Gestalt Therapy AustraliaGestalt Therapy Australia

30: VAGP Conference 2025

A two-day conference exploring the then, now, and next of gestalt therapy in Australia .

Key details

Date | Saturday 15 & Sunday 16 November, 2025

Time | 9.30am to 4:30pm

Location | Treacy Centre, 126 The Avenue, Parkville

Organiser | Victorian Association of Gestalt Practitioners (VAGP)

Cost

  • Early bird full price (July-Aug): $295 (VAGP members) | $355 (non-members)
  • Early bird concession price (July-Aug): $235 (VAGP members) | $285 (non-members)
  • Full price: $335 (VAGP members) | $385 (non-members)
  • Concession price*: $265 (VAGP members) | $315 (non-members)

* All current GTA students are eligible for concession prices.

See below for more information on VAGP. Click here for membership options and to join VAGP.

The ticket price includes morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea on both the Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night dinner and drinks will be available separately at another venue (details to follow).

About this event

The title of the conference reflects that 2025 is the 30th anniversary of the founding of Gestalt Therapy Australia (GTA), which is Melbourne’s gestalt therapy training institute. This conference will in part be a birthday celebration for GTA: a chance to reminisce, catch up with old friends and colleagues, and reflect on the ongoing place and relevance of the institute.

Like any good milestone celebration, this conference will offer the chance for reflection on the then, now, and next:

  • Then: Where have we, as a community of practitioners, come from? Looking back, we can recognise that we’ve been doing this for a while now, that we’re part of a rich and living tradition, and that there are elders among us. What can our past tell us about where we are now and where we might be headed?
  • Now: What does it mean to be practicing gestalt therapy here and now, in Australia in 2025? All traditions must evolve to meet the demands of the moment. Are we adequately meeting our moment?
  • Next: Together, can we imagine a future for gestalt therapy? What do we want this future to look like? As we step into the next moment, what should we hold onto, and what is asking to be left behind?

This conference will also be about more than GTA. We warmly welcome anyone interested in gestalt therapy. Some of the presenters and workshop facilitators will be from interstate and have no affiliation with GTA.

The conference will involve a mix of keynote presentations, presentations, workshops, and panels. Some of the presentations, workshops, and panels will be running concurrently, so participants will be able to choose topics of most interest to them.

For further information, see vagpconference.com.au.

About the Victoria Association of Gestalt Practitioners (VAGP)

The VAGP is a member-based organisation for graduates, students and others interested in gestalt practice, including organisational consultants and coaches. It operates as a peer support and community of practice.

The VAGP is committed to supporting the development of the gestalt practitioner beyond their training and to provide new opportunities for leadership in the community. For the established practitioner, it offers connection, space for reflection and professional development. The association seeks to create a thriving space in which gestalt students, graduates and practitioners can explore and develop their practice and deepen their connections to the community of practice.

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 wor

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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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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