Key details
Date | Friday 18 September 2026
Duration | 9.30 am–4.30 pm
Location | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade Parkville, VIC 3052
Fees | $350 (includes GST)
Facilitators | Tony Jackson
PACFA Endorsement | Category A (7 hours)
About this workshop
Many intimate relationships are shaped by the tension between closeness and autonomy. What begins as each partner’s private struggle often becomes a patterned dance of pursuit and withdrawal that can narrow responsiveness and leave couples feeling stuck.
Clients bring longstanding ways of seeking connection (confluence) or protecting space (isolation), usually outside awareness. These dynamics emerge not only in narrative but in breath, posture, tone, and presence. For therapists, the task is to stay steady, curious, and able to gently open new possibilities.
This workshop explores how intimacy–autonomy tensions show up in the therapy room and how to work with them in embodied and relational ways.
Participants will:
- Recognise confluence and isolation as adaptive patterns rooted in developmental history.
- Track how connection–distance cycles unfold between partners and with the therapist.
- Attend to embodied and energetic cues that illuminate these dynamics.
- Support differentiation, awareness, and more flexible contact.
- Explore interventions that invite choice, curiosity, and authentic relational presence.
About this series
This workshop is part of a 6-workshop series exploring intimacy, conflict, and change through the lens of relational gestalt therapy. Each module focuses on a core theme found in the rhythms of human connection—how we move toward, away from, and with each other in the ongoing dance of relationship.
A certificate of completion is available upon request. We recommend attending the full series for a comprehensive learning journey.
Other workshops in the series:
- Talking about sex and intimacy
- Coercion and control in relationships
- Disappointment and betrayal
- Queer love
- Impasse and ending: To stay or to go?
For detailed information on workshops and facilitator bios, download the PDF booklet here.
What can you expect?
These experiential workshops are designed for therapists, counsellors, and anyone interested in deepening their relational awareness.
You’ll explore key gestalt principles—contact, awareness, dialogue, and creative adjustment—through direct practice and reflection.
By the end of the series, you’ll have a richer appreciation of how intimacy, conflict, and change emerge in relationship, and how to meet them with curiosity and compassion.
Is this for me?
Ideal for counsellors, psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists, and students in helping professions who wish to:
- expand their relational skill set
- integrate gestalt concepts into their work
- explore their own relational patterns and growth edges.
The workshops also welcome anyone curious about how gestalt practice can illuminate personal and professional relationships.
About your facilitators
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.
Refund policy
Refunds are available up to 7 days before the event.
Please note:
In the unlikely event that this workshop is cancelled or postponed, registration fees will be fully refunded. Please note that the organisers are not responsible for any travel, accommodation, or other costs incurred by participants.
