Grounded in gestalt therapy's power to transform and heal, the VAGP provides practitioners with opportunities for connection, learning and reflection, and is committed to promoting gestalt therapy in the wider community.
The VAGP is a member-based organisation for graduates, students and others interested in gestalt practice, including organisational consultants and coaches. It operates as a peer support and community of practice.
TheVAGP is committed to supporting the development of the gestalt practitioner beyond their training and to provide new opportunities for leadership in the community. For the established practitioner, it offers connection, space for reflection and professional development. The association seeks to create a thriving space in which gestalt students, graduates and practitioners can explore and develop their practice and deepen their connections to the community of practice.
Annual membership fees are: $90 full membership; $50 concession and $30 for students. If you are experiencing financial hardship please contact us. We don't want to exclude people on the basis of cost.
One of the VAGP’s central offerings is The Gestalt Projects. These wonderful and diverse seminars range from the experiential, the ground-breaking and the transformative, as well as deepening into traditions and making natural links to exciting new modalities. They are designed to be inspiring, interactive, highly informative and affordable, and form a large part of VAGP’s main aim to connect, learn and reflect together.
Please click here to read and register for our upcoming projects. Read more about our successful past projects below. We welcome feedback on any of our events, email us at admin@vagp.com.au
Each year we have a social event where we celebrate together and feed the spirit of the association. This is expanding into a celebration of the whole gestalt community and will include a gathering of current students and graduation.
We are also contemplating developing a listing of gestalt practitioners and their specialties to promote on our website as a way of supporting one-another’s work in the field. Stay tuned!
VAGP priorities for 2023
Professional development focused activities – as well as the Gestalt Project, VAGP offers supervision groups, and we are planning a mini-conference. Demonstration work and research seminars may also be offered as part of the Gestalt Project.
We are evolving ideas to establish special interest groups – such as gestalt and the environment, gestalt and LBGTIQ+, trauma, gestalt and private practice groups, reading groups and peer supervision groups.
We will also be organising social events – which seek to embrace a more informal opportunity to connect with peers and have fun!
Benefits of belonging to a community of practice
- Increased collaboration. VAGP connects people and creates an opportunity for people to interact, pool resources and work in partnership
- Innovation and creation of new ideas/knowledge: VAGP allows members to share experiences and generate new and creative ways of working as a gestalt practitioner.
- Professional development: VAGP encourages peer learning groups, professional development workshops, and learning communities
- Rapid problem solving: The VAGP provides another opportunity for sharing of important information which affects practitioners and helps facilitate quick and efficient problems solving.
- Opportunities to share, reflect and enjoy the company of other gestalt practitioners.
Upcoming events
The Founding Committee of the VAGP
Eva Deligiannis, Craig Delphine, Tony Jackson, Rhys Price-Robertson, Annette Reeves, Sean Renehan, John Singleton.
In 2023 the Gestalt Projects seminars were:
Facilitator: Dr Leanne O’Shea
Overview
It is perhaps the erotic that keeps clients coming back to therapy; the sense, however tremulous, that something else is possible, the disruption of 'business as usual', the hope for connection to something of substance, that thing that makes the heart sing with joy. Rarely is this longing explicit, but I believe it underpins what compels many towards therapy and perhaps represents a reach for the last fragile threads of hope in an otherwise despairing world. It is what we most need, and of what we are most afraid.
But this longing for the enlivening energy that wakes us from the ordinariness of our lives is a tender and delicate thing. This engagement with the erotic stirs our creativity, calling us into a recognition of what is most important. But it does so against the ordinariness of humanity, our stories of loss, harm and grief, and in a world that tangles ideas of romantic love with authentic intimacy. Pleasure and sex exist in a toxic morass of negativity, objectification, attachment, and commodification.
About the facilitator:
Dr Leanne O’Shea is a psychotherapist, supervisor, and educator. She studied the gestalt approach in Melbourne and London. In addition to her private practice work, she holds a number of teaching positions, including the Director of Training at Gestalt Therapy Australia. She is a faculty member with Gestalt Therapy Brisbane, and an Associate with Relational Change in the UK. She is interested in creating greater awareness of and sensitivity to our relational responsibility and is particularly passionate about the place of sexuality and the erotic within the therapeutic relationship.
Presenters: Scott Kellogg and Amanda Garcia Torres
Overview
In Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, Fritz Perls spoke not only about ambivalence as a core part of the human experience, but also about the central importance of being able to express our feelings of appreciation and resentment towards others – especially those who are important to us. In this workshop, we will first introduce our Four Dialogues Model of Chairwork Psychotherapy. We will then specifically focus on the Vector Dialogue Structure – which is an elegant and profound way of working through complex emotions in a safe way. After doing a demonstration, we will invite the participants to form small groups and to role-play and practice this approach using their own experiences or patient material; we will then debrief the experience. If there is any time remaining, we will do some case consultations.
About the presenters:
Scott Kellogg, PhD, is the author of Transformational Chairwork: Using Psychotherapeutic Dialogues in Clinical Practice (2015, Rowman & Littlefield). He is a former Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at New York University and a Past-President of Division of Addictions of the New York State Psychological Association. An ISST-certified Advanced Schema Therapist, he has also trained in Gestalt Therapy and Voice Dialogue. Dr. Kellogg currently runs a Chairwork-centered private practice in New York City. Through the Transformational Chairwork Psychotherapy Project, he has taught this method of psychotherapeutic dialogue to practitioners in the United States and abroad. Website: www.transformationalchairwork.com.
Amanda Garcia Torres, LMHC, is a certified Chairwork Psychotherapist and Co-Director at the Transformational Chairwork Psychotherapy Project. Ms. Garcia Torres received her Master’s Degree in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness from New York University and has also completed training in Voice Dialogue. She began her journey with TCPP in 2013 and has trained clinicians in NYC and internationally for four years. Her presentations and writings have addressed topics including Chairwork, trauma, social justice, and identity issues. Ms. Garcia Torres is in private practice at Chairwork Therapy NYC. Website: https://chairworktherapynyc.com/.
Facilitator: Gina Denholm
Overview
Does the idea of working with physical conditions in the therapy room fill you with dread? Do you avoid engaging directly with your client’s fibromyalgia, back pain, migraine or fatigue, believing that you can only work with the emotional suffering they produce?
Many psychotherapists are reluctant to address their clients’ physical symptoms or diagnoses, believing them to be beyond the scope of our practice. Yet persistent physical health conditions without clear long-term outcomes are on the rise. If we aspire to working with the whole person in therapy, we need to be ready to engage robustly with physical suffering – and take seriously our role in potential recovery.
This workshop looks at a new paradigm for working with chronic pain, advocating for the role we therapists can play in helping clients recover from, not just live with, distressing physical symptoms. Come and explore the meaning of pain through the lenses of modern pain science and gestalt therapy, learn why there is hope for recovery and experiment with how to befriend and engage with physical symptoms in the therapeutic process.
About the facilitator:
Gina Denholm is a psychotherapist in private practice in Brunswick West, VIC. She has a special interest in exploring chronic pain and illness through a Gestalt lens. In her practice, she draws on body process and parts work to help people befriend, make meaning of and often recover from physical symptoms in the context of their broader life concerns.
Facilitator: Belinda Gibson
About the supervision group
To improve their work and practice responsibly, therapists and other mental health practitioners need a dedicated space and trusted relationships where they can reflect on their work and deepen their understanding and impact. This supervision group will offer this space, drawing on clinical expertise to mentor, navigate ethical dilemmas, solve problems, gatekeep and engage in challenging conversations.
Having delivered supervision to students, interns, and graduates for many years, the ConnectGround faculty are knowledgeable about the multifaceted aspects of supervision. We have experience training and supervising within the Gestalt Centre and beyond, and we use a relational approach to supervision.
About the facilitator:
Belinda Gibson is a psychologist and Gestalt therapist working in private practice providing counselling to individuals and couples. Belinda works with individuals, couples and groups providing therapy and clinical supervision.
She completed her gestalt training with the Gestalt Institute of Western Australia and has also trained with the Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles (GATLA).
Belinda has worked in a number of settings that include forensic, tertiary, community, and the private sector. Her therapeutic work with clients is influenced by her belief that with increased awareness, clients have the capacity to resolve difficulties, enhance their sense of wellbeing, increase their resilience and self-support, and experience fulfilling relationships.
Facilitator: Claire Niven
Overview
When working alongside younger children, clinicians may feel a sense of discomfort when “all they want to do is play”. Questions then arise for clinicians – is this still therapeutic and what is my role now? In this workshop, we will explore the purpose, function, and dynamics of child-led imaginative play in the therapeutic environment.
We will investigate practical ways of joining developmentally and creatively with children in their world, while seeking to understand and engage play as the child’s language and pathway to expression, communication, and sense-making. In this way, the clinician can facilitate the reframing of a child’s trauma narrative within the context and therapeutic distance of play.
For those who are able, we recommend wearing comfortable clothes suitable for playing on the floor, although play exploration will be adapted to different mobility needs. Our exploration will focus on how concepts from play therapy can be integrated within a relational gestalt approach.
About the facilitator:
Claire Niven (she/her) is a Quandamooka woman, social worker and play therapist. She has worked for 5yrs with refugee and asylum seeker populations in Australia, in a variety of different roles, as well as working in domestic violence, before moving to London in 2016 to start her Play Therapy MA. Roles in London included the design/delivery of a pilot youth outreach program on hate crime, domestic violence and sexual assault, facilitating community development responses to child exploitation, mental health trainer for the Anna Freud Centre, and play therapist at an inter-disciplinary clinic. Currently, Claire works at Berry Street as a senior clinician and as a lecturer for Deakin's MA Play Therapy. She enjoys donning elaborate costumes, at times for no particular reason, has been likened to a cockatoo as a child (noisy and destructive), and is passionate about challenging systemic harm and exploring how the psychotherapy profession can better identify and address discriminatory practice and unconscious bias.
Presenter: Michael Clemmens, PhD
Overview
This workshop will focus on the perspective of our “lived body” (Merleau-Ponty) as the basis of Gestalt Therapy. This attunement from within and between us is how we come to know ourselves and are intertwined in our development and continuing contact. Yet the emphasis in much of emerging neuroscience and somatic approaches orients towards the “objective” body, the measurable observable definition of human behaviour. Holding on to the differences of these two perspectives, we will explore the dynamic of our experience and the impact of being perceived and defined while directly experiencing our sensory immediacy.
About the facilitator:
Michael Clemmens, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and trainer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Michael works with individuals and groups focusing on the relationship between personality adaptation, physical processes, and culture. He is a lecturer at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, the Gestalt Institute of Toronto, and the Esalen Institute. He teaches Gestalt in study groups both nationally and internationally. Michael is the author of Beyond Sobriety (1997) published by Wiley Books and Embodied Body Relational Gestalt: Theory and Practice (2020) published by Gestalt Press, and has written articles in the British Gestalt Journal, Gestalt Review, and other journals.
Presenter: Claire Taubert
Overview
In this seminar we will discuss the attitudinal stance of "clinical hospitality". This stance of clinical hospitality offers a needed antidote amongst the prevailing culture of immediacy, short-cuts, demand for rapid outcomes, influencers. We will consider what constitutes clinical hospitality and how comfortably this attitude sits next to the foundational principles of gestalt therapy and theory. I believe clinical hospitality is a relational attitude that creates a fundamental and necessary scaffolding for the therapeutic alliance, supporting the clinician towards developing an efficacious but pragmatic, ethical, and fallible stance in the therapeutic engagement. Further to the consideration of therapeutic engagement, we will discuss the pernicious impact of reductionism on a relational stance and consider the potential effects of the plethora of shorthand teleological approaches and techniques so prevalent in our psychotherapy culture, exploring how the attitude of clinical hospitality can provide some ballast within this particular context for the therapeutic alliance.
About the facilitator:
Claire Taubert (BBSc, BSc, B.Ed (Counselling) MAPS, GANZ) is the co-founder and past managing director of Gestalt Therapy Australia (GTA). She has been involved in the Australian and International Gestalt community as a student, trainer, therapist, supervisor, mentor, and member of the GANZ council for over 30 years.
She was originally trained in Melbourne, UK, and San Diego and has furthered her interests in relational Gestalt with an ongoing training and relationship with the Pacific Gestalt Institute (USA) where she is associate faculty. She is the founder and current director of Gestalt Concepts, Melbourne.
Claire has run a psychotherapy and psychology practice in Melbourne and Ballarat for the past 30+ years, where she works as a relationally orientated psychotherapist and psychologist. Claire also works as a consultant to various community, mental health, and medical organisations, facilitating groups and providing clinical supervision, mentoring, and support to managers and health workers.
Presenter: Steffi Bednarek
Overview
We live at an evolutionary threshold, not just in terms of our energy consumption and lifestyles, but also for the field of psychotherapy and our understanding of mental health. The habitual way of viewing good mental health as a way of functioning symptom-free, within a system that destroys our basis of life, is no longer a reliable measure. If we want to move to an understanding of mental health within a life-enhancing system, we need to co-create a wider understanding of what it means to be human in an inter-connected world.
This seminar explores the role of psychotherapy at a time of global disruption and asks important questions about ways in which psychological theory, practice and ethics may need to widen in order to become porous to the world.
About the facilitator:
Steffi Bednarek is a gestalt psychotherapist, trauma therapist and climate psychologist. Her work explores the interface between climate change and mental health. Steffi is a co-founder of the journal Explorations into Climate Psychology, a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance, a firekeeper at the World Ethics Forum and a member of the Climate Change Group of the American Psychological Association. Her book “Climate, Psychology and Change’ will be published in 2024. Steffi has worked for national governments, the corporate sector, the sustainability sector, the Council of Europe, large NGOs and many psychotherapy training institutes worldwide. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, the BBC and numerous international publications and podcasts.
Presenter: Dr Marie-Anne Chidiac, DPsych
Overview
Events in the last few years from Brexit to the present disturbing war in Ukraine and the overall deepening of political divides around the world, all point to people feeling marginalised even in countries that assert themselves as beacons of democracy. This feeling of powerlessness presents as well in our work spaces and individual lives, where issues of privilege and power seem frequently confusing, either over-emphasised or totally ignored. Understanding power, its impact and how it manifests feels more urgent than ever.
In this talk, building on both her clinical and organisational experience, Marie-Anne will put forward a Gestalt understanding of power not just as coercive but also as enabling and structuring the field. In doing so, she will build on the work of two field theorists; Kurt Lewin and Pierre Bourdieu and show how their work might support us in better understanding prevalent power dynamics being enacted in the world today.
About the facilitator:
Dr Marie-Anne Chidiac, DPsych, is a Lebanese-British UKCP Psychotherapist, organisational consultant, coach, trainer and supervisor. Alongside her work with individuals in clinical practice, she is an experienced OD practitioner and supports teams and organisations internationally in both the public and private sectors. She is one of the UK’s leading trainers in Organisational Gestalt and the author of “Relational Organisational Gestalt: An Emergent Approach to Organisational Development”. She is a co-founder of ‘Relational Change’, an organisation that works to develop relational skills in individuals, teams, and organisations, and an Accredited Coach and Associate of Ashridge Business School.
Overview
Gestalt therapy came of age in the 60s, a time of experimentation and expansiveness, of breakthroughs and breakdowns. Our tradition has matured over the ensuing decades. Yet it’s also lost something of the aliveness, exuberance, and intensity of its youth. Can we salvage aspects of this energy without repeating familiar missteps and harms? This mini conference will centre aspects of human experience—specifically, sex and psychedelic consciousness—that have the potential to enliven our therapeutic practice and tradition. Bring an open mind and heart. And enough energy for a rockin’ after-party!
In 2022 the Gestalt Projects seminars were:
Presenter/s: Gávi Ansara and eden brown
Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP) is an internationally recognised, comprehensive framework for responding to any clinical issue or marginalised lived experience in ways that promote personal and community wellbeing. This seminar will provide an introductory overview of some key AOP principles, concepts, and techniques. We will apply an AOP perspective to evaluate some key strengths and limitations of Gestalt therapy and make suggestions for building an anti-oppressive Gestalt therapy community of practice. We will cover some historical, conceptual, and applied elements of AOP to explain its therapeutic value, including:
- How AOP differs from “friendly”, “inclusive’”, ”diversity positive”, and “affirming” approaches
- Why cultural humility is safer and more effective than “cultural competence”
- How to recognise and address implicit biases and privilege in your work
- Some Anti-Oppressive clinical practices you can apply to your work
- How AOP can help you to resolve some seemingly ‘”too hard basket” dilemmas and transform your practice
Presenter bio’s:
Dr Gávi Ansara (PhD Psychol, MCouns) (He/him) provided 20+ years of anti-oppressive practice alongside communities experiencing marginalisation. He received American Psychological Association’s Transgender Research Award for original, significant research, UK Higher Education Academy’s National Psychology Postgraduate Teaching Award, and University of Surrey Vice Chancellor’s Alumni Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to international human rights and social justice. Gávi is a polycultural, polyamorous, androsexual man living on Boon Wurrung land. He has lived experience of disability, homelessness, racist violence, and gender, body, kinship, and sexuality oppression. He strives toward cultural humility regarding his literacy, verbal, allistic, binary gender, sighted, and non-Aboriginal privilege. Contact at gavi[at]ansarapsychotherapy.com
eden brown (they/them) completed their Gestalt training in 2021. They have worked in the international development and community services sector for the past 12 years; within Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations and Indigenous non-government organisations in the Asia-Pacific region, has supported young people in state care, women and children escaping family violence and provided counselling to men who enact violence. They currently work as a counsellor for a LGBTIQ+ community health agency. They also co-chair an international online Gestalt Gender Group and is a collaborator and facilitator at Open Gestalt. eden is an able-bodied, queer, trans non-binary pasefika person of colour.
Presenters Kirti Singh and eden brown
Years ago, Gestalt took a relational turn paving way for its next turn. Given the crossroad we are at, the next ethical turn for Gestalt is towards social justice” - Kirti Singh. Through this dialogue, Kirti and eden would like to invite you to join them in expanding our capacity to hold the complexities and dynamics of the contemporary field. The current field conditioners draw our attention to the anthropocene; a landscape of rapidly evolving pandemics, climate challenges, racialised violence, ongoing sexual assault of women and children, LGTBQI-free zones, and a regression in geopolitical responsiveness. We propose more complexity, depth, and an expansion of our current ethical stance; we propose that, given the current field conditioners, the next ethical turn is a global social justice turn. Neutrality is a political position. How do we as practitioners stay experience-near, embody, integrate, and articulate an ethic of social justice in our practice? Let’s dialogue; bring your unique perspective, given our differences in positioning, to this conversation.
Presenter bio’s:
Kirti Singh is an International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified professional coach, and a process group facilitator. As director of exponent coaching, she works with individuals, organizations, and communities. She is a faculty at Open Gestalt and a visiting faculty at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She is a cisgender woman, able-bodied, a person of color, Indian-born immigrant to Canada. In her work, she acknowledges the impact of social identities and socio-cultural field conditions; and works towards making spaces more equitable and diverse. Currently, she is co-organising the Human Rights and Social Responsibility Committee at the International Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (IAAGT). Contact at kspaliwal.singh@gmail.com.
eden brown (they/them) completed their Gestalt training in 2021. They have worked in the international development and community services sector for the past 12 years; within Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations and Indigenous non-government organisations in the Asia-Pacific region, has supported young people in state care, women and children escaping family violence and provided counselling to men who enact violence. They currently work as a counsellor for a LGBTIQ+ community health agency. They also co-chair an international online Gestalt Gender Group and is a collaborator and facilitator at Open Gestalt. eden is an able-bodied, queer, trans non-binary pasefika person of colour. Contact at edenbrown3000@gmail.com.
Presenters: Scott Kellogg and Amanda Garcia Torres
Chairwork was first developed by Dr. Jacob Moreno, the creator of Psychodrama, and then made famous in the 1960s through the work of Dr. Frederick “Fritz” Perls at the Esalen Institute in California. Following his death in 1970, a wide range of integrative psychotherapists adopted and re-imagined the practice of Chairwork. The Four Dialogues Model – Giving Voice, Internal Dialogues, Telling the Story, and Relationships and Encounters – represents a crystallisation of nearly 60 years of Chairwork development. In this seminar, we will present the Four Dialogues model and show how it can be used with a wide range of clinical issues. We will then do two demonstrations or case consultation sessions with volunteers from the group. This will be followed by discussion with the group.
Presenter bio’s:
Scott Kellogg, PhD, is the author of Transformational Chairwork: Using Psychotherapeutic Dialogues in Clinical Practice (2015, Rowman & Littlefield). He is a former Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at New York University and a Past-President of Division of Addictions of the New York State Psychological Association. An ISST-certified Advanced Schema Therapist, he has also trained in Gestalt Therapy and Voice Dialogue. Dr. Kellogg currently runs a Chairwork-centred private practice in New York City. Through the Transformational Chairwork Psychotherapy Project, he has taught this method of psychotherapeutic dialogue to practitioners in the United States and abroad. Website: www.transformationalchairwork.com. Contact at: kelloggchairwork@gmail.com
Amanda Garcia Torres, LMHC, is a certified Chairwork Psychotherapist and Co-Director of Training at the Transformational Chairwork Psychotherapy Project. Ms. Garcia Torres received her Master’s Degree in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness from New York University and has also completed training in Voice Dialogue. She began her journey with TCPP in 2013 and has trained clinicians in NYC and internationally. Her presentations and writings have addressed such topics as Chairwork, trauma, social justice, oppression, and identity issues. Ms. Garcia Torres is in private practice at Chairwork Therapy NYC. Website: www.chairworktherapynyc.com.
Depth Enquiry is an experiential process for working with trauma (developmental or single incident), negatively held beliefs, anxiety, and phobias. This workshop will give some background as to how it was developed, some theory, case studies, and a presentation of work with an attendee (if time permits). I will talk about the process in relation to some of the core gestalt principles: paradoxical theory of change, experiment, phenomenological enquiry, and field theory.
Presenter bio:
Amanda Gruhn studied gestalt and became a trainer at Sydney Gestalt Institute and Terrigal Gestalt Institute while running a practice with her partner. She developed Depth Enquiry over a number of years, after attending an EMDR training. Her practice now consists of work with individuals and couples, and with training programs. Website: https://www.depthenquiry.com.
Presenters: Anna Evans and Rhys Price-Robertson
Gestalt therapy has a holistic approach, promoting integration of mind and body. However, it is not uncommon for gestalt therapists to have a strong sense that the body is important, yet limited confidence in deepening embodied process with their clients. In this experiential seminar, we will explore practical ways to work with the conversations our bodies are already and always having. We will speak to the importance of meeting clients where they are on their journey to mind-body integration so that interventions match their orientation to their bodies. And we will explore therapists’ own capacities for embodiment. Come prepared to feel, move, practice, and connect.
Presenter bio’s:
Anna Evans is a psychologist and psychotherapist working in private practice and a member of GTA faculty. Anna has a keen interest in embodiment and was a yoga teacher for 10 years. She now follows an approach to yoga developed by Vanda Scaravelli. She is engrossed by the idea that every joint in the body is relational, and likes to explore approaches that cultivate an attitude of participation of both therapist and client in whatever is emerging.
Dr. Rhys Price-Robertson is a gestalt therapist, researcher, and member of GTA faculty. He believes that many of the issues people bring to therapy are connected to, and manifested in, the body, and that it is important for therapists to continually develop their own capacities for embodiment. Rhys has published widely on topics such as psychotherapy, mental health, fatherhood, family life, and social theory, and was previously the Editor of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia(PACJA).
Presenter: Leslie Ellis
Dreams provide immediate access to our clients' inner lives. When we are able to help our clients experience their dreams in a curious, open way, they are able to directly access the dream's tendency to carry their life situation forward. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Ellis has been working with dreams in clinical practice and has come to favour three embodied experiential dreamwork techniques: “finding the help” in a dream (from focusing), re-entering a dream element (from gestalt therapy), and dreaming the dream onward (from Jung). These experiential methods can be used and combined to safely and constructively navigate the depths of any dream. In this introductory workshop, Dr. Ellis will offer examples, a demonstration, and experiential exercises that will show participants how to allow the dreamer to discover for themselves what the dream is trying to tell them.
Presenter bio:
Dr. Leslie Ellis is a teacher, author, and psychotherapist interested in the many ways of cultivating inner life, especially through dreams and the body. She is currently offering online dreamwork instruction based on her book, A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (Routledge, 2020). She also offers training in focusing, a somatic approach to psychotherapy. Leslie has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and a Masters from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is vice president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and past president and a Certifying Coordinator with The International Focusing Institute.
Presenters: Annette Reeves
Many clients struggle with setting and maintaining healthy personal boundaries in their lives. Conducting boundary experiments is a way to explore the creation of safe boundaries that goes beyond just talking about them, offering clients a deeper and more nuanced experience of sensing and setting boundaries. Drawing on gestalt therapy principles, along with the trauma work of Pat Ogden and Bessel van der Kolk, and attachment theory, this in-person, experiential seminar will involve demonstrations of boundary experiments and chances for participants to practice what they have learned. It will also outline the guiding principles that will assist therapists in creating their own experiments that are appropriate for a particular client at a particular time.
Presenter bio:
Annette Reeves (BA [Sociology], BA [Vis. Art], DipEd, AdvDip Gestalt Psychotherapy, Level 2 Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Depth Enquiry) is a psychotherapist who has a particular interest in trauma work and is currently working in private practice in Fitzroy. She also works as a volunteer therapist with Thorne Harbour Health and is a proud member of a rainbow family. She is a mother and aunt and has worked in the creative industries for many years.
Panellists: Noel Haarburger, Annette Reeves, Anna Skolarikis, Phyllis Traficante & Rob Watson. Host: Rhys Price-Robertson
Date: Tuesday 29 November, 6:30pm-8:30pm.
Location: Elie
A number of Australian gestalt therapists have gone on to study somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, or similar trauma-focused modalities. What were they seeking in this training that they did not find in gestalt therapy? What does gestalt therapy offer that trauma modalities do not? How can therapists integrate gestalt therapy and trauma work in their practice with clients? In this panel discussion, five therapists who have studied both gestalt therapy and somatic approaches to trauma will share their experiences of learning and working across these different therapeutic modalities.
Presenter bio’s:
Noel Haarburger has been a faculty member and trainer at Gestalt Therapy Australia (GTA) since 2001, and works in full time private practice as a psychologist, psychotherapist and somatic experiencing therapist, working with individuals and couples, as well as offering individual and group supervision to allied health professionals. He specialises in working with trauma, as well offering training (at the Equine Psychotherapy Institute) in nature and equine assisted psychotherapy at his private practice in Daylesford.
Annette Reeves is a psychotherapist who has a particular interest in trauma work and is currently working in private practice in Fitzroy. She has studied gestalt psychotherapy, sensorimotor psychotherapy, and depth enquiry. She also works as a volunteer therapist with Thorne Harbour Health and is a proud member of a rainbow family. She is a mother and aunt and has worked in the creative industries for many years.
Anna Skolarikis is a gestalt psychotherapist and somatic experiencing practitioner. Anna is the co-founder of Restoring Resilience, which provides trauma resolution trainings for individuals, schools, families, and organisations. The trainings are a synthesis of gestalt theory, polyvagal theory, and somatic experiencing. Anna is in private practice specialising in attachment and developmental trauma and provides clinical supervision/reflective practice for Wyndham City Council and the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency.
Phyllis Traficante is gestalt psychotherapist and somatic experiencing practitioner. Phyllis works in private practice and is the co-founder of Restoring Resilience, a training organisation within which she co-develops and delivers trauma resolution programs with a relational, neuroscientific framework for parents, schools, communities, and organisations. Phyllis works with children, youth, and families, and is a clinical supervisor. Phyllis is a trauma specialist and consultant for the NDIS.
Rob Watson is gestalt psychotherapist, graduating from GTA in 2012, and a somatic experiencing practitioner. Other therapeutic influences include internal family systems and the diamond approach. Rob works two days per week in private practice in Northcote and Ringwood. In addition, Rob works three days per week in Community Services for Anglicare Victoria as a team leader and supervisor to a team of drug and alcohol counsellors.
Rhys Price-Robertson is a gestalt therapist, researcher, and member of the GTA teaching faculty. Rhys has published widely on topics such as psychotherapy, social theory, mental health, fatherhood, and family life, and was previously the editor of thePsychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia (PACJA).