Claim OwnershipNext Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence
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© 2026 Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence
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Join me on Next Level Play Therapy, a podcast for child and adolescent therapists seeking to elevate your play therapy services. Hosted by Cathi Spooner, LCSW, RPT-S, at Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training.
Each episode delves into the nuances of play therapy, exploring innovative techniques, evidence-based practices, and practical strategies for providing exceptional therapeutic experiences. These engaging discussions cover a wide range of topics, including building rapport with children, how to make sure you get great outcomes for clients, therapeutic toys and tools and strategies to use in sessions, addressing trauma and attachment issues, engaging parents, promoting emotional regulation, and nurturing resilience for children and their families.
Whether you're an experienced therapist looking to refine your skills or a novice clinician venturing into the world of play therapy, the Next Level Play Therapy podcast equips you with the knowledge and insights to enhance your play therapy practice. With interviews featuring experts in play therapy, exploration of best practices, discussion of game-changing principles and strategies, this podcast equips you with the tools to unlock the amazing power of play therapy to transform the lives of children, adolescents, and families.
Tune in to Next Level Play Therapy and take a journey towards becoming an exceptional play therapist as we navigate the next level strategies that lead to profound healing and growth for children and their families.
116 Episodes
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Send us Fan Mail You can have the most beautiful playroom… the best toys… even strong rapport… But if you’re not assessing what’s actually happening beneath the play, you might be missing the very thing your client needs most. In this episode of Next Level Play Therapy, we’re breaking down one of the most overlooked (and misunderstood) skills in play therapy: assessment—and why it directly impacts your case conceptualization, treatment planning, and outcomes. If you’ve ever wondered: → “How d...
Send us Fan Mail Are you feeling stuck in your play therapy sessions… unsure what to do next or why your play therapy interventions aren’t working? You might be missing the most important step in the entire play therapy treatment process: case conceptualization in play therapy. In this episode, you’ll learn what case conceptualization actually is (without the grad school confusion) and how it becomes your clinical roadmap for helping children and teens heal. Because here’s the truth—when y...
Send us Fan Mail What do you do after you’ve identified the symptoms in a struggling teen? Failing grades. Emotional withdrawal. “I don’t care.” High-conflict divorce. Estrangement from a parent. Identity confusion. It’s one thing to recognize the patterns. It’s another to know how to turn that understanding into a clear, effective plan to help your teen clients heal. In this week’s podcast episode, I walk through a case example of “Ethan,” a 16-year-old navigating academic decline and emotio...
Send us Fan Mail What do you do when a 16-year-old walks into your office, shrugs, and says, “I don’t care”? Low motivation. Failing grades. Emotional shutdown. Estrangement from a parent after divorce. On the surface, it can look like depression, defiance, or typical teen apathy. But what if those symptoms are telling a much more layered story? In this free livestream episode, I’m walking you through a real-world adolescent case study to demonstrate why case conceptualization is the backbone...
Send us Fan Mail Can you really use sand tray therapy with adolescents? Absolutely—and when you understand how to adapt it developmentally, sand tray becomes one of the most powerful expressive arts tools to use with teens. In this podcast episode, I’m diving into how to use sand tray with teens in a way that respects their autonomy, supports emotional regulation, and deepens therapeutic insight. If you’re a play therapist who has ever wondered whether sand tray feels “too young” ...
Send us Fan Mail This week I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to help teens access the therapeutic powers of play using poetry. Yes - poetry! If you’re rolling your eyes and remembering your high school English class feeling tortured by reading poetry, then rest assured - this is not your high school English class version of poetry. Poetry is an expressive arts modality that allows clients to use words and language for expression - like the lyrics of your favorite songs. This week I’m sharin...
Send us Fan Mail Play therapy isn’t for adolescents. It’s just for little kids. There’s a misbelief in the mental health community that play therapy is only for little kids. Maybe you’ve wondered that yourself. Play therapy can be an amazing way to help adolescents engage in healing and in a way that meets their developmental needs. Rather than asking IF play therapy works for adolescents – Ask –HOW is play therapy beneficial for adolescents? Using play therapy with adolesce...
Send us Fan Mail Ever sit across from a teen in session, clock ticking, silence screaming… and your nervous system quietly panicking? Yeah. This episode is for that moment. In this week’s podcast, we’re naming the thing no one warned you about in grad school: why play therapists feel stuck with teens—and why it’s not because you’re doing it wrong. Here’s the hard truth (said with love): 👉 Trying harder to get teens to talk about their feelings is often the exact thing keeping ...
Send us Fan Mail Happy International Play Therapy Week! 🎉 What is play therapy—and how is it different from simply using games and activities in therapy sessions? This is a common and critical question for mental health professionals working with children. While games, art, and activities are often part of therapy, play therapy is a distinct, evidence-based clinical approach grounded in child development, theory, and the therapeutic relationship. In this special International Play Therapy Wee...
Send us Fan Mail More Impact. Less Burnout. isn’t a cute slogan. It’s a line in the sand. Because here’s the truth most play therapists won’t say out loud: Burnout doesn’t come from caring too much. It comes from doing this work alone. In this week’s free livestream episode, we’re pulling back the curtain on why being part of a strategic play therapy community isn’t optional if you want sustainable impact in play therapy. Not another play therapy training. Not more play therapy activit...
Send us Fan Mail What if better results in play therapy didn’t come from more play therapy activities, more games, or more play therapy training — but from clearer thinking? In this week’s free livestream episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on the real secret sauce: case conceptualization. Because if you don’t know what’s driving the behavior, how do you decide what to do in play therapy sessions without guessing? 👀 We’ll talk about why your play therapy model actually matters (yep—m...
Send us Fan Mail If you’re a mental health professional, including play therapy, we’ve all heard this said and probably even said it ourselves: consultation is a clinical and ethical part of providing effective play therapy (and therapy in general). Truthfully – I have mixed feelings about this statement. From a clinical and ethical standpoint, consultation is an important part of providing quality mental health services to our clients, including play therapy. I’m a firm believer in g...
Send us Fan Mail A New Year Is a Chance to Stop Doing Play Therapy Alone. A new year begins… and for many play therapists, your caseloads are already full. Same questions about what you should be doing in play therapy sessions to “get it right.” Same feeling of wishing there was someone who truly understood your play therapy work so you could share ideas and support. If you ended last year feeling tired, isolated, or second-guessing yourself, this week’s free livestream is for ...
Send us Fan Mail Helping Neurodivergent Kids Thrive in the Playroom: A Conversation with Dr. Robert Jason Grant Every month inside Play Therapy Academy and the Play Therapy Elevation CIRCLE, I hear the same heart-wide-open question: “What’s the best way to support neurodivergent kids in play therapy so they can truly thrive?” And honestly? Same. It’s a big, beautiful question — and the kind of question that deserves wisdom from someone who’s both deeply trained and living the ne...
Send us Fan Mail 🎁 Pulled from the Vault: An Oldie but Goodie I’m officially taking a break this holiday season — slowing down, soaking up family time, and sipping something warm by the tree. ✨ But I didn’t want to leave you hanging! So I dug into the vault and pulled out one of the most-loved livestream episodes I’ve ever done. And honestly? It’s still 🔥 relevant today. Over the last 15+ years of supervising and training play therapists, I’ve noticed one big mistake that keeps showing up ...
Send us Fan Mail Happy holidays!! I’ve decided to take two weeks off to spend the holiday season focusing on my family. So – I went back into my livestream vault and found this oldie but goodie! Check out this podcast discussing some interesting information I gleaned from research and what it means for play therapists. How does being trained to use a specific play therapy model influence clinical decision-making vs clinical decision-making of child/adolescent therapists using play...
Send us Fan Mail 🎶 This Week’s Podcast: How Music Helps Kids Heal — A Heartfelt Conversation with Crystal Luk-Worrall If you’ve ever watched a child hum softly during play… tap a rhythm while they’re telling a story… or light up when you mirror the beat they’re creating… …you already know music has its own kind of magic in the playroom. This week, we’re going deeper into that magic with a guest whose work is as grounded as it is breathtaking — Crystal Luk-Worrall, a London-based mus...
Send us Fan Mail If you’ve ever wondered how to set up a sand tray during play therapy sessions in a way that feels intentional, grounded, and supportive of your client’s nervous system, this episode is your new BFF. We’re diving into the essentials — starting with how to introduce the sand tray using child-centered, non-directive prompts and when to lean into thoughtful directive prompts that still honor the client’s process. Then we’ll get real about boundaries (aka the invisible safety net...
Send us Fan Mail If I say play therapy treatment plans, what’s the first thing that pops into your brain? “Aaaaagh! I hate writing treatment plans! They’re just more paperwork to make insurance happy.” “Ugh, they’re so complicated and confusing.” “Treatment plans are pointless. I never use them and they take forever.” “I get why we need them… but writing them for play therapy clients? Overwhelming.” If you’re in the mental health world — even in the play therapy realm — you’ve proba...
Send us Fan Mail When kids can’t find the words, the sand tray speaks for them in play therapy sessions. In this week’s podcast episode, we’ll look at how sand tray therapy taps into the implicit memories stored beneath language — The attachment patterns, emotional imprints, and unspoken stories that surface symbolically before they ever become verbal. If you’ve ever felt goosebumps watching a client create a scene that “says everything without saying anything,” this one’s for you...
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