Embodiment: Accessing the creativity of the right brain

Dates | Thursday 19 February, 6:30pm-8:30pm

Where | Elie, 27 Royal Parade, Parkville

Facilitators | Anna Evans and Awombda Codd

Cost | VAGP members: $45; VAGP non-members: $55

This is the first of a series of three workshops offered under the EEEP banner. These sessions are designed for emerging and practising therapists interested in emerging somatic experience as a resource for the therapeutic dyad.

The right side of the brain is the place where assumptions soften and certainty loosens, allowing something new to emerge. From here, we cultivate a vibrant, grounded presence—one that deepens trust and contact with our clients.

Western culture, and many outcomes-based therapeutic models, are predominantly organised around left-brain logic: analysis, diagnosis, linear progress, and problem-solving. While valuable, this focus can limit our capacity to meet what is alive in the room.

This workshop invites you to reconnect with an often under-used, yet readily available resource within you: the right brain. Together we will explore how right-brain engagement supports creativity, relational depth, and moment-to-moment responsiveness in therapy.

This workshop is an invitation to step out of doing and into being—to trust the intelligence of the relational field and allow therapy to unfold with aliveness, nuance, and depth.

Experiential exercises, discussion, and reflection will develop participants’ abilities to:

• harness creativity and embodied awareness
• meet attachment wounds through presence rather than technique
• engage the vitality of the here-and-now
• cultivate emergent curiosity instead of certainty
• integrate polarities and hold paradox, rather than attempting to resolve them.

Exploring the somatic underpinnings of reaching and grasping

Embodied field study

Anna Evans is a psychologist and psychotherapist working in private practice and on the teaching faculty at GTA. Anna has a keen interest in embodiment and her practices have included creative dance, Alexander technique and contact improvisation. Anna taught yoga for ten years and now follows an approach to yoga developed by Vanda Scaravelli. Anna can be contacted at [email protected].

Awombda Codd is a gestalt psychotherapist and creative arts therapist working in private practice and community health, as well as on teaching faculty at GTA. She supports creative exploration and experiential body work in her clinical practice. Awombda has a background in theatre, film, performance art and performed with an improvisation collective for many years. Awombda was a sessional teacher at MIECAT (Melbourne Institute of Experiential Creative Arts Therapy) and values creating spaces in which curiosity can be manifested and explored. Awombda can be contacted at [email protected].

The Gestalt Centre is the heart of Melbourne’s Gestalt community. We offer a four-year psychotherapy training program through Gestalt Therapy Australia, staying true to the experiential roots of Gestalt while embracing cutting-edge developments in contemporary Gestalt thinking and practice worldwide.

We also operate ConnectGround, a community-based counselling and psychotherapy clinic. ConnectGround serves as both a training facility for psychotherapists and a provider of low-cost individual and group therapy for clients. The clinic emphasises the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist as a key support for building awareness and adaptability. Psychotherapy interns and volunteers gain valuable hands-on experience, enhancing their skills and professionalism through client work.

Refunds are available up to 7 days before the event.

In the unlikely event that this workshop is cancelled or postponed, registration fees will be fully refunded. Please note that the organisers are not responsible for any travel, accommodation, or other costs incurred by participants.

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Host or Publisher VAGP -Vic Association of Gestalt Practitioners