Gestalt Therapy AustraliaGestalt Therapy Australia

An essential guide to setting up private practice

Key issues that need to be considered when setting up a sustainable and vibrant psychotherapy practice.

Key details

Date | Thursday 16 October, 2025

Time | 6.30pm - 8:30pm

Where | Elie, 27 Royal Parade, Parkville

Facilitator | Belinda Gibson

Cost | $40 VAGP members. $50 non-members

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Are you ready to take the leap and start your own private therapy practice?

It can be both exciting and overwhelming to embark on this journey. You may have the skills to help clients, but navigating the business side of things can be challenging.

In this training, we'll dive into the key issues that need to be considered when setting up a sustainable and vibrant psychotherapy practice. We'll explore the pros and cons of working in private practice, and help you find your niche area.

We will cover the following topics:

  • The pro and cons of working in private practice
  • Finding a niche area
  • Practice fundamentals, e.g. memberships, insurance, renting rooms, bookkeeping
  • Readiness to provide therapy
  • Finding support for complex client issues and supervision
  • Marketing essentials for your private practice.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your therapy practice to the next level!

About your facilitator

Belinda Gibson, Manager of Clinical Services / Manager of ConnectGround clinic

BPsych, Grad Dip (Psych), MPsych (Community), MAAPI

Belinda is a psychologist and Gestalt therapist working in private practice providing counselling to individuals and couples. Belinda works with individuals, couples and offers clinical supervision. She completed her Gestalt Training with the Gestalt Institute of Western Australia and has also trained with the Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles (GATLA).


About the Gestalt Centre

The Gestalt Centre is the heart of Melbourne’s Gestalt community. We offer a four-year psychotherapy training program through Gestalt Therapy Australia, staying true to the experiential roots of Gestalt while embracing cutting-edge developments in contemporary Gestalt thinking and practice worldwide.

We also operate ConnectGround, a community-based counselling and psychotherapy clinic. ConnectGround serves as both a training facility for psychotherapists and a provider of low-cost individual and group therapy for clients. The clinic emphasises the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist as a key support for building awareness and adaptability. Psychotherapy interns and volunteers gain valuable hands-on experience, enhancing their skills and professionalism through client work.

Tickets
Gestalt foundations
The 6 relational gestalt foundations underpin all we do at the Gestalt Therapy Australia.
Aware
Embodied awareness
Aware
Opposites: Unaware, constrained & frustrated

Awareness is the goal of Relational Gestalt Therapy.

Awareness supports connection, wisdom, spontaneity & health.We bring attention to our body (embodied awareness) because needs (longings & fears) emerge contextually first as sensation.

Beginning with embodied experience, we are more aware in the here-and-now and more likely to know what we need in any given moment and more able to act to satisfy these needs.

Awareness sets us up to be more receptive and responsive in all aspects of our life.

Present
Attuned & transformational presence
Present
Opposites: Absent, distracted & reactive

Presence is at the heart of Relational Gestalt Therapy.

Presence provides a way of being in the here-and-now with openness and flexibility, able to respond to the fulness of the moment.

In this place of presence, we are aware of the ways our history and other contextual conditions might organise our current experience.

From presence we are more able to confirm the humanity of others. With compassion, we hold others with deep care.

Gestalt training supports the development of therapeutic presence.

Receptive
Enlivened & responsive relating
Receptive
Opposites: Closed, denying & isolated

Tuned into our own experience, more present in the here and now, we can orient ourselves to others and the world we live in.  

We become more spontaneous and receptive to our needs, and the needs of others, as they emerge in contact.

We build interest in deep satisfying interpersonal relating.

We become curious about the ways we habitually meet others and the changes and challenges of life.

As we become more aware of our habitual patterns in relating to others and meeting our needs flexibly we begin to create change, healing, or transformation.

Choiceful
Compassionate & experimental living
Choiceful
Opposites: Rigid, blaming & shaming

In Gestalt, change often includes acceptance of our lived experience.  We understand that some of what causes distress is a response to earlier adversity and challenge (adaption).

With support we can identify and begin to let go of unhelpful pathologising narratives.  Instead of trying to be ‘someone else’, we can allow ourselves to be who we are.

We become more compassionate and curious.

We experiment in the world to create novel opportunities for growth and development.  We become more creative and flexible moment-to-moment.

Situated
Cultural & environmental sensitivity
Situated
Opposites: Unaccountable, self-interested & isolated

Our curiosity helps us to grapple with the ways we are situated in cultural and environmental worlds (contexts).

We develop in the context of complex relational worlds of family, school, culture, and environment. We recognise that these worlds inevitably shape how we relate to ourselves and others.

Gestalt therapy seeks to contextualise all experience, breaking down ideas of individual pathology, shame, and blame.

We ask the question ‘how does this make sense?’

We also seek to become more meaningfully engaged in responding to issues of ecology, diversity, power, and privilege.

Engaged
Ethical, just & community minded
Engaged
Opposites: Self-absorbed, disconnected & lonely

Within a relational Gestalt framework, the true goal of therapy is to be engaged in the world, with a developed sense of self and an understanding of the co-emergent experiencing in relationship, family, communities large and small.

Therapy supports more than the individual who attends; it builds capacity for community.

We support people to become more ethical.  Ethical in the sense of responsive, responsible, and willing to act for justice.

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The Gestalt Centre is an environment that is welcoming and inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) persons and communities.  The Gestalt Centre and Lygon Therapy are members of the Welcome Here Project.
The Gestalt Centre acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional custodians of this land and pays respect to Elders past, present and future. We celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and achievements as well as recognise the contributions that Indigenous Australians make to our country and our society. We support the Uluru Statement from the Heart and The Voice to Parliament.
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Organisations
Gestalt CentreConnectGround ClinicRelational SkillsLygon TherapyVAGP
Contact

Phone
03 9489 6300
Clinic & Administration

622 Lygon Street, Carlton North, Victoria
Gestalt Centre Training Campus ‘Elie’

27 Royal Parade, Parkville
Mail

PO BOX 60, Brunswick West, Vic 3055

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