Description
Who is this workshop for?
– Therapists/Counsellors
– Teachers
– Youth workers
– Social workers
– Psychologists
– GTB students and graduates
– Anyone interested in connection to country
Participant Outcomes
– A greater awareness and embodied experience of the human/nature relationship.
– An appreciation of how gestalt can facilitate an ecological perspective.
– A deeper understanding of how to incorporate this ecological relationship into therapeutic practice.
– An understanding of how therapists can by guided by Indigenous knowledges and practices in a reciprocal way, with permission.
Description:
This workshop will offer you experiential exercises that support embodied contact with the land. Held on Kombumerri and Minjunbal Country of the Yugumbeh language region in the Currumbin Valley hinterland, you will be guided to expand your awareness of how this embodied and phenomenal connection to the living world can support both human and ecological wellbeing. Together, we will explore how developing an I-thou dialogue and relationship to the land can support mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression, alienation and loneliness and how to bring that stance into the therapy room.
We acknowledge that these concepts are not new and that Indigenous cultures worldwide have devoted significant attention to deepening human-nature relationships based on respect and reciprocity for over 65 000 years. At this workshop you will be joined by First Nations educator Ken Brown who will be translating the “voice of Country,” offering guidance on how we can strengthen our relationship with the land from an Indigenous perspective. Drawing on Indigenous knowledges and practices, Ken will support you to experience how the different ways of caring for and listening to Country can deepen your connection, which in turn deepens connection to life and a healthy future for all. This workshop aims to inform and orientate therapists towards a collective understanding of Indigenous protocols and permissions, which also guide how we make contact with Country and Country’s Caretakers.
Presented by
Michael Burgess
MGestTherapy
Rhiannon Flavel
MGestTherapy
Ken Brown
Indigenous Australian Educator
Sharon Gray
Gestalt Educator
