Theresa Kestly, PhD, RPT-S™, is a psychologist, educator, consultant, Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor with the Association for Play Therapy, and Registered Sand Therapist-Consultant/Trainer with the World Association of Sand Therapy Professionals®. She maintains a private practice in Corrales, New Mexico, where she specializes in play therapy and sandtray therapy with children, adults, families, couples, and small groups, with particular attention to trauma, attachment, emotional regulation, and relational healing.
Theresa is an international presenter and the founder and director of the Sand Tray Training Institute of New Mexico, where she provides large-group seminars and small-group intensive training for psychotherapists in child and adult sandtray therapy. She previously served as a senior staff psychologist at the Albuquerque Family and Child Guidance Center, where her work included child, adolescent, and family therapy, consultations with the Indian Health Service, and consultations with Albuquerque Public Schools.
Theresa has supervised psychology, counseling, and psychiatry trainees as an adjunct faculty member at the University of New Mexico. She also served as the first president of the New Mexico Association for Play Therapy. She is the author of The Interpersonal Neurobiology of Play: Brain-Building Interventions for Emotional Well-Being, published in the Norton Interpersonal Neurobiology Series, and has contributed numerous book chapters on play, sandtray therapy, neuroscience, attachment, and trauma-informed relational healing, including “Endowed with Play Circuitry,” published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers in 2024.
Her work brings together play, sand, relationship, neuroscience, and embodied experience in support of emotional healing and integration across the lifespan.
