🪑 Gestalt Therapy | Free Course
Updated: Oct 19
Free Course by Everything IFS Academy | Therapeutic Modalities Series
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🎧 Audio - Listen as you go - (coming soon)
🪑Welcome to the Free Gestalt Therapy Course for Everyday People
Gestalt Therapy was created in the 1940s and early 1950s by three remarkable founders: Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, and Paul Goodman, a psychiatrist, a psychologist-philosopher, and a poet who together built one of the most influential therapies of the twentieth century. Their central insight was radical then and is still bracing now: you don't change by analyzing your past or forcing yourself to be different, you change through full awareness of what is actually happening right now. That present-moment, experiential stance went on to shape nearly every modern therapy that works with the body, the moment, and the live relationship, and it gave the world some of therapy's most famous and enduring techniques.
This course teaches pure Gestalt Therapy, with no other modalities blended in, written in plain, everyday language. You'll learn the art of the here and now, meet the famous empty chair and the unfinished business it was built to finish, and discover how awareness itself, simply noticing your own experience as it happens, becomes the engine of change. Each module offers clear teaching and real-life examples, and ends with a simple Gestalt practice so you can begin using the skill right away. It isn't clinical training for therapists and doesn't offer continuing education credits; it's Gestalt Therapy you can put to use in your own life.
Course outline
Click any lesson below to begin.
The Basics 1. What Is Gestalt Therapy 2. Who Were Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, and Paul Goodman 3. Figure, Ground, and the Cycle of Experience
How Gestalt Sees Change 4. The Paradoxical Theory of Change 5. The Here and Now and the Awareness Continuum 6. The Five Contact Interruptions 7. Unfinished Business
The Experiments
8. The Empty Chair Technique 9. Top Dog, Underdog, and Polarity Work 10. The Language Experiments 11. Body Awareness and the Exaggeration Technique 12. Gestalt Dream Work
Living It 13. Gestalt Therapy in Everyday Life
Bonus
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Disclaimer:
Everything IFS Academy is an independent educational platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the IFS Institute. While we strive for accuracy, errors can occur, and users are encouraged to cross-reference critical information. These courses, lessons, skills, and practices are offered for educational and self-reflection purposes only. They do not constitute therapy, mental health treatment, clinical training, or crisis support, and they should not be used as a substitute for professional mental health care.
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If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, feel unsafe, feel at risk of harming yourself or someone else, or feel too overwhelmed to safely use self-directed practices, please pause this material and reach out for immediate support. Contact a licensed mental health professional, call or text 988 in the U.S. or Canada, or use your local emergency or crisis resources.
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