Coming Home to Ourselves: A Gestalt Therapy Approach

Gestalt Therapy is a humanistic, experiential forGestalt Therapy: The Art of Awareness and Embodied Living

Gestalt Therapy is a humanistic, experiential form of psychotherapy that places awareness, freedom, choice, and agency at its heart. It’s not about diagnosis or quick fixes, but about meaningful contact—with yourself, with others, and with the world around you.

I see our work together as a co-created, relational process; a dialogue where we stay curious about what emerges in the in-between between us. The beauty of Gestalt is that it allows for authentic and transparent connection, and invites genuine interest and curiosity into the therapeutic relationship. We draw on what’s happening right here and now, using the therapeutic space as a living microcosm of life outside the therapy room.

If you hold back from telling me how angry I make you, it’s likely you do that outside the therapy room too! Which in many contexts might be a sensible thing to do—and yet in some, it might inhibit your capacity to bring your full, authentic voice to the table.

Developed in the 1950s by Fritz and Laura Perls, Paul Goodman, and Ralph Hefferline, Gestalt emerged as a dynamic alternative to more interpretive or analytic approaches. The early Gestalt thinkers were deeply influenced by existential philosophy, field theory, art and phenomenology. They believed that growth happens through awareness in the present moment, not through analysing the past. Goodman and Hefferline, in particular, brought a profound understanding of organismic self-regulation—the natural capacity of living systems to move toward balance and wholeness when awareness is supported.

Rather than interpreting or diagnosing, Gestalt therapy invites us into the here-and-now—to notice what’s emerging in your body, emotions, and relationships. It recognises you as the expert of your own experience and sees awareness itself as a catalyst for change.

This orientation sits comfortably within a wider philosophical lineage. John Dewey, the American pragmatist, spoke of experience as an ongoing, creative process—something we make and remake through our actions and awareness. He saw life itself as a kind of art: each moment an opportunity to engage, reflect, and reshape the pattern of our days. Gestalt shares this ethos—it’s experiential, dynamic, and concerned with what’s happening now rather than what should be.

Similarly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology offers a rich understanding of embodiment that deeply aligns with Gestalt practice. He reminds us that we are our bodies, not observers of them—that “the body is our general medium for having a world.” In Gestalt therapy, we attend to this lived body: to sensations, movements, and postures as expressions of meaning. The way you breathe, shift, or look away can speak volumes about how you relate to yourself and others.

In our work together, we turn toward what’s alive right now. We bring gentle attention to your moment-to-moment experience—sensations, emotions, thoughts, patterns, and behaviours. Through embodied awareness and collaborative experiments, we begin to explore what’s been pushed away, disowned, or hidden.

These creative, compassionate inquiries help you reclaim lost parts of yourself and expand your capacity to respond with choice rather than from habit—what Dewey might call the art of experience, and Merleau-Ponty might describe as a new way of inhabiting the world. Gestalt, at its heart, invites us to live as artists of our own lives—responsive, embodied, and awake to the vivid immediacy of being.

Here is a wonderful article on Gestalt: https://gestalt.org/yontef.htmof psychotherapy that places awareness, freedom, choice, and agency at its heart. It’s not about diagnosis or quick fixes, but about meaningful contact—with yourself, with others, and with the world around you.

I see our work together as a co-created, relational process; a dialogue where we stay curious about what emerges in the in-between between us. The beauty of Gestalt is that it allows for authentic and transparent connection, and invites genuine interest and curiosity into the therapeutic relationship. We draw on what’s happening right here and now, using the therapeutic space as a living microcosm of life outside the therapy room.

If you hold back from telling me how angry I make you, it’s likely you dot outside the therapy room too! Which in many contexts might be a sensible thing to do—and yet in some, it might inhibit your capacity to bring your full, authentic voice to the table.

Developed in the 1950s by Fritz and Laura Perls, Paul Goodman, and Ralph Hefferline, Gestalt emerged as a dynamic alternative to more interpretive or analytic approaches. The early Gestalt thinkers were deeply influenced by existential philosophy, field theory, and phenomenology. They believed that happens through awareness in the present moment, not through analysing the past. Goodman and Hefferline, in particular, brought a profound understanding of organismic self-regulation—the natural capacity of living systems to move toward balance and wholeness when awareness is supported.

Rather than interpreting or diagnosing, Gestalt therapy invites us into the here-and-now—to notice what’s emerging in your body, emotions, and relationships. It recognises you as the expert of your own experience and sees awareness itself as a catalyst for change.

This orientation sits comfortably within a wider philosophical lineage. John Dewey, the American pragmatist, spoke of experience as an ongoing, creative process—something we make and remake through our actions and awareness. He saw life itself as a kind of art: each moment an opportunity to engage, reflect, and reshape the pattern of our days. Gestalt shares this ethos—it’s experiential, dynamic, and concerned with what’s happening now rather than what should be.

Similarly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology offers a rich understanding of embodiment that deeply aligns with Gestalt practice. He reminds us that we are our bodies, not observers of them—that “the body is our general medium for having a world.” In Gestalt therapy, we attend to this lived body: to sensations, movements, and postures as expressions of meaning. The way you breathe, shift, or look away can speak volumes about how you relate to yourself and others.

In our work together, we turn toward what’s alive right now. We bring gentle attention to your moment-to-moment experience—sensations, emotions, thoughts, patterns, and behaviours. Through embodied awareness and collaborative experiments, we begin to explore what’s been pushed away, disowned, or hidden.

These creative, compassionate inquiries help you reclaim lost parts of yourself and expand your capacity to respond with choice rather than from habit—what Dewey might call the art of experience, and Merleau-Ponty might describe as a new way of inhabiting the world. Gestalt, at its heart, invites us to live as artists of our own lives—responsive, embodied, and awake to the vivid immediacy of being.

Here is a wonderful article on Gest