Why Does Play Therapy Work?

    Children who have experienced some difficulties 
    in their lives will need to learn new coping skills to 
    integrate these experiences and feel whole again.
 
    New brain research describes how play, as well 
    as other forms of expressive therapies (i.e. art, 
    music, storytelling, sandplay, etc.) helps the child 
    process their experiences using their right-brain 
    functions. It is the brain that helps us all to regulate 
    negative states and thus helps us to recover from 
    difficult or traumatic experiences. The left-brain is 
    generally responsible for speech and language, 
    and the right-brain for specific sensory and spatial 
    information. 
   
    Play Therapy helps us achieve the 
    state of "flow" (Stien & Kendall (2004). Psychological Trauma and 
    the Developing Brain: Neurologically-based interventions for troubled 
    children.) which is a harmonious state of consciousness   
    that brings brain waves into synchrony and all the  
    important resources of the mind to bear on a task.  
   When we experience "flow," it creates a physiological calmness.