Gestalt Therapy for Restoring Balance and Finding Inner Peace

September 16-17, 2023
10:00 am to 1:00 pm (each day)
Online

Admission: $90-$170

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Have you noticed how much of our time and energy goes into us talking to ourselves? Our neuroses are borne out of our identification with our thoughts and beliefs. Imagine establishing a new way of living that is not borne out of our anxious mental chatter.

First developed in the 1950s, Gestalt Therapy has its foundations in Gestalt Psychology, existential philosophy and phenomenology, holism, humanistic psychology, Eastern contemplative practices, somatic work, and theory of change. When engaging with Gestalt, we hone our skills to listen more deeply to our somatic feelings and sensations. We discover that we have a sophisticated internal radar that can help us align with who we are moment to moment, as we continually emerge in response to the changing world around us.

Join Gestalt Therapy trainer Srini Katragadda for an experiential workshop exploring Gestalt Therapy techniques for restoring mind-life balance. Learn how to rest your mind and discover who you are beyond your mind and thoughts. As you do that, you uncover the anxieties and conditioning that drives our minds incessantly. You learn when to use your mind as a useful tool and when to let it rest. As you gain the ability to rest your mind, you discover a new world of existence. Through this work, possibilities for new ways of living open before you, allowing you to discover the inherent inner peace of your somatic world and connectedness to this mysterious existence.

In this workshop Srini teaches one of the great gifts of Gestalt Therapy, the practice of Awareness Continuum, which shifts your attention effortlessly from your mental zone to the other two zones of our being—the outer zone of senses and the inner zone of our body. By mastering this practice, you restore balance in living from all three zones of reality.

Understand what the mind is useful for and become aware of when your thoughts get in the way of living, loving, and enjoying life. Through Gestalt Therapy, Srini invites you to discover the sensation of a mind at rest.

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Srini Katragadda, LMFT has been a clinician and educator for over 15 years. During this time, he has developed training programs and workshops to increase awareness and alignment with oneself. Srini has been facilitating workshops and teaching Gestalt Therapy in the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally for the last 10 years. He co-founded the Bay Area Gestalt Institute and is currently a faculty member at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).
 

Exploring Gestalt Therapy for the Whole Self

October 16-17, 2021
10:00 am to 1:00 pm
Online (Check-In Begins at 9:45 am PDT)

$85-$160 - General Registration
$68-$128 - Members

Scholarships Available

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For the last few centuries, we have been increasingly accustomed and conditioned to living our lives from our mental zone. We default to our thoughts, trying to find our home in our mind. However, many of us feel a loss of vitality due to an imbalance created by living primarily from this place.  

When we can restore the balance of operating from all available zones of reality—our senses, emotions, thoughts, and bodies—we can regain our vitality and become aware of our choices and the ways we want to move through the world. Gestalt Therapy is one pathway to accessing these additional zones of reality by exploring its three Es: the existential, the experiential, and the experimental. These three essences can lead us to an ever evolving and alive way of living. 

First developed in the 1950s, Gestalt Therapy has its foundations in Gestalt Psychology, existential philosophy and phenomenology, holism, humanistic psychology, Eastern contemplative practices, somatic work, and theory of change. When engaging with Gestalt, we hone our skills to listen more deeply to our somatic feelings and sensations, discovering that we have a sophisticated internal radar that can help us align with who we are moment to moment as we continually emerge in response to the ever-changing world around us. 

Join experienced Gestalt facilitator and CIIS faculty Srini Katragadda for an interactive workshop on Gestalt therapeutic approaches for living a more authentic and integrated life. In this workshop, Srini provides guidance through a series of experiential exercises aimed to help you become more aware of the various parts and aspects of yourself. Gain a deeper connection with yourself by learning various powerful Gestalt tools and principles such as awareness continuum, phenomenology, holism, layers of neurosis, and the paradox of change.  
 
By looking within at the conditioning, identifications, and conflicting parts that drive our anxieties, negative self-beliefs, and neurotic thought patterns, we become more aware of our own suffering, and can better listen to our heart's longing and how we want to live.  

Join this workshop to get more in touch with yourself, distinguish your authentic self from your self-image, and regain your aliveness and an ability to chart your own unique path forward.

Srini Katragadda, LMFT, has been a clinician and educator for over 15 years. During this time, he has developed training programs and workshops to increase awareness and alignment with oneself.  

Srini has been facilitating workshops and teaching Gestalt Therapy in the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally for the last ten years. He co-founded the Bay Area Gestalt Institute and is currently a faculty member at California Institute of Integral Studies. 
 

Impasse Therapy -- Gestalt's elegant way of working with an impasse

Ticket Options

General Attendance $135.00 USD Students $100.00 USD Associates $100.00 USD

Impasse Therapy -- Gestalt's elegant way of working with an impasse

Gestalt gives us a powerful way to work with life’s impasses by stepping out of our thoughts and entering the phenomenon of our particular impasse in a direct way.  This training will review the main concepts of Gestalt such as the 3 zones of reality, phenomenology, layers of neurosis and the paradox of change. 

We will then look at how these Gestalt principles elegantly weave together and culminate in a simple yet powerful way of working with an impasse.  We will also explore the gravitational pull of our authentic existence that brings forth our various impasse for us to work through.

Training Details:
Date: Saturday, April 10, 2021
Time: 10am - 1pm
Cost: General Attendance: $135
Associates & Students: $100
Location: Virtual - Zoom link will be sent to you

Facilitation by:

Srini Katragadda LMFT, has been a clinician and educator for over 15 years. During this time, he has developed training programs to increase awareness and alignment with oneself. Srini has been teaching Gestalt Therapy to other therapists in the SF bay area and internationally for more than 10 years. He co-founded the Bay Area Gestalt Institute and is currently a faculty member at CIIS. In addition to practicing and teaching therapy, Srini loves to watch cricket, spend time with his family/friends, and simply exist in the here and now with no particular focus.

To register, please use button on this page or go to PayPal and send payment to bagievents@gmail.com

A Gestalt, humanistic, existential, relational, approach to suffering; an attempt to undo the constructs of the DSM

Ticket Options

General Attendance $135.00 USD Students $100.00 USD Associates $100.00 USD

A Gestalt, humanistic, existential, relational, approach to suffering; An attempt to undo the constructs of the DSM

How do we hold phenomena that reflect intra-psychic and inter-personal suffering? How does this soul suffering impact contact and relational experiences? This workshop hopes to offer a frame for understanding and relating to experiences that are distressing without framing the experience as pathological. The Humanistic/Gestalt frame holds that the way we respond to our circumstances is the most creative adaptation that we have available given the limitations of self and environmental support. What if we use the constructs that Gestalt offers us as lenses through which to understand these experiences of suffering? Perhaps we can find the human in the suffering rather than the pathology of the sufferer.

 In this workshop we hope to explore, through experiential and dialectical explorations, ways in which to recognize our own subjectivity and how contact with another’s subjectivity can facilitate a deepening in our understanding of the suffering we experience.

Training Details:
Date: December 19, 2020
Time: 10am - 1pm
Cost: General Attendance: $135
Associates & Students: $100
Location: Virtual - Zoom link will be sent to you

Facilitation by:

Anna Benassi LMFT, loves all things Gestalt theory, and practice and in particular phenomenology. Anna is a core faculty assistant professor at the California institute of Integral Studies and was a founding member of the Bay Area Gestalt Institute. Anna’s passions are cooking, gardening and traveling the world studying Gestalt modalities from other countries.

Gieve Patel LMFT, is a bicultural immigrant who is immersed in Gestalt/Existential inquiries of phenomenology and field theory. His intention is to promote humility, subjective understanding and experience. He believes in the power of non-hierarchical experiences, and enjoys motorcycles, legos and records.

To register, please use button on this page or go to PayPal and send payment to bagievents@gmail.com

Goodbye, Now: Grief, loss and the moment - A Gestalt Training & Inquiry

Ticket Options

General Admission $135.00 USD Associates & Trainees $100.00 USD

Goodbye, Now: Grief, loss and the moment.

Holding space for loss and grief is inescapable in our work and yet essential to our lives.

What happens for the therapist when the client brings them into the room?  

Exploring our own grief and loss identities provides the ground from which we can work in the moment.  Using awareness, we can track triggers that activate the impulse to move away from dropping into the client's experience, or collapse into a fixing mindset. 

Training Details:
Date: October 31, 2020
Time: 10am - 1pm
Cost: General Attendance $135 
Associates & Students: $100
Location: Virtual - Zoom link will be sent to you

Facilitation by:

Gieve Patel LMFT is a bicultural immigrant who is immersed in Gestalt/Existential inquiries of phenomenology and field theory. His intention is to promote humility, subjective understanding and experience. He believes in the power of non-hierarchical experiences, and enjoys motorcycles, legos and records.

Judith Nihei is an LMFT whose work includes both private practice and clinical supervision for a community based non-profit, where she also trains staff in providing trauma-informed services through a lens of cultural humility. Her experiences as a performing artist and activist are rooted in San Francisco's Japantown, and she is a founding member of The Bad Aunties.

To register, please use button on this page or go to PayPal and send payment to bagievents@gmail.com

Intersectionality and Positionality in Contact - A Subjective Dialogue Using Gestalt Therapy

November 10, 2018
10am - 4pm
3281 16th Street, St. Matthews Church

This experiential workshop will use the Gestalt principles of awareness, experience and polarities to explore our different identity markers with the hope of freeing ourselves from the dualism with which we are indoctrinated.

Agenda
10-12: Introduction, Frame and Groundwork in Awareness, Polarities, Dialogue and Identity Markers.
12-1: Lunch
1-4: Experiential exercises, ending with space in group to share self-discoveries.

Cost
Students and Interns -$80
General Attendance -$120

Facilitation By:
Gieve Patel LMFT is the director of the Church Street Integral Counseling Center. His intention is to promote humility, subjective understanding and experience. He believes in the power of non-hierarchical experiences and enjoys motorcycles, legos and records.

Tickets will sell out!
Use PayPal to Register:

Ticket Options

Students and Interns $80.00 USD General Admission $120.00 USD

Bay Area Gestalt Institute Fundraising Gala

Please join us for dinner and drinks, live music, stand-up comedy, and a silent auction! Most importantly, this is your opportunity to support the Bay Area Gestalt Institute. Please feel free to invite friends and loved ones! 

Saturday, September 22, 2018
6:00pm to 11:30pm

Slovenian Hall
2101 Mariposa Street, San Francisco

Ticket Cost: 
General Admission: $75
Associates: Sliding Scale $75-$50
Students: Sliding Scale $75-$35

RSVP by September 12, 2018

To RSVP and pay through PayPal click the donate button below: 

If you would prefer to pay by cash or check at the door, please email your full name to bagievents@gmail.com

To make a donation to BAGI please visit bagisf.org/donate

Psychotherapy in the Trump Era - A Daylong

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This event has been CANCELLED
Saturday July 8th, 2017 10am to 5pm

Bay Area Gestalt Institute presents a day-long event that focuses on ways in which therapists can respond to the atmosphere fostered by Trump and his administration.

The fee is $25. For more info, see flyer!

To register, send a check payable to BAGI to Attn: Chris Corey 425 Gough Street, San Francisco, CA 94102 or click the button below!

The Therapist As Relational Artist - A daylong with Rich Hycner

Bay Area Gestalt Institute is pleased to announce this daylong workshop with Rich Hycner PhD.

Saturday, November 5th, 2016 / 10am - 5pm
Location: Cultural Integration Fellowship
2650 Fulton Street, San Francisco.

This workshop will focus on the “relational dance” between therapist and client with an emphasis on how they form an interactive and constantly evolving relational field in which both of their relational developmental strengths and weaknesses get highlighted and played out in the hope of creating a healing connection.  

A central issue in this workshop will be how much the therapist is able to bring their own experience and personhood into the foreground, in the service of highlighting and expanding the client’s experiential possibilities, and facilitating the development of the relationship.  

The workshop will include theory, demonstrations, and discussion. Participants will be encouraged to explore their own clinical interventions, and be sensitized to exploring previously unexplored dimensions of their relational impact on clients. They will be encouraged to expand their “use of self” within the therapeutic relationship.  

Early Bird Pricing before 09/15: $100 /$80 (interns and students)
After 09/15: $120 / $100 (interns and students)

Register online, or send a check payable BAGI to: Attn: Chris Corey, 425 Gough St. San Francisco, CA 94102

REGISTER

Rich Hycner (Regular) $120.00 USD Rich Hycner (Student/Intern) $100.00 USD

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Rich Hycner PhD finds the therapeutic relationship to be an endless source of inspiration and healing. He views the therapist’s presence as an essential medium for exploring the relational and experiential dimensions of therapy.

He is author of Between Person and Person: Toward a Dialogical Psychotherapy and co-author with Lynne Jacobs of The Healing Relationship: A Dialogic/Self Psychology Approach. He and Lynne have also co-edited, Relational Approaches in Gestalt Therapy.

He has been Co-Director of the Gestalt Training Institute in San Diego and Training Faculty for Erving and Miriam Polster’s Gestalt Training Center. He has conducted relational psychotherapy training workshops in Brazil, Canada, England, Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Scotland, the U.S., and Wales.

He is in private practice in Solana Beach, CA, intrigued by applying relational theory to couples and individual therapy. 

A Relational Approach to Gestalt - A Daylong with Lynn Jacobs

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Saturday, November 7th, 2015 10am-5pm
Cultural Integration Fellowship, San Francisco
Cost: $100 / $80 for interns and students

This workshop will be a fascinating inquiry into enduring relational themes, from a uniquely gestalt perspective. Through a combination of lecture, discussion, group work and other experiential components, we will consider the power and usefulness of understanding the relational dimension in our work with our clients. 

Bay Area Gestalt Institute is honored to present Lynn Jacobs, Ph.D for what is sure to be a stimulating exploration. 

To register, send us an email at bagievents@gmail.com

Healing Shame Relationally -A Training with Gary Yontef

Saturday, February 21st, 10am - 5pm
Cultural Integration Fellowship, SF
Cost: $100 / $80 (interns and students) 

Bay Area Gestalt Institute is thrilled to welcome Gary Yontef, PhD, to San Francisco. During this day-long workshop, the esteemed trainer, writer and gestalt therapist will present his theory on shame, through the lens of relational gestalt, and its clinical applications. The day will also include abundant opportunities to witness and be part of demonstrations of the theory.

Shame is one of the most common and complex aspects of the therapeutic process—join us for this unique opportunity to learn from a master in the field as he offers clear and concrete ways to fearlessly work with this ubiquitous phenomenon.

Based in Los Angeles, Gary Yontef is diplomate in Clinical Psychology with American Board of Professional Psychology and a fellow of the Academy of Clinical Psychology. He has been a gestalt therapist since training with Frederick Perls and James Simkin in 1965 and a supervisor and trainer since 1971. Past president of the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles (GTILA), he was chairman of the faculty there for 18 years and has been on the editorial board of the International Gestalt Journal, an associate editor of theGestalt Review and is editorial advisor of the British Gestalt Journal. He is a co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute (PGI) and teaches and consults internationally.

Space is limited, so register soon!

To register, send an email to bagievents@gmail.com.
 

Bay Area Gestalt Institute Celebration

Saturday, October 12th, 2013 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Slovenian Hall, 2101 Mariposa Street, San Francisco

This festive evening will include food, drinks, live music, raffle prizes and
opportunities to support and learn more about BAGI.

Please RSVP by September 28th.  To RSVP and pay online, click here.

Entry Fee: $50 per person
Student/Intern: $35 per person

If you prefer to pay by cash or check at the door, please RSVP at bagievents@gmail.com.

To make a general donation, please visit our donation page.