searching for uh what is it that I wanted to share with this book, um, I think it's uh it's a beautiful way of having a bridge between these two models. And you have the ability of storytelling, of simplifying something that we can think of as complex, especially when we're trying to bridge to models, but you have this ability to simplify it. And then with the cases that you bring in, the the way that you write it, like it's a beautiful storytelling.

Ana Gomez:

Well, thanks, Liiana. I very much appreciate that. You see, um, I think EMDR um it is it is a very powerful approach supported by research and sand tray therapy is a very powerful approach, but when they are brought together, they generate such powerful synergy and one that really reaches uh layers of experience beyond what words can access, right? Because verbal language, I mean, we know that when uh individuals are uh physiologically activated because of trauma or thinking about trauma, or there is a trigger in the environment that activated the trauma, we know that their verbal capacities are diminished. We do have studies that show the broca area um is shut down, you know, so we can be physiologically activated while verbally inhibited. And I and I can only hope for a shift in paradigm in terms of how we see trauma work and healing, because a lot of therapists, especially therapists working with adolescents and working with adults, they have a strong bias towards verbal communication, which is interesting because is the one that goes offline first. And I think we need to open one of my hopes is that this book can contribute to that, opening new channels through which we can support our clients of all ages in their journey towards healing and realizing wholeness, and for clinicians to be able to use a different language or at least uh give different channels and pathways and portals into the mind, into the embodied mind, and into memory systems that hold traumagic material.

Liliana Baylon:

Yeah, yeah. I love that, right? Because as clinicians, um, I feel and tell me if you agree, Mandia, but as clinicians, we were trained to um do talk therapy, and we get really uncomfortable when everyone goes quiet. So, like, give me something. And and the beauty of um Santre, and it and even lately on EMDR trainings is it's okay if if we don't if it's not organized in order for you to say it right away. Like, can you show me? And then with the population that I work with, um, when there's a sense of loyalty, I cannot share this because I will be betraying them, or it's not organized in a language yet. Um like it happens in this language, in my native language. And if I go to a therapist and it's too close and I want to externalize it in another language in order to separate, um, right? Like when we do it in the centre, like it's giving me permission and the easiness of being able to do it. So again, um, such a beautiful way. The other thing that I appreciate it is how you go from individual and you're mentioning teens. Um, I um I think when we discuss even like do it between parent and child um or doing a group. Um, I think a lot of us when we go to basic training, we get frustrated because we don't understand that in basic training, we're getting the basics. That's why we need to go to advanced uh trainings. But we want to figure out like how to do this right away and the way that you divide your chapters. It was a really nice way of even giving us um more of a sample of like this is what it can look like um uh for for all of you.

Ana Gomez:

Yeah, and to add to what you were saying in terms of how trauma again is expressed and in and trauma lives in sensations, embodied perception, impulses, uh not necessarily well-organized uh verbal narratives. So through the centre that provides a safe space for the child, the adolescent, and the adult, then this sensations, these patterns of um autonomic states, uh, meta perceptions, impulses, and attachment and relational templates unfold, all of them unfold in sand world in a way that creates the beautiful distance where and and you said it before, where the mind can travel from implicit into explicit memory because it's not a binary uh space. We're not talking about either or, but instead a whole continuum that the mind travels through. And for example, many children start with implicit reprocessing, which I think is one of the big contributions of the book to name it implicit reprocessing, because so far in the MDR therapy, we have relied on just explicit reprocessing where there is ownership, it's me, it's mine, itself. And yet uh children, for example, uh, and adults with a narrow window of affect tolerance, they have a hard time accessing it that way and owning it. Sometimes it's too dysregulating, sometimes it's too big, too heavy. And through implicit reprocessing, we give the mind an outlet, a pathway, a portal into the memory network that is easier, organic. It may be the story of a kitty cat, a dog, a llama that is being hurt. Perpetrator victim dynamics can unfold in the Sand world without ownership. Yeah, it's not me, it's not the perpetrator I had, it's not my shame, it's not my fear, it's not my terror, is the llama's terror. And with that level of distance, then reprocessing actually can happen faster because of that distance that implicit reprocessing offers to the mind. Yeah, it feels safer.

Maria Laquerre-Diego:

Yes, yeah, I love that. I think I think EMDR is very magical, right? Like you don't they don't need to verbalize what they're processing, right? And it's really nice to have that. I think sand tray is magical, right? Giving in a container, taking away the need for verbalization and for showing up, right? Uh I anytime you put your hands in the sand for sand tray work, like things happen whether you want them to or not. I've been in plenty of trainings myself. I'm like, I'm just gonna be like, I'm gonna keep my wall. No, no, you touch the sand and magic happens. But I love the combination of these two because we have the power of EMDR and the permission, like, you don't have to talk, we're going to be able to process this. But then the sand tray offers a container. Because I know in some of my own work with really complex trauma, EMDR, as much as we put all the preventative measures and the safety measures up, like it can be really flooding for them. And I think the idea of having a sand tray to hold that and give them an external visual place to put all of that is really, really, I mean, it's it's magical.

Ana Gomez:

Yeah, and and part of um what we do in EMDR that I think so many have contributed to it, that is in the book, is uh is a titration continuum, is the concept that we borrow from pharmacology of microdosing and bringing it into EMDR therapy where there's not just one entry road into the memory system. So imagining the memory network as a house that we can certainly enter through the front door where we just go into assessment phase, access it, activate it, boom, go into channels of association without any restriction. Certainly that may work well for a lot of our clients, but especially for clients exposed to chronic traumatization during sensitive periods of development, this door could be highly activating and move them out into complete emotional flooding. And the sand tray offers a backdoor, right? Another portal, not necessarily for everyone, but at least there are other portals that we can offer to our children, adolescents, and adults that don't provide or create such level of activation, and that can keep the client within windows of tolerance, and the client can still do incredible work and process, reprocess a lot of what exists in this memory networks. We have structures of you know, cognitive structures, emotional structures, somatic structures, behavioral structures that unfold in the tray, and the mind can integrate without yet the ownership. But what I have witnessed for 26 years, 25 years is this movement, this journey, this travel from implicit into explicit that happens so organically. I'm thinking right now about many of my clients where where they started with a character, not me, not my terror, not my fear, not my shame, just the the dogies of pain. And yet, as we travel together and continue to reprocess implicitly, one day uh a client comes in and says, you know what, I'm gonna work on this. And by the way, this is me, and by the way, that is those are my parents. And suddenly there is a sense of ownership very organically, the mind arrived to is an arrival that we don't force, it's an arrival that comes natural to the mind, and we honor that rhythm, right? We honor the the embodied mind's rhythm and and enjoin in instead of forcing upon the mind, you have to acknowledge it, you have to recognize that this is your fear, right? So it is really honoring that journey of the mind and what is needed to access something that quite often is so full of fear and shame and terror.

Liliana Baylon:

So, for all of you, as Ana was describing describing this, for all of you who are working with DACA recipients, that is exactly the process that we go with when they have the shame of their parents being undocumented and them having like this ongoing stress and trauma of every so often having to go and go to the process of getting that permit. When you just I was like, you know, my clients, that's exactly what they want go through from being implicit to explicit to working to acknowledging to be able to tolerate it because of it. And and and then you see the progression that you just mentioned, but I have seen that again with DACA recipients quite often.

Ana Gomez:

Yeah, yeah. What the mind is um not able yet to acknowledge, recognize, and I'm not going to say able, I'm going to say it does not feel safe to access. It does not feel safe yet to acknowledge and recognize, then the symbol gives refuge to the mind. Yeah, and still, when you see the sand worlds that clients of all ages create, you see all the cognitive, affective, and somatic structures right there. You see the dog that is ashamed, or the wizard that is evil, or you see the um witch or fantasy figures that represent evil, for example, or fear or terror. You can also see, as I was saying in the beginning, the attachment system very much reflected and represented in the sand world through the miniature collection. You see the caregiving system, you may see um an animal, a child in the sand story that doesn't have a consistent caregiver. I'm remembering a client, a nine-year-old, that created a sand whirl, a divided sand whirl. On one side, you have a mother that is loving and caring, and on the other side, you have a witch that is the mother as well, but is evil and trapped um Pluto and Nemo into this horrible space, this cave where they couldn't escape. And really through the sand world, it was so clear the how the caregiving system at times was providing love or care and protection, and yet this was also a caregiver that created terror and fear. So clearly, the foundation and the basis of disorganized attachment was right there, activating two different systems. The defense system as the parent is the source of fear, and yet activating the attachment system as the caregiver was also the source of safety and survival. That was just um so painful and beautiful to witness how in the Santray it can show up in ways that are developmentally appropriate for a child that is nine or 10 or 11, or you know, even teenagers, but adults do the same very much. Yeah if we give them the opportunity.

Liliana Baylon:

Yeah. So as uh we're getting closer to the NF pocket, which I feel like we can continue talking about this and the benefits for all of you listening. I'm wondering, Anna, how do we divide this into two questions? What is it that you wanna tell clinicians who are just tiptoeing into EMD Art and Santre, um, which this book can be an introduction. Um, for all of you listening, uh, go to Anna's website because she has a lot of trainings and I know you're promoting the Santray. Um, and I think you have it in Spanish this time around, isn't it?

Ana Gomez:

Yeah, I'm so excited for the very first time that we have it in Spanish. Yes.

Liliana Baylon:

So if you're bilingual, that is gonna be a really cool being part of the first cohort. Um, okay, let me check the dates. Maybe I'll join all of you, but in the meantime, let me go back. Um, what is it that you that you want the people who are just barely tiptoeing? Like what is the one um uh giveaway that you wanna that you want, what is the one thing that you want to tell them to the one to the people who are just training? And then what is another that you want to give to the people who are seasoned therapists who have done EMDR, who have done sound trait um therapy? What is the what is it that you want to tell them about this book and why they have to read it?

Ana Gomez:

Okay, and and before I go on, I want to say that uh all the examples that I give in presentations are composite cases. Okay. There are a composite case of many of the cases that I work with. So the case that I just presented is not an actual real case, but very much could be.

Maria Laquerre-Diego:

Yeah.

Ana Gomez:

Okay, so what do I want uh clinicians to know about this book and how this book can help them? So number one, I think the book will give them a new pathway, a new way of thinking, a new way of conceptualizing the work. And this book, I have to say, is for the therapist that is just training the MDR, but it's also for the experienced clinician because it goes deep. It it proposes new ideas and new ways of conceptualizing even the MDR, um, proposing a way of looking at the adaptive information processing model or system, not just as an individual system, but as systemic and dyadic system and how we um reinforce and create new synaptic networks and a new synaptic architecture through relationships. So there are a lot of elements and theories that I think will support clinicians. Doesn't matter where they are on their journey. And I hope that this book can give clinicians a new pathway, a new possibility. I don't think there is one way of delivering EMDR therapy, and what this book proposes is even beyond EMDR Santray because it's a multimodal approach to EMDR San Trey where we incorporate polyvagal uh-based interventions, but also polyvagal ways of conceptualizing what's happening. So it's a transtheoretical approach as well that enriches the AIP model with attachment theory, dissociation theory, polyvagal theory, interpersonal biology. So it gives um an expanded way of conceptualizing, understanding, and also making intentional decisions when you come to the therapeutic process. It's also a book that places a great deal of um importance on the therapeutic relationship. So this the work with EMDR, AMDR Santray, is a radical relational approach where we are the most important tool in the process in how we can work individually, systemically, diadically, and how you know clinicians can find new portals into the journey of accompanying clients through their healing journeys. So I can that I can only hope that clinicians can use it. It has theory, certainly, but it has a lot of how-tos. This is how you may want to say it. Here are here is a format that you can use. Here are some ideas, very specific interventions. So not only has the theory ways of conceptualizing the clinical landscape of the client, but also it offers a lot of how-tos. This is how you do it, and it offers multiple protocols. But let me say a little bit about protocols. It even though the protocol is there, it really emphasizes the moment-to-moment decision making, case conceptualization, and how we don't deliver it like a cookie-cutter form of treatment, right? It's not protocol-based, but it really offers a way of delivering EMDR San tray that expands into an approach, right? Not just how I read and use a protocol, but how I conceptualize it, how I make decisions, how I am intentional in how I deliver EMDR San tray, how I am at the same time very aware of what's emerging in my nervous system moment to moment, and how I remain connected to myself, and how I can mentalize and hold the mind of the client in mind. So it's very relational and complex and yet offered in a way that is easy to understand, digest, and actually use. Oh, beautiful. What a gift.

Liliana Baylon:

Yes. Um, I think when you were talking, I was like, oh yeah, that's right. Because the impression that I got from this book was exactly a therapist um regulation, um, and how we become the the anchor um in the room for our clients. Um, and then the reminder, right? Which is how do you how can you hold all this information and then make adaptations for the client that is in front of you, and how culture lives in the symbol and in the sand. Um what is the meaning that the client is given to the symbol, not what we perceive that is the meaning of the symbol. Like if you touch on culture, attachment, neurobiology, like oh yeah, yeah, it's uh rich in information, Anna.

Ana Gomez:

It has a lot of pieces, yeah. Yeah, it is the product of 25 years of delivering this and sitting down and thinking about it and reflecting and writing. So it is a process that changes you so deeply. Yeah. Writing a book and really sitting with it, digesting it, having moments of just thinking about human existence. You know, I have that existentialist tendencies, and really diving deep and what into what it means to be human, and what what it means to exist, and our path into realizing wholeness, the path into becoming and unbecoming, and walking alongside with my own process, with my own work, and diving deep into deep layers of self has been such a journey that is not just an intellectualized process, but it's highly embodied and and one that calls for somatic intelligence. This is something that we also use in the Santray, for example, where we can go from object and symbol to self and work very closely with the soma. So it's it's um it's it's work that for me has transformed uh me in so many different ways. The writer behind it's a human that is being transformed in the process.

Liliana Baylon:

And you're such a gift, even the way that you're just describing that was like, yeah, everyone is um lucky to not only to read your work. but also to be trained by you.

Ana Gomez:

Thank you. Thank you both.

Liliana Baylon:

So for all of you listeners, we will include um uh a link to um so if you have not get the book so that you can go get the book and then a link um to Anna's website so if you want to go get trained and if you're bilingual and if you want to be part of the first cohort and be part of that amazing picture please do so. Um Anna, thank you um for for being here and for your wisdom um and for keep uh sharing your knowledge well thank you it was just a pleasure to spend the time with both of you with your audience with everyone that is listening to us uh this is how we promote change right we we have conversations that could be challenging and difficult but expand our awareness our field of consciousness so I very much appreciate this moment and um I'm finishing this with immense gratitude for the two of you thank you anna yeah what a gift and we'll have you we'll have you back hopefully really soon thank you yeah till next time listeners

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Liliana Baylon, LMFT-S, RPT-S

Host
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Maria Laquerre-Diego, LMFT-S, RPT-S

Host
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Ana Gómez

Guest