The Goos-Haenchen shift of a totally reflected beam at the planar interface of two dielectric media, as if the incident beam is reflected from beneath the interface between the incident and transmitted media, has been geometrically associated with the penetration of the incident photons in the less-dense forbidden transmission region. This geometrical approach is here generalized to analytically calculate the Goos-Haenchen shift in one- and two-dimensional periodic structures. Several numerical examples are presented, and the obtained results are successfully tested against the well-known Artman's formula. The proposed approach is shown to be a fast, simple, and efficient method that can provide good physical insight to the nature of the phenomenon.