A student who regularly participates in classes and fulfills all the academic requirements of the program will be awarded a certificate of completion from the Continuing Education Unit, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa.
The Playground Approach (ALP) - Intensive course
An Integrative Framework for Practicing Cross-Sensory Attunement
in the Potential Play Space
Therapeutic work with neurodivergent individuals
with an emphasis on autism
International Program - Stage I
When?
To be scheduled
Duration
10 Zoom sessions
5-day in-person intensive (consecutive days)
Target Audience
Psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, social workers, arts therapists
Academic Consultant
Ms. Miriam Ben-Oz, MSW
Academic Director and Course Facilitator
Ms. Keren Rosenbaum, MA
About the Program
What becomes possible when we listen differently?
A client withdraws. The intervention that usually works falls flat. You feel stuck. These are the moments the Playground Approach was built for. It offers therapists a structured practice for starting from what is already present in the encounter and building connection from there, in real time.
In every encounter, we can become aware of how a voice answers a movement, rhythm shifts with distance, and silence carries meaning. Together, such happenings form what we call the cross-sensory layer of communication: the movement between words, at times within partial words, and present even when there are no words at all.
Developed over more than 20 years, the Playground Approach (ALP) teaches therapists to attune to this layer. Small shifts in how a therapist listens and responds can change the course of a session, moment by moment. The therapist takes part in what unfolds, and the work expands each person’s ways of participating: choosing, influencing, and co-creating meaning in real time.
The course is built around three foundations:
- Reflexive Listening: listening through your own participation, noticing what you bring, what comes back, and how this shapes your next step.
- Cross-Sensory Attunement: sensing how qualities of expression resonate across forms, so that a rhythm can be answered with a sound, or a gesture with a touch.
- Joining: finding a way into what is already happening through a contribution of your own, so that different voices can sound together, each remaining itself.
Underlying all three is playfulness as an inner mindset: staying curious, allowing the unexpected, and creating conditions for play by practicing playfulness oneself. It brings openness and lightness into the therapeutic space, even in moments that feel stuck.
For therapists familiar with developmental-relational approaches and with embodied and enactive perspectives, the Playground Approach also invites listening to the cross-sensory expressive pattern: to what returns and develops with variations. In therapeutic work, this kind of listening makes it possible to meet people who find connection, regulation or availability for the encounter challenging, and to build together the conditions in which safety, trust and initiative can grow, and shared activity can begin to flow.
The approach is in dialogue with the work of Donald Winnicott and Daniel Stern, and draws on the theoretical work of Keren Rosenbaum and Miriam Ben-Oz on cross-sensory expressive patterns.
To go deeper: Cross-Sensory Expressive Patterns, published in Human Development (Karger, 2026)
In the Playground Approach, the therapist learns to ask: What is already happening here? Where do interest, response or initiative appear? How can I join without taking over? And what in my own participation opens connection or makes it harder? The work rests on respect for each person’s ways of expression.
With people on the autism spectrum, movement, repetition and sensory expressions can be starting points for getting to know one another. The same listening is relevant for people who speak fluently and for whom reciprocity or flexibility within a relationship takes effort, and for situations of anxiety, rigidity or communicative stuckness.
Beyond autism, the Playground Approach speaks to any therapeutic encounter in which connection needs a new way in. It grew in clinics, classrooms, communities and organizations, and offers therapists from every discipline a practice they can bring into their own work, with children, adolescents and adults alike.
About the Lecturer
Keren Rosenbaum, M.A., is a composer, conductor and cross-disciplinary researcher, the developer of the Playground Approach (ALP: Attune Listening Playground), and the program’s academic director and facilitator. The approach grew out of her work in composition and out of the Reflex Invisible Score, a listening technique she developed, in which form, time and variation are the material of the work. It developed as a practice for creating connection and meaning across many different settings: in extreme situations and communities in distress, in education and special education, and in entirely mainstream settings such as organizations and universities, in Israel and internationally. Among others, it was applied in systemic work in northern New Jersey with Dr. Terzini-Hollar, educational psychologist.
The methodological and pedagogical conceptualization of the approach was formed together with Miriam Ben-Oz, MSW, social worker, senior supervisor and psychotherapist, who serves as the program’s academic consultant and takes part in supervising participants. Today the approach is applied by therapists, educators, organizations and professionals in therapy, support and community work in Israel and internationally.
Each weekly Zoom session combines theoretical learning, practical exercise and supervision of a case from the field.
The 5 live intensive days will consist of practice, deepening, and experiential learning.
The program will address the following core areas:
- The cross-sensory layer as a developmental-relational space: connection and meaning emerge within the encounter and over time, through voice, movement, rhythm, breath, timing and space, alongside words and before interpretation, representation or correction, forming a basis for regulation, flexibility and development. We will explore how this understanding opens new ways of meeting children and adults on the autism spectrum and with neurodivergence, and situations in which communication is complex.
- Cross-Sensory Attunement: recognizing connections between qualities of expression in real time, and practicing response through another sense or means of expression, as well as through silence and presence. Emphasis will be placed on moments of sensory difficulty, overload, flooding or rigidity, in which the cross-sensory layer can support regulation and availability for the encounter.
- Joining and continuity: joining what is already happening, including when a person withdraws, repeats an action, finds it hard to use speech, or speaks fluently yet finds connection difficult. We will practice Engage-with-variation, creating a shared continuity that can be recognized and returned to, co-regulation and shared listening.
- Reflexive Listening: listening through the therapist’s own participation: to what they bring, what comes back, and how this shapes the next step. We will focus on sensory, movement-based, repetitive and nonverbal expressions as part of the relationship, and on holding interpretation in favor of real-time responsiveness that allows the relationship to continue, expand and organize from within.
- Inner playfulness as a state of mind: practicing playfulness in the therapist themself, as a condition for creating a shared space of play.
- Applying the Playground Approach in therapeutic work: integrating the principles of the approach into work with autism, neurodivergence, difficulties in connection, regulation and availability for the encounter, and complex sensory profiles. We will learn to create conditions for regulation, flexibility and development, and to choose how to continue according to the person, the context and the therapeutic goals.
The program is offered as an international course, in a blended format of online and in-person learning:
- 10 Zoom sessions of 2 academic hours each (20 hours), forming a continuous learning sequence. Each session has three parts: theoretical learning, practical exercise and supervision of a case from the field. Some sessions include joint supervision by Keren Rosenbaum and Miriam Ben-Oz.
- A 5-day in-person intensive on consecutive days in June (50 hours), dedicated to experiential practice of the approach, group work, real-time observation and professional processing, and to deepening the ability to apply the approach in therapeutic, educational and rehabilitation settings. Exact dates will be announced.
Total: 70 academic hours
Stage I serves as an introductory and foundational phase of the Playground Approach, and provides the basis for continued deepening in advanced stages of the program.
- Actively participate in at least 80% of the online Zoom sessions.
- View the recording of any Zoom session missed.
- Participate actively in all in-person intensive sessions.
- Gain practical experience applying the approach according to the program guidelines.
- Present a case for supervision.
- Submit a written case summary.
- Complete program feedback.
The program is tailored for psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, social workers, creative arts therapists, professionals from allied health disciplines (speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists) working with children, adolescents, or adults who are autistic or neurodivergent, have Down syndrome or intellectual and developmental disabilities, experience communication or regulation challenges, or are in situations in which a deeper development of connection, participation, and communication is needed.
Applicants from special education backgrounds may be considered on an individual basis by the admissions committee.
The program is also relevant to work with verbally communicative individuals when spoken language is available but challenges remain in establishing connection, a sense of safety, flexibility, participation, or cooperation within the encounter.
Suitable applicants will be invited to a personal interview via Zoom.
The number of participants is limited to 20.
Please Contact directly for budget proposal that includes:
Lecturer fee
Traveling and accommodation
Workshops materials and equipment