26 Dec 2023

2024 Newsletter

 

2024

NEWSLETTER


Gestalt Art Therapy Centre

Newsletter

December 2023 - January 2024

Good Morning!

We are Gemma & Yaro from the Gestalt Art Therapy Centre in Australia!

We are contacting you to share with you our reflections and inform you about our upcoming events, face-to-face, and online international access.

We are closer to the end of the year, and, in some way, sadness is the common feeling that Yaro and I have, regarding the situation related to our planet.

Yaro, Australian and Ukrainian, now relives his painful memories by watching the news, seeing how in his homeland, once again, families are divided, members die, and the destruction of daily life in the war against Russia.

Yaro lost his father a long time ago when he was just a baby, during the Nazi invasion of Ukraine, and never saw him again. His father was a photographer.

A year ago, Yaro joined the OPEN ARMS (DVA) team, offering couples Counselling sessions, and recently he realized that by doing this job, he is supporting people affected by the military lifestyle and deployments and PTSD. It was an interesting “awareness” for him, and a surprise, how the unfinished business related to his childhood and the war now is attended.

And one more surprise, the 
International Association of Experimental Gestalt Therapy in Kyiv, Ukraine contacted us and offered us to be "Honorary Members" of the International Association, collaborating with them.

So, we thought.. how can we manage these sandnes emotions?

It's completely understandable to feel sadness and empathy when reflecting on the conflicts and wars happening around the world. Here are some suggestions on how to cope with these emotions and continue with your life:

 

  • Acknowledge Your Feelings: Recognize and accept your emotions. It's okay to feel sadness and empathy for others who are suffering. Allow yourself to experience these emotions without judgment.
  • Limit News Consumption: While it's important to stay informed, constant exposure to distressing news can be overwhelming. Consider setting limits on how much news you consume each day to help manage your emotional well-being.
  • Focus on What You Can Control: Acknowledge that you may not be able to change the larger geopolitical situation, but you can control how you respond to it. Focus on actions you can take in your immediate surroundings or within your community to make a positive impact.
  • Practice Self-Care: Take care of your mental and physical well-being. Engage in activities that bring you joy and relaxation. This might include hobbies, exercise, meditation, or spending time with loved ones. Know more about our 2024 upcoming workshops and Creative Retreats
  • Connect with Others: Share your thoughts and feelings with friends, family, or a mental health professional. Connecting with others can provide support and perspective.
  • Channel Your Concerns into Action: If you're passionate about helping those affected by wars and conflicts, consider getting involved in humanitarian efforts or supporting organizations that work towards peace and give aid. Even small actions can make a difference.
  • Educate Yourself: Gain a deeper understanding of the complex issues contributing to conflicts around the world. This can help you empathize with the people involved and contribute to informed discussions.
  • Gratitude Practice: Focus on the positive aspects of your life. Gratitude can be a powerful tool to shift your perspective and bring attention to the good things around you. Join our Gestalt Art Therapy Club and receive a monthly newsletter with interesting articles and meditations. Benefit from discount only for members,
  • Set Boundaries: It's important to be informed, but it's equally important to recognize when you need to take a break. If you find that the news is affecting your mental health, take a step back and give yourself some time away.
  • Seek Professional Help: If your feelings of sadness and empathy become overwhelming or persistent, consider seeking support from a mental health professional who can help you navigate your emotions. Here is more information about our online Gestalt Art therapy sessions and Supervision sessions (In English, Spanish, and/or Ukrainian).

Here more resources
How to cope with anxiety in times of global crisis. (Black Dog Institute)
 
The way we feel we are contributing to the world is by offering you the opportunity to participate in our workshops, trainings, and wellness retreats.

We invite you to see the upcoming 2024 events and participate in the 2024 survey, where we ask you what kind of topics you are interested in, to be able to offer you the events that you need, or that you would like to explore.

We are open, we are flexible, and we want to support you in these uncertain times of our planet, through Gestalt and Art therapy.

►Gestalt Art Therapy Centre is turning 14 Years old! Join us at the creative celebration on February 10th, 2024
 
Looking forward to seeing you at our events soon.
 
Kind Regards
Keep the Hope
Gemma & Yaro

▶️ To participate in these Events, online workshops, Retreats, Training, or Therapy sessions, it is not necessary prior experience and/or training in Therapies / Gestalt Therapy / Art Therapy.


For whom our events are indicated

► If you are a professional of Psychology, Counseling Therapy, Social Work, Art Therapist, etc., our events and training will provide you with important tools/ theories/practice, to be applied with your clients/ groups/ couples/ Families.

► If you are not a Mental Health professional, in the same way, our events will offer you access to an enriching world from where you will be able to understand your emotions, feelings, and experiences, as an opportunity to create and learn about Gestalt Therapy, Art and personal growth, with a multitude of professional or personal applications. Indicated for Teachers, Artists, Parents, and anyone interested in this discipline.

  • Luxury Retreat for Couples 2024. Open waiting list.  Mount Glorious. Brisbane. Contact us for more information.
  • Love yourself - Creative Retreat. February 23rd, 24th, 25th, 20242 Mount Glorious. Brisbane. Contact us for more information.

☼ Oh! we would like to invite you to visit our ONLINE STORE where you can find books for you or to GIFT someone who would be interested in personal growth and Gestalt Art Therapy.

Looking forward to meeting you at one (or more) of our events.
About us
Yaro Starak
Gemma Garcia

Green

We continue with enthusiasm, offering already-known workshops (with a very positive response from the participants) online and face-to-face, and new workshops inspired by these times of climate change awareness.

WE ARE GOING GREEN!
Visit our web to see new upcoming events

Become a Member of the Gestalt Art Therapy CLUB and enjoy great discounts and receive access interesting articles, Books, and more! Click here for more information
Members Gold or Silver
Online Workshops
Collage Gestalt Art Therapy
Mandalas Gestalt Art Therapy
Dream work Gestalt Art Therapy
Inner Child work Gestalt Art Therapy
Online workshops:
Find your passion
DPL© Discover your passion in Life
Online
Gestalt Art Therapy Centre
More information here

Registration Here
From $50 / Session
Face-to-Face Workshops
Broken Self Gestalt Art Therapy
Face-to-face workshops
Retreat Australia
CR© Creative Retreat
Brisbane
February 23rd to 25th, 2024
Gestalt Art Therapy Centre
Contact us for a payment plan
More information here

Registration Here
Project of the Creation of the ART THERAPY BOOK We hope to launch the book at the end of 2024
Book Art Therapy

Project Creation of an ART THERAPY Book with Contributions

❇️ We are starting a beautiful and interesting project!

► The creation of a book on ART THERAPY, Gestalt, and other different approaches.

We have realized that since we started the project with the creation of the Gestalt Art Therapy Training in 2010, since then, the number of professionals incorporating more Art in the practice of Gestalt Therapy and other approaches has grown remarkably and we would love to offer you the opportunity to collaborate, with your contribution in our book. Also established multimodal approaches like Art Therapy and Creative and/or Expressive Arts Therapies professionals are welcome to share their experiences.

The goal of creating this book is to convey the experiences, research, opinions, and awareness of clients in workshops, and psychotherapy sessions, and the awareness of therapists, in supervision sessions and their own personal processes, as the result of the use of the arts in the Psychotherapy approach.

Thus, we have opened the term to receive “expressions of interest” to collaborate on this project.
Participation is open if you are a GOLD Member and meet the minimum requirements. For more information on conditions of participation, write to us at: gestaltarttherapycentre@gmail.com

We hope to launch the book in 2024!

Participating in this project, in addition to personal satisfaction for you, maybe professional, since the chosen collaborators will be able to see their publication in the book, where readers will also be able to read a Biography of the author(s) and the contact information that will give access to the web, email, social networks, etc., as well as activities that selected contributors develop, information that will appear in the directory in the book, being an important professional international promotion channel.

In addition, we are planning to translate this book into the Spanish language.

Contact us for more information at gestaltarttherapycentre@gmail.com
*The photograph/cover that appears as an Art Therapy book project will not be the official/definitive cover of the book. (Images Copyright the Gemma Garcia).

Here you can see another project of a book (at the moment only in the Spanish language) that we created with the collaboration of different Gestalt professionals from Spanish-speaking countries. This time it was to raise funds for children without parents, for UNICEF with the Book “Ser Padres Gestálticos” (Being Gestalt parents)

 

Online Store Books
Groups
Turning 14 Celebration

We are happy to announce a creative Celebration on
February 10th

Venue: Gestalt Art Therapy Centre

Brisbane- QLD- Australia

Information about the Program and the venue very soon!

Contact us for more info:

gestaltarttherapycentre@gmail.com

GOLD Members ZONE - Gestalt Art Therapy CLUB
If you want your events to appear in our newsletter  (which will reach more than two thousand emails) in Australia and all the English-speaking countries of the world, join the Gestalt Art Therapy CLUB (GOLD Membership)
MEET OUR GOLD MEMBER Annette Eriksen
and her work here
Career Coaching & Mentor
GOLD MEMBER
Annette Eriksen
Career Coaching & Mentor
Buy the Journal here
My Soulful Career Journal
Instant digital download
Upgrade Your Career and Empower yourself


Yaro Starak
B.A., M.S.W, Adv. Dip. SW, Dip.GT.
Former Lecturer at the University of Queensland
Gender pronouns: He/ Him
Gestalt Psychotherapist.
Gestalt Art Therapist CAT®
Men leadership training
Author of books on Gestalt Psychotherapy & Group facilitation
Co-Director Gestalt Art Therapy Centre-Australia
 
 
Gemma Garcia 
Dip. GT. Dip Ericksonian Hypnosis. Aura Soma Therapist L2. Dip. Visual Arts. Dip. ECEC.
Gender pronouns: She/ Her
Gestalt Therapist
Gestalt Art Therapist CAT®
Co-Director Gestalt Art Therapy Centre - Australia
Visual Artist. Art Instructor. Freelance Book Editor
Freelance Curator, Coordinator Art Group Exhibitions.
Director of APE Brisbane (Art Performances and Exhibitions) 
  
More Information:
Contact:

Gestalt Art Therapy centre acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as the First Peoples of Australia, and we pay our respects to their Elders past and present with whom we share this great country.

Legal notice for the collection of data and its incorporation into automated files. Gestalt Art Therapy Centre complies with the Australian Government Privacy Act 1988 on Personal Data Protection.
More information here. If you do not want more information, please reply to this email with the subject unsubscribe.

If you have received this message in error, please destroy it and notify us. This message and its attachments are confidential and are legally protected. It refers only to the recipient or recipients. Only allowed access and use by people who are expressly authorized. If you are not the person to whom it may concern, any use, treatment, information, copying or distribution or any action or inaction based on information contained in this message is prohibited and is illegal.



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.