About Therapy

What is a typical session like?

Therapy provides a safe, focused space for you to explore and reflect on current challenges or goals. While no two sessions will be alike, a typical session may include:

• A short mindfulness exercise to begin

• Space for issues, reflections, questions or challenges to be voiced

• An organic flow of focus while remaining curious about the data received from our senses and sensations

• Intentional pauses or slowing down to further explore a strong or interesting emotion or a surprising insight.

• When it seems useful, you might be invited to experiment with role plays, exaggeration or another creative method of inquiry, like exploring your 'parts'.

• We might talk about the past and future but will always come back to the lens of the present.

• Sometimes there might be homework! But if you don't get around to doing it we would simply try a different approach instead.

What is Gestalt Therapy?

• Gestalt Therapy was developed in the 1940s by Fritz and Laura Perls and their friend Paul Goodman - and is considered a humanistic and existential form of therapy.

• Gestalt is a German word for form or essence - the concept of 'the way a thing is put together'. A bit like the saying 'the sum is greater than the parts', it is based on a holistic understanding that people are intricately linked to, and influenced by, their environments and history.​

• Gestalt practioners were early adopters of Eastern mindfulness techniques to bring non-judgemental attention on the present moment, including body awareness - similar to what you may find in somatic therapies and yoga.

• This approach can help you to gently reconnect and integrate aspects of yourself into a whole, an idea closely aligned with more recently-developed approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS).

• Gestalt takes a relational, creative and organic approach to the therapy process using 'experiments' and other tools of enquiry like drawing or writing which can be surprisingly useful and even quite fun!