Grow into your practice…

At The Heart of Play, we believe becoming a therapist is both a professional and a personal process. It involves developing clinical skills, deepening self-awareness, and learning to be present with another person’s experience.

We offer one paid each year. Why one? We want to curate a life and career of intentionality and it begins with field placement. Our team is able to dedicate their wealth of knowledge and resources to assist in ensuring your experience is hands-on, experiential in nature, and growth-oriented.

Our field placement experiences are designed to support that growth with intention. We value the time, effort, and perspective interns bring, and we believe meaningful learning deserves meaningful support.

We welcome learners with curiosity, respect, and an appreciation for their unique strengths. Grounded in Gestalt and person-centered values, our approach emphasizes awareness, authentic connection, and trust in each person’s capacity for growth.

You do not need to arrive with every answer. We invite you to bring an openness to learning, a willingness to reflect, and a commitment to meeting others with empathy.

Through supported experience, interns can begin to connect classroom knowledge with the living, unfolding work of therapy.

Intentional Experiential Learning

Field placement is an opportunity to develop your clinical understanding and your way of being with clients. Our aim is to create space for observation, participation, reflection, and increasing responsibility as your readiness develops.

Learning experiences are shaped by your educational requirements, stage of development, and appropriate scope of practice. Depending on your placement, opportunities may include:

• Observing how therapeutic relationships develop through empathy, presence, and attunement.

• Participating in clinical work with guidance appropriate to your training.

• Exploring play, creative expression, and experiential approaches.

• Developing assessment, treatment planning, and documentation skills.

• Reflecting on how your own feelings, assumptions, and responses influence your work.

• Receiving feedback that supports both accountability and confidence.

We value the learning that happens when you pause, notice, ask questions, and consider a new perspective.

Relationship at the Heart of Learning

Our approach to supervision is collaborative and developmentally responsive. We seek to offer a learning relationship grounded in empathy, genuineness, and respect—where questions are welcomed and challenges can be explored openly.

Drawing from Rogerian principles, we value understanding your experience and supporting your emerging professional identity. Through a Gestalt lens, we invite awareness of what is happening in the present moment: within yourself, in the therapeutic relationship, and in the larger environment.

Together, these perspectives support thoughtful practice and a growing capacity to respond with intention.

Ethical and Trauma-Informed Care

Our commitment to learning is inseparable from our responsibility to clients.

We emphasize care that respects dignity, autonomy, culture, and lived experience. Interns are supported in understanding informed consent, confidentiality, professional boundaries, scope of competence, and the thoughtful use of supervision.

Trauma-informed care guides how we approach relationships and learning. We prioritize safety, transparency, collaboration, and meaningful choice. We encourage curiosity about the context of a person’s experience and respect for their pace, strengths, and ways of adapting.

Ethical practice is an ongoing process of reflection, consultation, and accountability.

Explore a Field Placement with The Heart of Play

We welcome students who are curious, reflective, and committed to compassionate, ethical care. Our paid internship experiences offer an opportunity to grow within a practice that values both the learner and the people we serve.

To inquire, please submit your application and required materials by click the button below.

We look forward to hearing from you. -Nolan