The course is aimed at deepening the psychotherapeutic practice of Gestalt therapists and second-level Gestalt students who are interested in bodily awareness and the Gestalt approach to the bodily process. Studying body-oriented work will help increase the effectiveness of your practice, since it is designed for working with clients at different levels of their experience.
This program is focused not so much on new knowledge as on new experience and practice, namely HOW:
- to create a shared field for contact and relationship, while building clear boundaries;
- to focus on constant presence in the body, for both therapist and client;
- to notice the quality of the therapeutic encounter as it develops, as a path from the background of sensations to a figure of interest and action in fulfilling needs.
Certificate of completion
Upon completion, a certificate of completing the specialization is issued by the Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama.
180 hours of specialization.
Course leader Nadiia Rekhtina:
- Gestalt therapist,
- Bodymind Gestalt practitioner,
- Trainer of educational programs of the Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama,
- Full Member of EAGT,
- Member of AGTU,
- Dance movement therapist,
- Practicing psychologist.
Course supervisor Arye Bursztyn:
- Israeli Gestalt therapist in private practice, trainer and supervisor,
- Trained at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, in Israel and Ohio, specializing in work with physical processes,
- Full Member of EAGT since 2007,
- Board member of the Israeli Association of Gestalt Therapy,
- Taught Bodymind Gestalt therapy at Tel Aviv University and in various training programs for psychotherapists in Israel, the USA and Europe.
Format of study
The specialization consists of 6 meetings:
4 online three-day blocks.
Schedule:
Fri (17:00 – 20:00),
Sat, Sun (10:00 – 18:00)
2 offline four-day blocks, in person in Lviv.
Schedule:
Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon (10:00 – 18:00)
Cost of study:
135 euros (equivalent) per online module.
240 euros (equivalent) per offline module in Lviv. (Accommodation and meals are arranged by the participant independently.)
Schedule of meetings:
- June 7–9 (online)
- August 23–26 (in person, Lviv)
- November 1–3 (online)
- December 13–15 (online)
- March 7–9 (online, supervision with Arye Bursztyn)
- May 2–5 (in person in Lviv)
Participants’ reserve of additional dates, in case any meeting needs to be rescheduled due to force majeure during the project: June 20–22.
Registration requires an interview with the course trainer, 100% payment for the first meeting and a 50% prepayment for the last meeting.
Topics of the meetings:
- Introduction to Bodymind Gestalt. The bodily Self. Focusing the bodily figure and creating the sensory background of the session. Forming an embodiment language;
- The cycle of experience. Contact and avoidance of contact. Working with contact styles and interruptions in the bodymind approach. Therapeutic positions of the Gestalt therapist in an embodied approach;
- Mobilization of energy, action and the bodily process. Experiment. Working with polarities;
- Bodily experience. Working with trauma in the body-oriented approach. The “Bottom up” principle of working with trauma;
- Supervision in the bodymind approach with Arye Bursztyn;
- The client as the expert on their own life. The emergence of the bodily process from the bodily structure. The nature and origin of the adapted bodily structure. Organization of the body and personality. Touch in therapy. Exit from contact, assimilation and the bodily process; The final therapeutic work of the course.
During the program we will also:
- Focus on the basic ideas and principles of the holistic approach of Gestalt therapy, the wholeness of the “body-mind”,
- Get acquainted with our bodily Self,
- Explore our history, beliefs and way of making contact, embodied in the body,
- Practice extensively specific methods of working with movement, breathing, grounding, centering and body scanning,
- Bodily work with trauma,
- Acquire presence skills: how to be in contact with the client fully, with mind, body and attention,
- Build a sensory background in the work and experiment by offering new bodily experience,
- See how our biography becomes our biology,
- Look at the mechanisms of interrupting contact as bodily processes,
- Focus attention on awareness of the patterns that structure the body, on expanding the movement repertoire and the ways of expressing oneself in movement and in life,
- Explore in practice which concepts and techniques of body work Gestalt therapy uses,
- Consider different views of embodiment and of attitudes toward the body in the modern world and in history.