Key details
Date | Thursday 21 August, 2025
Time | 6.30pm to 8:30pm
Where | Elie, 27 Royal Parade, Parkville
Facilitator | Umaa Thampu, UK and Sri Lanka
Cost | $40 VAGP members. $50 non-members
About this event
Struggling to stay connected during these turbulent times? Where do you make space to honour your sense of belonging to land, to lineage, to community?
This is where Gestalt comes alive.
Join us on Thursday, August 21 for a 2-hour experiential workshop for Gestalt practitioners, therapists, and facilitators exploring the interwoven themes of community, inclusion, heritage, and systemic presence.
Together, we’ll engage in a powerful, embodied process that invites personal reflection, cultural exploration, and collective awareness asking how our identities, ancestries, and social locations shape the way we meet others, in both therapeutic spaces and the wider world.
What to expect
Through a carefully held Gestalt experiment, group process, and guided inquiry, you’ll be supported to:
- deepen your personal development and cultural self-awareness
- expand your capacity to work cross-culturally, relationally, and systemically
- explore your lineage, identity, and place in the collective field
- engage with others through non-verbal inclusion, embodied presence, and symbolic action.
Rooted in both Gestalt and systemic practice, this workshop draws from Umaa's experience working across the UK, Jaffna (Sri Lanka), and diasporic communities.
You’ll be invited to explore your place within the larger field, recognise patterns of belonging and exclusion, and gain deeper clarity on how to meet others with awareness, care, and curiosity.
Who is this for?
This workshop is open to Gestalt therapists, practitioners, facilitators, and anyone drawn to exploring their own story of belonging.
You are welcome if you’re curious about:
- cultural or ancestral identity
- intergenerational story
- inclusion and difference in therapeutic or community settings
What to bring
- A photo of an ancestor or an object that represents your sense of belonging.
- Your curiosity, and an open heart for personal and collective exploration.
- Something to help you stay grounded this could be a crystal, grounding tool, or fidget object.
- Comfortable clothing and a journal if you wish to reflect.
About your facilitator
Umaa Thampu, MBACP (Accred) Gestalt Practitioner
Umaa Thampu MBACP (Accred) is a Gestalt therapist, author, and group facilitator based in London and Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
Her practice is rooted in embodied presence, systemic awareness, and relational inclusion, with a commitment to working across differences.
She brings a UK-based field perspective, shaped by clinical, creative, and community practice across diverse cultural landscapes.
She is particularly interested in how our personal and ancestral stories live in the body and how the Gestalt process can support self-inclusion, cultural humility, and authentic contact in ourselves and in the field between us.
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
