At this busy time of year, with summer events, end-of-term commitments, and the many tasks involved in wrapping up work before the school holidays, it can be easy to move from one thing to the next without stopping to reflect. I have found it important to intentionally put aside time to pause, process my notes, and make sense of the experiences that have unfolded over the summer.
I feel fortunate to have a space away from the busyness where I can do just that.
There is something profoundly simple about sitting in a beach hut. Four wooden walls, a roof that creaks with the wind, and the shifting sound of waves just beyond the door. The hut offers both shelter and openness, a liminal space where inner worlds can surface. For me, this has become a powerful image for both drawing and sandtray therapy—creative ways of allowing symbols to emerge from the unconscious.
Carl Jung once described the psyche as a house: the attic representing higher thought and spiritual aspiration, the ground floor our everyday conscious mind, the cellar our personal unconscious, and the ground beneath the vast collective unconscious we all share. This model gives us a map of the inner life. But what happens if, instead of a house, we imagine a hut by the sea?
The Attic (Higher thought, spiritual aspiration)
In a beach hut, the roof is often low, slanting, and close above your head. Yet it still points upward, reminding us of inspiration, imagination, and spiritual seeking. In intuitive drawings, the marks that stretch upward—spirals reaching to the sky, birds in flight, shafts of light—can speak to these aspirations. In the sandtray, a figure placed on a hilltop, a bird, an angel, or a lighthouse may carry a similar quality of hope, perspective, or guidance. These are glimpses of something reaching beyond our everyday selves.
The Room on the Ground Floor (Conscious mind)
The main space of the hut is where we sit, where daily life unfolds. This is the conscious mind, the part of us aware of our choices and surroundings. Here, drawings may reveal symbols of everyday life: chairs, windows, paths, or doors. Likewise, the arrangement of miniatures in a sandtray often reflects the client’s present experience and relationships. These images are rarely random; they become metaphors for the way we perceive ourselves and move through the world.
The Basement/Cellar (Personal unconscious)
Unlike a house with brick foundations, the hut rests on sand. Beneath the floorboards lies the shifting, buried material of the personal unconscious. When forgotten toys, broken shells, hidden objects, or half-buried figures appear in a sandtray—or emerge unexpectedly in an intuitive drawing—they can echo memories, feelings, or parts of ourselves that have been pushed out of awareness. The sand itself invites curiosity. Objects can be buried, uncovered, moved, and rediscovered, reminding us that what lies beneath is not fixed, but waiting to be gently explored.
The Tide Below (the Collective Unconscious)
Go deeper still, and beneath the sand you reach the sea—the timeless ocean that touches every shore. This is Jung’s collective unconscious, the shared reservoir of archetypes and myths. Whether universal images arise through drawing or through the selection of miniature figures—a wise elder, mother and child, animals, bridges, circles, dragons, journeys or boats—they often feel both deeply personal and strangely familiar. The tide carries these symbols to the surface, connecting our individual stories to something much older and larger than ourselves.
Symbols as a Doorway
Whether we pick up a pencil or begin arranging miniatures in the sand, we are stepping into the hut and listening for what the sea brings in.
The creative process allows symbols to emerge before words do. Rather than analysing them too quickly, we can become curious, noticing what they evoke and how they relate to our inner experience. Often, healing begins not through explanation, but through giving these images space to be seen.
The beach hut, the sandtray, the sketchbook provide a gentle containers for exploring our inner world. They allow the psyche to communicate through symbols, images, and metaphor, often expressing experiences that are difficult to put into words.
Healing from the hut means trusting this process: letting the tide carry images up through the sand and into the room of consciousness, where they can be witnessed, reflected upon, and gradually integrated.