This advanced experiential course examines Sand Tray Therapy as a flexible, integrative therapeutic approach grounded in trauma-informed, neurobiological, developmental, attachment, and relational frameworks. Students will expand their theoretical and practical understanding of how metaphor within the sand tray supports emotion regulation, attachment repair, right-brain–to–right-brain coregulation, and transformation across diverse client systems.

The course will familiarize the student with EFIT an attachment-based psychotherapy that helps individuals identify and transform negative emotional patterns to build more secure sense of self and others. EFIT integrates the core principles of attachment theory, humanistic-experiential methods, and emotion theory to help individuals. As an empirically validated approach, it was customized to work with individuals through a series of three stages: Stabilization & Alliance; Restructuring Self & Attachment; and Consolidation and Integration.

This course is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of attachment theory across the lifespan, in particular, in adulthood. Students will explore the key concepts of attachment theory, the different attachment styles, and their impact on development throughout the lifespan. The course will focus on the different phases of adulthood from the early 20s to late adulthood, and how attachment can impact a range of outcomes such as relationships, mental health, and well-being.

This course offers an innovative approach to exploring current theoretical trends and therapeutic strategies when working with children, adolescents, and their families. The course will be taught from a systemic perspective while taking into account the special needs of the individual child. One of the major components of the course will involve Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s Intensive course: Making Sense of Kids. The course will explore the dynamics of “stuckness” in childhood and adolescence through Dr. Neufeld’s comprehensive attachment-based developmental model.

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the study of grief, loss, and end-of-life care in the context of family systems, with a focus on the interconnection of familial, individual and relational dynamics. Emphasizing the role of culture, community, and family narratives, students will critically examine how diverse cultural, spiritual and faith rituals, beliefs, and practices shape responses to loss and mourning within family systems.

This seminar style course covers theoretical and practical approaches for helping professionals to integrate Christianity and Psychology. Emphases include biological, psychological, sociological, and spiritual aspects of personhood, including applications for clinical practice. This course also provides opportunities for professional development through personal reflection that leads to the development of an integrated therapeutic perspective.

In this course, we will explore the purposeful dynamics of emotion and the inherent properties of play — and most importantly, the magical interplay when they come together. We will play with the practical application across the lifespan. What does it look like to bring true play and playfulness into our practice, both in and out of the therapy room? What does it look like to matchmake play and emotion for those you care for and for yourself? With this insight of true play, we can see how play is nature’s design to take care of us, no matter what one’s role.

The course will familiarize the student with Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT), an empirically validated approach to working with couples who are experiencing marital distress developed by Drs. Susan Johnson and Leslie Greenberg. EFT offers a comprehensive theory of adult love and attachment, as well as a process of healing distressed relationships. Through a series of nine steps, this experiential–systemic therapy focuses on helping partners restructure the emotional responses that maintain their negative interaction patterns.

This course provides students with clinical understanding regarding substance use, addictions and domestic violence offering a trauma-informed assessment and treatment. Students will learn to appreciate the complexity of substance use disorders, diversity of care, and providing informed referrals to evidence-based support services. They will learn to conceptualize and treat families in crisis in a systemic way, promoting recovery, safety, wellness, and harm reduction to improve care and support for those with substance use and addiction.

As an advanced course in Marital and Family Therapy, this course will focus on the systemic issues and treatment of couples and families addressing essential topics like divorce, remarriage, stepfamily and blended family issues, severe illness and death, sexuality and intimacy, as well as violence and sexual abuse. Issues that are related to diversity and power and privilege as they relate to the areas of age, gender, sexual identity, health/ability, culture, SES, spirituality, and ethnicity will also be addressed.