Gestalt Art Therapy Centre

Apr 20, 2025

2025 Needle Felting for Stress and Anxiety Relief- Gestalt Art Therapy Face-to-Face Workshop

2025 Needle Felting for Stress and Anxiety Relief- Gestalt Art Therapy

Face-to-Face Workshop

Registrants from Australia can obtain their CPD /OPD hours (non-endorsed activities)

ANZACATA CPD hours

AASW CPD hours

ACA OPD hours

PACFA CPD hours

Needle Felting for Stress and Anxiety Relief: A Gestalt Art Therapy Perspective

Needle felting is a tactile, meditative process that involves shaping wool with a barbed needle.

From a Gestalt Art Therapy perspective, it becomes a therapeutic activity that fosters emotional healing through creativity, embodiment, and mindfulness.

The repetitive hand movement helps ground clients, release nervous energy, and bring focus to the present. This rhythmic action promotes a calming flow state, beneficial for reducing anxiety.

The creative process encourages non-verbal expression, emotional exploration, and decision-making, which support self-agency and control.

As wool shifts shape, clients practice flexibility and tolerance, engaging in playful problem-solving and letting go of perfectionism.

Through this process, unconscious projections often surface, offering opportunities for reflection and emotional integration.

Shaping wool mirrors shaping one’s inner world—transforming emotional tension into tangible forms.

In this way, needle felting supports Gestalt principles such as present-moment awareness, contact, and self-responsibility.

It becomes a powerful therapeutic tool, especially useful in trauma-informed care.

Workshop Objectives: Needle Felting for Stress and Anxiety Relief

(For professionals and non-professionals)

Introduce needle felting as a creative and therapeutic process that supports emotional regulation.
Explore how repetitive hand movements and sensory engagement help reduce stress and anxiety.
Understand the role of the creative process in expressing emotions non-verbally.
Learn how to facilitate present-moment awareness and grounding through tactile work.
Discover the symbolic and narrative potential of felted creations in reflecting inner experiences.
Gain insights into how Gestalt Art Therapy principles can be applied through needle felting.
Develop practical skills to integrate needle felting into personal self-care or client work.
Experience hands-on felting activities that model the process of externalizing and reshaping inner tension.
Build confidence in using needle felting as a tool for mindful creativity and emotional exploration.
Reflect on how this practice can be adapted for different settings, ages, and therapeutic goals.

Materials included in the workshop cost

Workshop information:

Day: August 23rd, 2025

Where: Gestalt Art Therapy Centre.

2 Findlay St. Ashgrove. Brisbane. Qld.

Time: 10 am to 1 pm (Brisbane- Australian time) 3-hour workshop

Cost:

Members of the Gestalt Art Therapy Center

Participation: $230Aud

Click here to pay by Credit card (Paypal)

General participants

Participation: $250Aud

Click here to pay by Credit card (Paypal)

Workshop REGISTRATION HERE

Workshop only for adults

Please note:

Covid Requirements

Following the Australian Government Health Department's indications and to offer a safe space for all patients and Psychotherapists/ Counsellors:

Every participant before being admitted to each Face-to-face session/ workshop:

• Before each workshop/ session temperature measures will be taken. If the participant has symptoms like fever (37°C or more), coughing, sore throat, or shortness of breath, unfortunately, he/she will not be admitted to the event/ session, and the participant must reschedule the session/ workshop participation.

Important information from Government:

Testing positive for COVID-19 and close contact and Flu symptoms

Any person who tests positive for COVID-19 or is a close contact, or has Flu symptoms, will not be admitted and will need to reschedule the session/workshop participation.

Payment Methods: Ask us for Bank details, please

More information:

Gestaltarttherapycentre@gmail.com

If the minimum number of participants is not met and the organizers decide to postpone the event, you will be offered the option to transfer your payment to a future event or discuss a refund. Cancellations made less than 24 hours before the event will not receive refunds or credits.

Please note that for payments and refunds processed via PayPal, a 3% commission will be applied by PayPal to each transaction.

By participating in our events, you agree to these conditions.

ART THERAPY - A GESTALT APPROACH

Hello! Welcome to our creative therapy centre!

Here you will find everything related to Art Therapy using the Gestalt approach.

What is Art ?:

Art is genarally known as what is done by a person whose purpose is to express a message through symbols.

These symbolic tools can be music, paintings, sculptures, theater and so on.

What is Gestalt Therapy ?:

Gestalt therapy is a methodology within psychology that grew out of the research and work of the psychiatrist Dr.Fritz Perls and his wife Dr.Laura Perls.

These two professionals were coming from the psychoanalytic perspective and felt that this method was not enough to work with clients. Today we are clearly aware that no one single method can resolve the issues that involve a range of human suffering and growth.

Gestalt is a German word roughly meaning "Shape" or "configuration".

This concept is understood, in gneral terms, that all individual experiences are shaped by a figure and a background. As time goes on, and our needs change, the figure can become the background and vice versa. So in the client's experience, the figure is changing at all times from becoming a background and as the needs arise, the figure emerges seeking completion.

When we block or prevent this process, we become unaware and suffer. That is a part of the theoretical foundations of Gestalt therapy.

Gestalt therapy, therefore, is a "philosophy", a way of being in the world in the "here and now" and taking "response-aibility" without pushing the river. Thus life is a flow ..

What is GESTALT Art Therapy?

It is the sum of the two previous concepts, Gestal therapy and the use of tools we learn to use in art therapy.

Using the artistic tools and adding the gestalt language between client and psychotherapist we work jointly to decode the messages hidden in the intrinsic symbols representing the client's situation. The Psychotherapist accompanies the client in the process of "discovering" what is helpful and not analysing or interpreting, but suggesting and asking the client what it is he or she knows are the answers and supports client's need to discover the ncessary solutions.

WE ARE SURE THAT YOU WILL BE ATTRACTED by this new way of working with emotions, whether or not you are a professional psychologist or therapist, since many of the exercises can be used personally for your own growth.

Our work is done in Australia & Spain and other countries. We have given workshops and participated in conferences throughout the world. We are located in our offices at the Gestalt Art Therapy Centre in Brisbane -Australia.

BE HAPPY HERE AND NOW..... AND BE CREATIVE !

Yaro Starak - Gestalt Psychoterapist
Gemma Garcia- Gestalt Therapist- Ericksonian Hypnosis

SEE LABELS ON THE RIGHT SIDE

1-TRAINING MODULES FOR SALE: Gestalt art therapy

1.1-FOR PSYCHOLOGY & THERAPY PROFESSIONALS:

Here you will find and carry out therapeutic work with tools that combine art and gestalt method.

You can learn new ways of providing therapeutic treatment depending on the particular situation and client needs.

1.2-ART AS PERSONAL GROWTH

These modules can be practical exercises for your "realize" how do you do in your life.

There are specific modules that you can play with your partner and / or family.

SKYPE - ON LINE THERAPY

We offer brief therapy sessions via Skype. You may request a no-obligation appointment with us, the first session is free.

This is a way of doing personal therapy we call "Emergency work" used in very special cases and situations. For us, the therapy session should be mainly for the benefit of the client needing immediate help.

BOOKS FOR SALE:

GESTALT THERAPY theory and practice - some books written by Yaro Starak

A GESTALT TEST: you can acquire to discover your potentials.

VIDEOS & DVD focussing on gestalt work and art therapy work.

ARTICLES: Written by varoius therapists from Australia, NZ and overseas.

Yaro Starak

He graduated in Psychology from the University of Manitoba and in Social Work from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He continued his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, specializing in group psychotherapy and Adult Education. He trained in Gestalt Therapy with Jorge Rosner at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto and after graduation, he was a faculty member for four years. He worked as a professor at the University of Queensland, Australia and is the founder of the Gestalt Center in Brisbane and Terrigal near Sydney in this country. Yaro conducts gestalt training workshops in Spain, Mexico, Denmark, Germany, and Canada. He also gives workshops for groups of men using indigenous rituals. Yaro is Gestalt Art Therapist CAT®. Co-Director of the Gestalt ART Therapy center (Australia). Co-Director of the Arteterapia Gestalt (Gestalt Art Therapy training in the Spanish language)
Yaro has an interesting range of Books related to the Gestalt works, Couples & Groups work.

Gemma Garcia

Gestalt Art Therapist CAT® Gestalt Art Therapy. Gestalt Therapist Master diploma from the Gestalt Institute Valencia (Spain). Art Therapist using the Gestalt approach CAT. Master in Ericksonian Psychology at the University of Valencia (Spain). Communications Operator at the Provincial Emergency Coordination center and Fire Consortium (Castellon, Spain) Naval radiotelephone operator. Group work and individual psychological intervention in crisis and emotional impact on collective emergencies with firefighters, policemen, paramedics using Gestalt art therapy techniques. Aurasoma Therapist Level 2. Dip. of Visual Arts. Curator. Coordinator-Art Group exhibitions. Co-Director of the Gestalt ArtbTherapy center (Australia). Co-Director of the Arteterapia Gestalt (Gestalt Art Therapy training in the Spanish language)