Cultural Elements that Impact Play Therapy Culturally informed play therapists look beyond what is linear and experience the journey. By exploring clients’ world, their beliefs, traditions, stories, cultures of origin, and spirituality, we can expand our professional insights, deepen the therapeutic relationship, and create culturally responsive play therapy approaches to inspire positive outcomes in the process of healing with our clients. These elements impact our own lives and allow us to create a sense of relational familiarity with our clients, which facilitates positive rapport and cultural respect.


CLINICAL EDITOR’S COMMENTS:


Cultural metaphors may lay the groundwork for building resilience.


Beliefs Traditions Therapy Stories


Cultures of Origin


Play Spirituality


StoryCrafts: Natural Healing Activities In addition to the Talk-Story Center, we also offered weekly StoryCrafts, creative activities that expand the storytelling metaphor into physical form through artistic expression. StoryCrafts use the story the way a sculptor uses clay as the medium through which her sculpture is formed (Mills, 2011).


EarthCrafts The


natural environment serving


as playroom, we used shells, fallen branches, driftwood, and found debris to create EarthCrafts. The metaphor of transforming what was broken into beautiful works of art was the heartbeat of this and all such activities (Courtney & Mills, 2016; Mills, 2011).


We Are the Playroom As play therapists, we carry the essential heart and soul of play therapy within each of us, leveraging the child’s resiliency and the play therapy relationship as therapeutic powers of play (Schaefer & Drewes, 2014) that we can use no matter where we are. We are the playroom.


While there are valuable suggestions and guidelines regarding how to set up a playroom, such as choosing the right toys, games, or techniques (Crenshaw & Stewart, 2015; Kaduson et al., 2020; Landreth, 2012), there may be financial and logistical limitations that impede a play therapist from creating an ideal playroom, such as limited space, environmental challenges, or surviving a natural or man-made disaster (Mills & Crowley, 2014). However,


these limitations or challenges are metaphorical


teachers, helping us to connect with the true playroom that exists within each of us.


After living through Hurricane Iniki, a category five storm that ferociously hit the garden island of Kaua’i on September 11, 1992, I worked in a converted utility room, outside in a community neighborhood center, and wherever space was available. Generously donated by the local community, the furniture had survived the hurricane. It became the “Talk- Story Center” in which I provided counseling and play therapy with the help of BT (Big Turtle), my long-time puppet/co-therapist. After Iniki, there were no formal “debriefing” sessions. No one was asked to relive anything. The metaphors we designed through creative activities provided healing intention (Mills & Crowley, 2014). We are the playroom!


Heart Drums Heart drums were made out of large, empty juice cans, inner tubes cut into circles used as hides, rope-cords to fasten the hides, and wooden dowels as drumsticks. The metaphor of drumming is the connection to the heartbeat of life. On a physiological level, helping children and adolescents connect to their own heartbeat can improve issues related to sensory and emotional regulation (Moore, 2011). Drumming in a group inspires children to communicate through rhythm and connection.


Cultural Cookouts Cultural cookouts consisted of Elders who came to the neighborhood center and shared stories, taught the spiritual meaning of the foods they prepared, and “talked story.” Like a tiny pebble tossed into a pond, a story can be offered in the river of experience and the ripples can be felt in many ways. This reinforces a hope and resiliency-based mindset (Brooks & Goldstein, 2001) rather than clients “reliving the trauma repeatedly in therapy, [which] may reinforce preoccupation and fixation” (van der Kolk, 2014, p. 32). By promoting the power of the metaphor, and delivering it in culturally grounded ways, play therapists can nurture the reconnection to a resiliency pathway and posttraumatic growth (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2013) within each client (Crenshaw et al., 2015; Mills & Crowley, 2014).


Reconnecting to Cultural Values for Healing The importance of helping children or families reconnect to deep cultural values can often be overlooked or minimized when dealing with the effects of historical oppression (Duran, 2006; Duran & Duran, 1995). However, these cultural values contain roots of resiliency that can help


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