Introduction to Gestalt Therapy: An Annual GTIP Workshop
Spring Date TBA | Online, Zoom | 6 CEUs
Registration Deadline: TBA
Overview
Current research has confirmed what Gestalt Therapy practitioners have always known: intellectual insights are not enough to create radical and permanent changes. Gestalt Therapy preferences embodied experience and awareness. Its emphasis goes beyond insight and leads to lasting, integrated healing and growth.
Being relational, embodied, experiential, and experimental, Gestalt Therapy is a deeply transformational approach to engaging personally and professionally with individuals, couples, families, groups and organizations.
Practitioners learn to attend to the emerging here-and-now relationship, paying as much attention to nonverbal communication as verbal communication, as much attention to how something is said as to what is said.
Gestalt Therapy theory emphasizes our interdependence and interconnectedness; in doing so we recognize that we are all subject to and participate in creating the social, political, economic, and racial forces in our world. Thus, our therapeutic inquiry includes but also extends beyond the realm of interpersonal relationships and we pay explicit attention to our social locations (an individual’s identity based on social class, race, family, gender, etc.). Embodied awareness and present-moment experience are also central to our theory and practice. Attending to all these components together promotes lively, intimate, and vivid dialogue that allows us to meet through difference as well as similarity.
This introductory workshop will allow participants to gain a taste of Gestalt Therapy Theory and an opportunity to experience the theoretical concepts in action. There will be mini-lectures, demonstrations, and experiential exercises. We welcome people from all professional walks of life. Experience as a therapist is not required. GTIP training is personally life enhancing and often life changing. It has been beneficial to a variety of professionals; including bodyworkers, lawyers, personal coaches, yoga teachers, nurses, doctors, and business professionals, as well as many others.
Come join us as we create connection, experience ourselves more deeply and learn about this still radical approach to connection and healing. Obtain a taste of what occurs in our 3-Year Training Program. New cohorts begin in September. Applications are accepted November through June.
Past Learning Objectives
- Learn how your history, culture and social location (including experiences of oppression and privilege) are embodied
- Observe Gestalt Therapy Theory as GTIP faculty employ it in live therapeutic sessions
- Learn how to integrate affective, sensory, cognitive, interpersonal, and behavioral awareness into powerful and effective contact-full interactions
- Understand Gestalt Therapy interventions that enable change to happen
- View different styles used by Gestalt Therapy practitioners and learn how to adapt those styles to your own personal relationships and professional work
Past Program Facilitators
Karen Ginsburg (she/her) LCSW is a member of the faculty at GTIP and is a Certified DSP Teacher and Supervisor for The Center for Somatic Studies. She has a BFA in Acting and an MSW from New York University. As a performer, she was trained in a variety of performance modalities, including The 6 Viewpoints, Contact Improvisation and the paratheatrical work of Jerzy Grotowski. She was a licensed massage therapist in NY for over a decade, practicing a variety of modalities, including Shiatsu, Craniosacral therapy and Swedish massage. Karen holds certificates in Gestalt therapy, Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy™, and Somatic Experiencing. She has worked as a Gestalt therapist for over 20 years and maintains a therapy and supervision practice specializing in somatic psychotherapy in Philadelphia.
Doug Graiver (he/him), LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and an NASW approved Clinical Supervisor with over 40 years experience providing mental health and substance abuse treatment in inpatient, outpatient, and school settings. Doug has advanced training in Family Therapy, Addictions Treatment, and Gestalt Therapy. He particularly enjoys presenting on a variety of topics related to all the wonders of the human experience. He and his husband are the fathers of two very active teens, ages 17 and 18. When he is not with his family, he works in his private counseling practice in Lambertville, NJ. He feels extremely fortunate to be a part of GTIP. He was a trainee from 2015-2017 and now serves as a faculty member. His time as a GTIP trainee was one of intense emotional growth, learning, and awe as he grew into a more capable clinician.
Catherine B. Gray, LCSW is a licensed clinical psychotherapist in private practice in Narberth, PA. She is on the faculty of the Gestalt Training Institute of Philadelphia. She has 40 plus years working with organizations and individuals, first as an organizational development consultant and later as a psychotherapist. Cathy works with individuals, couples, and groups and provides individual and group embodied supervision. In addition to her studies in Gestalt Therapy, she also studied improvisational movement, Focusing, EMDR, Mind-Body Centering and Developmental Somatic Psychology. Cathy is passionate about Gestalt Therapy and its potential to provide healing both for individuals and for our society. She gives workshops and leads week-long residential retreats nationally and internationally. Cathy enjoys reading and writing poetry, although most of her writing remains in her desk drawer. She gets excited exploring new ideas and theory.
CEUs: 6
Tuition (includes the cost of CEUs)
Refunds will only be issued to those who cancel a full two weeks prior to the workshop.
- $135 (full tuition)
- $75 (three sliding scale slots are sold out)
- $200 sponsorship tuition (For those that can afford more and wish their additional payment to go to support someone who might not be able to afford the full tuition.)
Registration will open in Fall 2026
GTIP offers Continuing Education credits to: LSW, LCSW, LPC, LMFT, and PSY. Should you be requesting CEUs, please indicate what license you hold and your license number on the registration form.
This event is co-sponsored by Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research (GSSWSR) for a maximum of 6 credit hours. Bryn Mawr College GSSWSR, as a CSWE accredited School of Social Work, is a pre-approved provider of continuing education for Social Workers, professional counselors, and marriage and family therapists in PA and many other states.
GTIP is approved by the Pennsylvania State Board of Psychology to offer 6 hours of continuing education for psychologists. GTIP maintains responsibility for the program. The Pennsylvania State Board of Psychology requires Psychology workshop participants to furnish their license number to receive a certificate of attendance.