The Puppet Passport: Playfully Taking Flight Through the Nervous System

Training Overview

Get your passport ready—you're about to embark on a playful journey through the nervous system!

The Puppet Passport: Playfully Taking Flight Through the Nervous System is a dynamic 3-hour experiential play therapy training that invites clinicians to explore Polyvagal Theory, sensory integration, and somatic regulation using the joyful power of play.

This interactive workshop uses a themed Puppet Passport™ to guide participants through “nervous system stops,” where each learning objective is stamped through playful activities and reflective integration. Along the way, clinicians will use puppets, sand tray, movement, metaphor, and storytelling—tools rooted in child-centered, attachment-based, and Gestalt play therapy theories—to help children understand and regulate their nervous systems.

Whether flying through Interoception Island or pausing at the Sand Tray Sanctuary, this training helps play therapists facilitate deep communication, nurture emotional wellness, strengthen relationships, and foster personal growth—all through play.

Participants will leave with creative tools and a fully stamped passport, ready to implement neuroscience-informed play therapy techniques that support resilience, regulation, and connection in young clients.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify and describe the three primary states of the autonomic nervous system through the lens of Polyvagal Theory, and explain how these states can be symbolically expressed in play therapy using puppet-making, puppet play, and sand tray interventions.
2. Demonstrate at least two play therapy techniques that incorporate puppetry, creative sensory-based tools, and symbolic expression to support emotional awareness, co-regulation, and attachment in child-centered play therapy.
3. Create one or more therapeutic puppets and apply the Puppet Passport™ framework in play therapy sessions as a developmentally appropriate, imaginative method for guiding children through nervous system states while promoting resilience, insight, and self-regulation.

Attendees

Counselors, social workers, therapists, graduate students, and school counselors working with this population will benefit from attending! Gain skills and knowledge of interventions that you can add to your "toolbox" to support some of your most fragile clients.

Play therapy credit available to mental health professionals & graduate students in a mental health program.

This training is appropriate for play therapists at a Beginner Level. It will address "Play Therapy Special Topics." The following play therapy competency will be part of the training: Clinical Play Therapy Skills. This training will address the following therapeutic powers of play: facilitate communication, foster emotional wellness, enhance social relationships, and increase personal strengths.

About Our Presenter

Dora Henderson, LMHC, RPT-S™, TraumaPlay™ Supervisor, EMDR Consultant, CST has been bringing brains, bodies, and big feelings together through play for over a decade. A Licensed Mental Health Counselor Supervisor, Registered Play Therapist Supervisor™, EMDRIA-Approved Consultant, and TraumaPlay™ Supervisor, Dora has spent the past 8+ years in private practice specializing in trauma and supporting neurodivergent children with creativity, compassion, and a spark of joy.

Before launching her private practice, Dora served in both community mental health and as a district mental health counselor, where she supported over 21 schools—offering nervous system–informed care and helping students and staff alike feel seen, soothed, and safe.

As co-host of the Neuroscience of Play Therapy conference, Dora lights up stages and training rooms across the country, blending brain-based insights with playful strategies. She’s also a children’s book author, passionate puppet lover, and fierce advocate for helping kids find their voice—especially those navigating trauma or neurodivergence.

Most importantly, Dora is a proud mom to three incredible neurodivergent adult children, and a joyful grandma who believes that healing is possible when connection leads the way. Whether she’s speaking, supervising, or storytelling, she brings clinical wisdom, lived experience, and a touch of sparkle (and probably a puppet) to everything she does.

NVAPT is approved by the Association for Play Therapy to offer continuing education specific to Play Therapy. APT Approved Provider number—22-671. NVAPT maintains responsibility for the program.

This program meets APT's definition of non-contact as it is a Live Webinar. For this live webinar, participants will be awarded 3.0 APT NON-CONTACT CE upon successful completion of a post test (e-mailed following the event). Participants are encouraged to be visible (video on) throughout the presentation.

NVAPT is an approved provider for the State of Nevada Board of Examiners for Marriage and Family Therapists & Clinical Professional Counselors. Approved Provider number—NVCEP2329. NVAPT is an approved provider for the Nevada Board of Education. NVAPT provides CEUs for the Nevada Board of Examiners for Social Workers based on the Board's expanded list of vendors as approved on 6/18/2024.

Grievance and Refund Policy

The NVAPT is fully committed to conducting all activities in strict conformance with the Code of Ethics of Nationally Certified Counselors, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, and Licensed Clinical Social Workers. NVAPT will comply with all legal and ethical responsibilities to be non-discriminatory in promotional activities, program content and in the treatment of program participants.

The monitoring and assessment of compliance with these standards will be responsibility of the President and Board of Directors. While NVAPT goes to great lengths to assure fair treatment for all participants and attempts to anticipate problems, it recognizes that complaints do and will arise. As such, NVAPT will do its best to anticipate problems and, when they do present themselves, attempt to alleviate complaints as quickly as possible

Grievance Policy - When a complaint, either verbally or written, is filed with the President and/or a member of the Board of Directors, the following guidelines are followed with respect to achieving resolution:

1. Complaints relative to a speaker or workshop leader, contents of instructional materials being presented, or an individual educational style being utilized, the individual voicing disapproval is requested to first address concerns to the presenter. If the presenter is not available, place his/her comments in writing. The President will convey these comments to the speaker while maintaining confidentiality of the complainant.

2. If the complaint concerns a continuing education activity, its content, level of presentation, or facilities in which the event is being held, the President will attempt to resolve the matter as expeditiously as possible. If the offered resolution (resolutions may include, but not be limited to partial/full refund of fees paid; credit toward future event) not satisfactory to the individual filing the complaint, then further action may be taken.

In the latter instance, the individual is requested to place his/her complaint in writing to the attention of the NVAPT Board of Directors. The complaint is then reviewed by the NVAPT Board of Directors. A written response will be issued within 30 days of receipt of the written complaint. Within 30 days of the resolution rendered by the NVAPT Board of Directors, the complainant may file a written appeal to the Association for Play Therapy. The decision of the Association for Play Therapy is final.

Refund Policy - All refund requests must be made in writing within 15 days of the purchase of continuing education programs. Every effort will be made to achieve resolution, including, but not limited to: refund of fees, substitution of course purchased, credit provided for future course. Please contact the NVAPT Board of Directors at nva4pt@gmail.com or 7260 West Azure Drive, Suite 140-1226, Las Vegas, NV 89130 for additional information.