Congratulations Sally!
We are excited to announce that Ms. Sally Chan has become our new teaching member! Congratulations Sally!
Ms. Sally Chan Shook Yim became the fifth locally trained ISST Teaching Member in Hong Kong on June 3, 2026. She is a family therapist working in a social service agency. Sally began her sandplay journey in 2010 after attending a workshop in Hong Kong led by Dr. Alexander Esterhuyzen. In the years that followed, she pursued extensive sandplaytraining. She was certified as an ISST Certified Member by the International Society for Sandplay Therapy on February 10, 2021. Throughout her demandiing yet profoundly exciting and deeply rewarding journey as both a certified sandplaytherapist and teaching member, she was greatly inspired by her two major supervisors, Ms. Lenore Steinhardt and Dr. Alexander Esterhuyzen.
Sally has been a committed and active member of HKSTA, making continuous contributions to the association. She has served in several leadership roles, including Committee Member (2014–2017), Vice-Chairperson (2017–2020), and Chairperson (2020–2026). She currently continues to serve on the committee as a Committee Member.
Sally began teaching Sandplay Therapy in Cantonese from a Jungian perspective in March 2019, when she led the HKSTA workshop “Initial Tray: Clues to the Psyche.” At the 26th International ISST Congress in Israel, she presented “The Closet in Sandplay Therapy: Incubation, Rebirth and Transformation,” a transformative case study of a traumatized middle-aged woman based on 150 sand trays.
She also conducted two workshops for the Dutch Society for SandplayTherapy (NVST), an ISST member society, in December 2025 and March 2026: “Sandplay for Children: Special Attention to Emotional Outbursts, Depression and Anxiety.” In these workshops, she demonstrated the full sandplay process through 44 sand trays created by a 6-year-old boy.
In January 2026, she co-taught the HKSTA workshop “The Hero’s Journey – Exploring the Archetype in Jungian SandplayTherapy” with Ms. Carina Conradie and presented an in-depth case study of a young woman with complex trauma, using 55 sand trays interpreted through the stages of the Heroine’s Journey.
She has also published two papers: “The Closet in Sandplay Therapy” in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2021), and “The Image of the Well in Ming’s Sandplay Therapy” in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2025). Sally looks forward to sharing more of her clinical experience through writing and teaching in the coming near future.
