The Challenge

The course is akin to a journey. The work is always challenging, inviting people to stretch themselves, work through unfinished business, take responsibility for their lives, get in touch with messy feelings, and generally go through a process of transformation. It can take students to places in themselves they hardly knew existed. Sometimes this is ecstatically joyful. Sometimes, even with gentleness and support from both the educator and the group, it is very painful. What is required is a willingness to experiment, to chart new territory and learn more deeply from previous experience. It is fundamentally about becoming more of who one really is, with an enriched vocabulary of expressiveness.

It takes a great deal of commitment to hang in though this. The course is not just about running up a certain number of hours, collecting a bag of skills, or being able to repeat the theory. The criteria for successful continuation and eventual completion is weighed primarily in terms of personal development and attitude, rather than solely through measures of objective knowledge.

Knowledge is valued, but only in the context of the wisdom which comes from personal integration. What is looked for in the student is an eagerness to learn, to explore themselves, to stay with what is happening, to hang in with the difficult processes and flow with the joyful ones; in all, a commitment to one's own growth and a willingness to dialogue. The course is an invitation to plunge into ever more authentic living; this requires a certain type of courage.

Gestalt is primarily an approach to living, and secondarily a form of therapy. Thus it is not possible to split the personal and professional into two discrete parts of the life of the Gestaltist. Genuineness, freshness, and aliveness are themes which cannot be limited to one aspect of a person's life; the course focuses on developing clear, moment-by-moment awareness in the individual as well as teaching the skills and knowledge necessary for practice as a professional. ``