Facilitated by Louise O’Dwyer
Date| Wednesday 20 November 2024, 9.30am - 1.00pm
Fee | $165 Includes GST
Venue | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade Parkville
Gestalt therapy is relational and emphasises the contact we make between therapist and client as a central part of its methodology. To understand this contact-making, we can experience it as movement in the body and in the space between ourselves and the other.
When a client reaches toward you with their gaze, pushes away in fear, or feels unable to yield to the process, how can you recognise what is happening and what is evoked in you as their therapist? The contact we make with each other is shaped by who we are and how we show up in the world. By bringing this dynamic into an embodied exploration, we start to understand our self-other relating more clearly.
In this workshop, we will explore
- Contact-making and its capacity to invite presence to self and other.
- How to perceive and work with the embodied states of your clients.
We will explore this in individual exercises, pair work, demonstrations, and group discussions, linking our explorations with Gestalt theory. We will discuss ways to develop our awareness of clients' kinaesthetic experiences.
What you will learn
- How to read your client’s non-verbal body language more deeply.
- How to make non-verbal cues more conscious for the client, and in doing so, bring choice and freedom back into their contact-making.
- Understanding what is evoked in you during contact with your clients and deepening your confidence and capacity to work with this therapeutically.
“When we therapists heighten awareness of our own sensing and moving experience, we kinaesthetically attune to the therapy relationship as it develops. In other words, we sense and include the other person in our experience. As we expand our potential for awareness and movement, we open to possibilities for growth and change in all our relationships.” – Ruella Frank
Wear comfortable clothes that allow you to move freely and have fun!
About the facilitator Louise O’Dwyer
Louise is a Gestalt Psychotherapist and a group therapy facilitator. She is also a Michael Chekhov trained actor and a qualified teacher. Her workshops are a unique physical exploration of making contact as a way of heightening self-awareness and deepening relational attunement.
She is interested in the intersections of creative expression and intimacy, connection and freedom, playfulness and depth, creative indifference and commitment.
About ConnectGround
ConnectGround is a community-based counselling & psychotherapy centre offering low-cost individual and group therapy that emphasises the therapeutic relationship as a support for developing awareness and flexibility.
ConnectGround offers opportunities for student interns, volunteers and graduate interns to gain experience by working with clients and to develop their skills and professionalism.
Cancellation policy
You can cancel up to 7 days prior to the commencement of the event via Eventbrite to receive a refund less their fee.
