Running Card Sessions Over Video: A Practical Guide

Card work is tactile by nature. The client reaches out, chooses, turns a card over, moves it closer or pushes it away — and much of the therapeutic value lives in those small physical decisions. So when sessions moved to video, many practitioners quietly dropped their decks, unsure how to translate something so hands-on to a screen.

It translates better than you'd expect, provided you set it up well. Here's a practical guide to running metaphorical card sessions over video.

The Problem with Holding Cards to a Webcam

The most common approach is also the weakest: the therapist spreads physical cards on their desk and holds them up, or points a second camera at the table. The client can see the cards, but that's all they can do. They can't browse at their own pace, can't choose by reaching, can't arrange or rearrange.

That difference matters more than it sounds. The client shifts from participant to audience, and the agency that makes card work valuable — I chose this one, I put it here — quietly disappears. What's left is a therapist describing images while a client watches.

What You Actually Need

For remote card work to keep its therapeutic quality, the client needs to be able to:

• See the cards clearly, at their own screen, without craning at a webcam.
• Choose for themselves, rather than having a card selected on their behalf.
• Place and move cards — arrangement carries meaning, especially in relational and parts work.
• Work in the same space as you, so you're looking at one board rather than two separate views.

Anything that preserves those four things will work. A shared digital board does all of them.

How a Shared Session Runs

The practical shape is simple. You start a session on a deck, share a link, and your client joins — no account, no download, which matters because clients shouldn't have to register for software to attend their own therapy. From there you're both looking at the same board in real time: cards move for both of you, cursors are visible, the timer is shared.

One detail worth planning around is permissions. Being able to set what a client can do — select cards, move them, flip or remove them, whether faces are revealed — isn't a technical nicety. It's clinical pacing. Early in a piece of work, or with a client who's anxious about "doing it wrong," a narrower set of options is containing. Later, opening it up gives them more room. Being able to change this mid-session lets you follow where the client actually is.

You can read the full walkthrough of how sessions and permissions work on the collaborative sessions page.

Practical Setup Notes

• Run video and board separately. Keep your usual video platform for faces and voice, and the card board in another window. Screen-sharing a board is worse than both people opening it — sharing makes the client a spectator again.
• Send the link before the session where possible, or paste it in the video chat. Fumbling with links eats into the hour.
• Do a short orientation the first time. Two minutes showing the client how to pick up and move a card removes most of the friction. After the first session it's invisible.
• Name the tech reality. A brief "if either of us drops out, the board is saved and we'll pick up where we left off" prevents a connection wobble from feeling like a rupture.

Adapting Your Interventions

Most card exercises transfer directly, but a few adjustments help online:

• Slow down the choosing. Without physical presence you lose some of the ambient cues, so give the client explicit time and say you're doing it: "take a moment, no rush."
• Narrate what you notice. In the room you might see a client hesitate over a card. On screen, say it: "I noticed you moved that one and then moved it back."
• Use arrangement deliberately. Spatial work — closeness, distance, what's placed behind what — is one of the things that survives the transition intact. Lean on it.
• Ask rather than assume. You can't see the client's screen or their body fully. Check in more often about how it's landing.

What You Gain

Remote card work isn't purely a compromise. A few things are genuinely easier: you're never limited by which physical decks you own or remembered to bring; a session's final layout can be saved and returned to weeks later; and some clients find a screen slightly less exposing than reaching across a table, which can make them bolder in what they choose.

One Clarification for Clients

Working with cards over video sometimes prompts clients to ask whether this is a reading. Worth answering plainly, as you would in the room: metaphorical cards carry no fixed meanings and predict nothing. There's nothing to interpret and no right answer — the card simply reflects what the client brings to it. Said early, this removes performance anxiety and keeps the authority with them.

Try It in Your Next Session

If you've been leaving your decks out of online work, this is worth a single experiment. Start a session on a deck like Essence or Figures, invite your client with a link, and let them place the cards themselves. Most practitioners are surprised by how quickly it stops feeling like a workaround.

See how collaborative sessions work — or browse the decks.

— MindTrays Team