Training program overview
Dates | 17 and 18 October, 22 November, 13 December 2025, and 14 February 2026
Time | 9:30am - 4:30pm
Where | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade, Parkville
Fee | $1450 (includes GST)
Facilitators | Tony Jackson
What's the purpose of this training?
The gestalt counselling training program aims to equip you with core counselling skills from relational gestalt theory, which are applicable to both personal and professional contexts. Through structured teaching, inquiry, and practice, each session builds on the skills learned previously.
The training emphasises the context and purpose of the helping relationship, ensuring that participants understand the intention behind each skill. Additionally, the program offers a supportive environment where participants receive immediate feedback and suggestions to enhance their skill development.
Each workshop is designed to equip participants with essential gestalt counselling techniques applicable across diverse contexts. Over five days, you will learn embodied, present-focused, and awareness-based methods that enhance client communication, understanding, and support healing.
With a strong emphasis on practical application, our goal is to help you gain confidence in counselling, both professionally and personally, fostering growth, development, and meaningful connections. There will be a lot of opportunities to practice in pairs, triads, and small groups, including plenty of time for Q&A and reflection.
Does the program suit me?
The program is ideal for:
- Counsellors
- Therapists
- Allied health professionals
- Anyone seeking a holistic and respectful framework for engaging with others
A certificate of attendance will be provided on the last day of the workshop.
What is covered in each workshop?
Day 1: Turning up and tuning in
- Introduction to counselling and gestalt counselling skills
- Developing skills in beginnings, setting the scene, tuning into the other, alignment, presence, attending behaviours, and initial contracting
- Relational gestalt concepts: awareness, presence, therapeutic relationship, change
Day 2: Engaged and deep listening
- Listening as an embodied act
- Developing skills in listening, responding to feelings, noticing, observing verbal and non-verbal cues, working with silence, and listening with heart
- Gestalt concepts: Dialogue, phenomenological method, and tracking experience
Day 3: Asking questions: exploring figure and ground
- Using questions to clarify client concerns and focus the session
- Developing skills in respectful questioning, process and content questioning, open and closed questioning, contextualising questions, and balancing challenge and support
- Gestalt concepts: field theory, figure and ground, paradoxical theory of change
Day 4: Identifying the presenting problem
- Working with clients to identify topics of discussion and possible interventions
- Developing skills in focusing on the client’s story, identifying presenting problems, contracting, designing interventions, and exploring possibilities
- Gestalt ideas: dialogue and phenomenology
Day 5: Identifying the underlying problem
- Addressing deeper issues that underlie the presenting problem
- Developing skills in reflection, understanding broader themes, attending to endings, and the role of supervision
- Gestalt ideas: Core organising themes and contact styles
About Gestalt Therapy Australia
Gestalt Therapy Australia (GTA) was founded in 1995, and the four-year psychotherapy training program we deliver has become nationally and internationally renowned. We pride ourselves on remaining true to the experiential roots of gestalt, whilst always striving to be at the cutting edge of contemporary gestalt thinking.
Our 14 faculty members are highly experienced with a broad range of professional backgrounds and a commitment to relational gestalt practice and teaching. All faculty are practising gestalt therapists. They are trained in gestalt therapy and come from a variety of other professional backgrounds. They have many years of experience working in mental health and wellbeing, both in private and public practice, and are committed to their teaching and learning journeys.
This 5-day training will be facilitated by faculty from the Gestalt practice & psychotherapy training program.
About your facilitators
Tony Jackson, Managing Director, Gestalt Centre
B.Theol, BA.Psych, GradDip.Counselling, AdvDip.Gestalt Therapy, GradDip.Supervision, M.GANZ
Tony is a psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer.
He works with people to support resilience and wellbeing and helps them develop a sense of vitality and choice in their lives. He provides supervision for psychotherapists which assist them to deepen their own personal and professional capacities.
Tony also provides training for individuals and groups that focuses on building responsiveness to individual and group needs in emergent situations.
Our previous participants said:
"The program was well organised, and I particularly like the arrangement of the learning materials, which helped me consolidate all of my previous training and focus more clearly on being present. I loved the variety of teachers: Tony, Leanne, Belinda, and Eva. The PowerPoints were well done and content rich with excellent information. I also liked the hand-out material - 'The questions for therapists' by Noel was invaluable."
"The practice sessions - dyad and triad work were also important parts of the program and something that helped advance my skills immensely. Thank you for running such a great program!"
"The workshop brought into awareness how I move from confluence to isolation with clients, and how to move from these two unhelpful places towards a place of being with the client in what arises. It also reshaped my view of challenging clients as not something that we do to the client, but rather something that we support the client through."
"I thoroughly enjoyed every single part of this workshop. The training is so deeply experiential and very different from traditional teaching methods. I have an ADHD brain and wasn't sure if I would last an entire day, but time flies so quickly with all the interactions and activities - I wish I could stay longer!
I also loved the fact that people in the group come from such diverse professional backgrounds. Sitting together in a circle (rather than facing one way) makes me feel a lot more welcomed and included. We get to connect on a deeper level and learn from each other's insights and experiences which is great.
Coming from a social work background with general counselling training, I had some unlearning to do, which felt challenging at the start, but as the workshop progressed I could really see myself transitioning from the brain to the heart - A lot less thinking and a lot more being. It has deepened the work I do with my clients and transformed the way I relate to them. I could really see the difference before VS after the training!
I highly recommend this workshop to anyone who is interested in gestalt and working in the mental health/coaching/consulting space. It's hands down the best counselling workshop I have attended."
Friendly Reminder: To ensure the quality and experience of all participants, the training is limited to a small number of participants. This has been a sold-out program in previous years. Grab your ticket when it's still available! We look forward to seeing you 🤗
