Tickets for individual events can be purchased below via Eventbrite.

If you wish to take account of our ‘bulk buy’ options,

1. Seven seminars for the price of Five.
2. All twelve seminars for £250

 please use the payment option https://newgestaltvoices.org/gestalt-seminars/

All seminars apart from No 1 (19th Sept 2020) will be recorded, and tickets grant you access to the recordings.

This online experiential workshop is designed for people of all ages, nationalities and experience levels who identify as “white”. Together we will create a “white space” where we can explore our fragility and anxiety around race and systemic oppression of people of colour, with a focus on the somatic and affective aspects of our experiences. Participants will be able to define “white privilege”, “white fragility,” and “white anxiety.” They will explore and identify their subjective, phenomenological experience of these concepts in their hearts (affective experience) and bodies (somatic experience).

Why are we offering this workshop to individuals who identify as “white”? We would like to create a space where whiteness can be discussed without shame or fear of offending others. We are aware of the potential for microaggressions against people of colour in settings where white privilege is discussed. Given the current global climate, and especially the hostile climate in the United States, against people of colour, we wish to avoid contributing further to their suffering. By doing our work, it is hoped that we will emerge with greater awareness of ourselves and empathy for people of colour. Through understanding our differences, it is hoped we will be better equipped to unite with people of colour in the fight for justice and liberation.

Bernadette O’Koon

Bernie is a 5th year Clinical Psychology doctoral student at the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, OH and is completing her internship at the University of Pittsburgh Counseling Center. She trained in Gestalt at GIC Cleveland and is currently enrolled in the Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy Training in New York City. Bernie trusts in the therapeutic process and believes that profound growth is possible when we understand our personal experience and development within the context of political and social systems and within our own bodies.

Gareth Thomas

Gareth qualified as a social worker in 2002 and went on to work in Hackney for a number years, supporting young people. In 2014 he developed epilepsy, due largely to the stresses from his work. Exhausted by the politics and bureaucracy of social work, he decided to retrain as a jewellery designer maker. Although successful at this he found it isolating. It did not rest easy with him that he was making products that were only accessible to the rich. In this time Gareth started therapy, he randomly selected gestalt therapy.
He was massively inspired by his therapist. Longing to get back to facilitating real positive change in people’s lives he eventually decided to study to become a psychotherapist.

Gareth is completing his second year of gestalt psychotherapy training at the Gestalt Centre in London. As well as being a student, he makes jewellery where he now lives in Bath, and has recently branched out to making bespoke sunglasses. He is a lover of meditation, dogs, music, food and life!

Consciously or not I think that our therapeutic interest makes us ask ourselves some crazy questions. For example something like this: What do we avoid when we avoid that we avoid that we avoid? Or at least in my case some similar or even more absurd questions. Asking these questions can in my experience sometime bring clinically useful insights.

Perceptive and expressive explorations of a field and poetic (which in Slovak literally means post-ethics) questioning may support a radical ethical approach. I would like to do this collectively at the workshop, possibly through poetry readings and use of experiments.

Jan Ballx

Jan was born in socialist Czechoslovakia in 1973. Archeology had a very big influence on him early on, then strangely enough was substituted by a keen fascination in mathematics and computational technology. Through experiencing the Velvet revolution and coup in 1989 Jan decided to study psychiatry and especially psychotherapy. He finished his Gestalt training in Slovakia in 2003. He often practices psychotherapy within a ‘psychiatric’ field. Jan is also a visual artist. For the last ten years he has worked in private practice in Bratislava. He teaches and supervises. Jan is married and has kids.

Recent times are posing unprecedented challenges. From a societal perspective, we have witnessed a polarisation and unyielding positions around concepts that belongs to the past century. While this dynamic is probably the result of the unprecedented pace of change, we believe that only dialogue and an awareness of being all together as a planet can bring new light to current challenges. The current narratives around capitalism risk missing the opportunity to recognise the societal importance of for-profit organisations and the central role that profit plays for a better future.

This workshop invites in different perspectives and hopefully a lively conversation around capitalism and beyond!

Laura Martinelli

Laura is an innovation expert, founder of ‘IN Innovation and Project Management’, a company focused on innovation management in high tech with both public and private organisations via public funded projects. Facilitation and coaching is an essential component of her job, that has brought her in contact with small, medium and large companies/corporates as well as with leading scientific institutions over the last 20 years. Laura has an Msc in Chemical Engineering, she is a graduated Gestalt Practitioner and passionate about organisations, their structure, functioning and their ultimate goal and importance for society – a cradle for the ethical development of individuals and society.

John Gillespie

John founded NGV in 2016 whilst in the third year of a gestalt psychotherapy training. He lives in London, and has a background of working in voluntary and public sector roles and in organisational consultancy. John is a profound believer that those on the margins hold many of the solutions to challenges our societies are only just beginning to grapple with.

Typical leadership/management development crushes aspiring leaders, as it stuffs them with what other people have done in different times and in different circumstances and encourages them to be like these others. In a world that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) copying others will no longer cut it. That mode of leadership belongs to post industrial-revolution leadership, where certainty was prized and prediction was possible.

An embodied relational gestalt turns out to be a perfect fit for facilitating an alternative to this outdated leadership paradigm! In this seminar we will offer gestalt methods and exercises that foster authentic presence, unfolding difference rather than training in similarity. We will explore what leadership means in the modern world, and provide a space for non-binary ways of looking at problems, for working with uncertainty and working with polarities.

Toni Clarkson

Toni is a former head of O.D for a multi-national electronics and IT company and head of Learning and Development for a U.K. national bank. Her main interest and expertise lies with coaching and leadership. Toni is also a coaching supervisor, trainer and educator of coaches. Apart from work Toni loves chickens, mountains and gardens.

Thomas Ameel

Thomas studied clinical psychology and through encountering gestalt understood that he hadn’t learned a lot in those five years at university. Besides his part-time private practice in Brussels, he attempts to bring more of him and his gestalt into organisations, developing ways to support leaders through contact and genuine encounter instead of leaning into the performance training demands that pervade executive levels.

As Gestalt therapists we cannot ignore sociological and cultural phenomena, especially if we call ourselves a field-centered approach. Gestalt Therapy theory needs to decentre the subject even further. In the seminar some contemporary social theories will be explored, among them critical theory, poststructuralism, general systems theory, social phenomenology, ANT. We will derive from them – an experiential part of the seminar – a larger understanding of the world we and our clients live in and explore how to act upon this understanding in the therapy room and outside of it.

Kamila Bialy

A sociologist and a gestalt therapist in one! When she works as a therapist, her sociological eye is always present, and often alert/activated/activist-oriented. As a sociologist she applies a relational field perspective. Kamila lives in Lodz, Poland with her cats and partner.

In this workshop we explore the creative imagination of the group and draw on the existing therapeutic skills that help us to face the challenges of deep adaptation to an unknown future. We start with stories about our personal adaptation and then look at what the current times ask of us and how we can rise to the challenges of our times?

• What have we got to offer?
• Is there something we need to unlearn or let go of?
• What does it mean to widen the field, attending to societal turmoil or the concerns of the ‘commons’?

Steffi Bednarek

Steffi is a gestalt psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer. She is a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance and works in private practice in Brighton, UK. She holds communal grief rituals and offers incubation spaces for mental health professionals to co-create approaches that widen the field and re-enchant our engagement with the more-than-human world.

Steffi has been a Head of Counselling and Mental health in Higher Education, managed Counselling and mental health services for the charitable sector, and worked as an international consultant and trainer for several government ministries, the Human Rights sector and national and international charities.

What’s wrong with certainty, the poor relation of its popular polarity, uncertainty? Why do we shy away from embracing and talking of our certainty, lacking confidence to name it in our gestalt clinical work? Where is our Creative Indifference without access to certainty? Are we ashamed of certainty; is it linked in our minds to abuse of power and privilege? Is certainty hidden, taken for granted and what is certainty as something to work with?

Can it be that, as Wittgenstein would tell us, certainty is in a different category to knowledge and is as such unburdened by issues of right and wrong, or that it is the ‘perceptual faith’ of which Merleau-Ponty speaks?

In the workshop, Certainty will be exhumed from its early grave and reinstated to its place as a living, embodied quality with a vital role to play in the presence-ing of ourselves and our clients.

Chris O’Malley

Chris O’Malley is a gestalt therapist, supervisor and trainer living and working in Birmingham. He co-devised and delivered CPD/Conference workshops on Shame and on Sex, and most recently on Certainty. His article ‘Coming Out in Appreciation’ was published in the second edition of NGV Journal and he has had letters and Opinion pieces published in the British Gestalt Journal.

The workshop starts with the premise that conflict is fundamentally important in enabling human relationships to prosper and deepen and that such conflict flows from experiences human beings have in contact with each other and the wider field. The workshop also contends that as well as important, conflict is inevitable, among 8 billion individuals living in a unified field we call “the world”.

At the same time, the workshop contends that violence is central to the perpetuation of trauma within communities and between generations.

The workshop will ask participants to look in more depth at conflict and violence through the lens of gestalt writing on contact, and wider theories such as field theory and shame. It will contend that violence is a turning away from contact. It will ask participants to share their own personal awareness of, and relationships to, conflict and violence, and how they reflect on this in relation to contact with the other.

Nick Adlington

Nick is both a UKCP registered gestalt psychotherapist and experienced mediator. As well as working with clients in psychotherapy, he also mediates disputes between colleagues in the workplace, and between parents and children in families. He continually explores his own experiences of conflict and violence as well as the relationship between conflict, violence, and the perpetuation of trauma. He is interested in how individuals and communities from different cultures channel conflict and is investigating research in the intersectionality between psychotherapy, conflict, violence.

This workshop is open to gay and straight, and people of all genders, who are interested in exploring sex from a non-normative perspective.

We will draw (safely) on personal narratives around sexual experience – to make space in a gestalt setting for voicing – & connecting around – divergent and non-normative experiences of sex – including but not limited to sex & drugs, sex toys, multiple partners, BDSM, fetish/kink etc.

As gestaltists we think in terms of ‘wholes’… it follows that something is missing from mainstream narratives around sex, if narratives that connect to minority experience are absent or pathologised. What can we learn about twenty-first sex century by inviting in non-normative experience, and by exploring how experience of oppression and experience of sex interrelate?

The workshop will invite “here and now” awareness of genital sexuality, and opportunity to share in safe settings experience of sex.

John Gillespie

John founded NGV in 2016 whilst in the third year of a gestalt psychotherapy training. He lives in London, and has a background of working in voluntary and public sector roles and in organisational consultancy. John is a profound believer that those on the margins hold many of the solutions to challenges our societies are only just beginning to grapple with.

We all have convictions: things we believe in our bones to be important and true. Some feel sure about the best ways to practice psychotherapy. Some are passionate about protecting the environment or fighting social injustice. How do such convictions intersect with gestalt therapy’s emphases on uncertainty, “not knowing”, and creative indifference? Are these troubled times of pandemic, climate crisis, post-truth politics, and systemic injustice asking us to reconsider the role of conviction in gestalt therapy? Picking up on the themes of Chris O’Malley’s March 2021 workshop, this workshop will involve experiential exploration of how our convictions show up in our psychotherapeutic lives.

Dr Rhys Price-Robertson

Rhys is a gestalt therapist, social researcher, and editor of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia. He has published over 50 journal articles, book chapters, and reports on topics such as psychotherapy, mental health, fathering, family life, and social theory. He lives with his partner and two young sons in a small country town an hour outside of Melbourne. He holds various, sometimes-contradictory convictions—one of which is the importance of “not knowing” in life and therapy—and struggles to know how to include these in his gestalt therapy practice

In this interactive, two-and-a-half-hour, workshop the facilitators will discuss current research using psychedelics, such as psilocybin and MDMA, for the treatment of mental health disorders, including depression, PTSD, and addiction, and the need for a theoretical framework to guide future practice. As this promising research evolves and eventually leaves the lab, practitioners will need a framework to support this work. Gestalt therapy is proposed as a theoretical framework well-suited for psychedelic-assisted therapy. Facilitators will discuss and engage participants in dialogue exploring Gestalt principles and methods that fit this emerging area of practice. This talk is intended as a creative exploration of the possible contributions Gestalt can make in the resurgence of the use of psychedelics and other psychoactive compounds for treatment and personal growth.

Dr Travis Fox

Dr. Travis Fox is a clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in private practice. He is a graduate of the Gestalt Training Program, Working with Physical Process, and the Group training program at Gestalt Institute of Cleveland where he also teaches. Dr. Fox started in Gestalt at the Gestalt Therapy Training Center — Northwest in Portland, Oregon USA. Particular areas of interest are working with men’s issues, supporting the personal development of health care professionals, psychedelic assisted therapy, and working with groups. He will be a therapist and assessor on upcoming psilocybin trials for opioid addiction and major depressive disorder.

Dr Christopher Nicholas

Dr. Christopher Nicholas is a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist with the University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. His research focuses on the efficacy and therapeutic and neurobiological mechanisms of psychedelic and other psychoactive compounds for the treatment of mental illness and addiction. He previously studied the pharmacokinetics and psychological effects of high dose psilocybin and is currently an investigator and therapist on psilocybin trials for opioid addiction and depression. He is also a therapist for the MAPS phase-III study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for severe PTSD and is certified in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Dr. Nicholas supervises behavioral training for the UW Addiction Medicine Fellowship and focuses his clinical work on the intersection of chronic pain, addiction, and trauma.

Dr Chantelle Thomas

Dr. Chantelle Thomas is a clinical psychologist and Executive Clinical Director of a private residential treatment facility in Wisconsin specializing in the treatment of addiction and trauma. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in health psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and shaped the development of a specialty substance abuse consultation clinic within the UW Department of Family Medicine. Dr.Thomas was a study psychologist/guide on the UW pharmacokinetics study of high dose psilocybin and is currently a therapist and trainer for the MAPS Phase 3 trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD and psilocybin trials for opioid addiction and major depression. Dr. Chantelle Thomas is also certified in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.

There is a preponderance of scientific evidence that supports gender diversity as a valid biological expression of humanness. This evidence also shows that the correct societal, medical and therapeutic response to a person experiencing gender dysphoria is to support the person to live authentically in their affirmed gender. Gestalt is uniquely positioned to meet the therapeutic needs of this population. For the trans person, as with other aspects of identity development, gender is discovered through experiencing the dance between self and other. As gestaltists our training gives us unique tools to co-create safe experiments to help the person discover their original rhythm.

This workshop is an experiment in creating a space for a different conversation where gender norms are questioned and deconstructed, allowing different meetings to occur!

Rebecca (Becky) Waletich, LCSW (she, her, hers)

Becky has been serving LGBTQ adults and youth since 1999, providing individual, couples, family and group therapy. Outside of her practice, she is active in advocacy efforts, facilitates professional training, and consults for local transgender service organisations. She is a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the National Association of Social Workers Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Committee, and the Americal Psychological Association Gender Identity Division 53. She has completed the foundation and advanced WPATH Certification training. Becky has completed three years of gestalt training at the Indiana Gestalt Institute.

Be part of next year’s seminar series! We are keen to invite new presenters to share their ideas, or people with lots of experience to talk about something new to them. If you are interested in delivering an online workshop for NGV please contact john@newgestaltvoices.org

In addition to our seminar series we sometimes host one off events on timely issues. If you have an idea please get in touch.