Gestalt Articles

Gestalt & Media

Pillow Talk
Guide to Internal Dialogue

Gestalt Astrology
Metaphor for Personal Integration

Just Sitting Meditation

Fritz Perls, Founder of Gestalt Therapy

The Ethics of Being with Yourself & Other People

Personal Intelligence 101

A Gestalt facilitator job is to experience being with a person rather than guiding them somewhere, suggesting rather than hypnotizing them like a computer, partnering with them rather than trying to dominate, empowering them rather than developing a dependent relationship.

Here are some suggestions of how to develop the skill to be with another person with integrity:

Center yourself

• Let go of personal business, or express it openly. Be aware of your body, emotional state, and random thoughts (internal dialogue). When you know where you are, only then do you have a chance to separate your projections from your awareness of the other and "get into their space."
  
• Say who you are and where you're coming from. You may set the level of sharing at its deepest level or you may make space for a miracle.
  
• Stay awake and aware by watching energy flows and blockage through physical clues. Stay centered and concrete as possible through mind/body/soul integrity.

Your state of being is the only value you have to give.

Make Contact

At the first opportunity, make contact with the group through body language and tone of voice. Share where you are Here & Now. Then request individual response. Wait for it! Listen. Show your response. Contract permission for every encounter you have with an individual or with the group: giving feedback, suggesting an exercise, even singling out an individual in any way. Thus, trust is built.

No one listens in distrust and no one shares.

Give up Expectations and Judgments ... or express them openly.

During the session, don't analyze, guess, predict, interpret, judge, or try to "fix" anything. Nothing and nobody is broken.

Give up Ego Investments... or admit them.

Have no investment in showing cleverness, special knowledge, or expertise, about another person's life. Confrontation, intrusion, clever tricks, hidden agenda, surprises, or slight of hand are Manipulations and are Abusive to another human being because the space holds another person as a lesser being and an object to be controlled. This is a misuse of power.

Be There for the People

Suggest ONLY self-awareness. True feedback is the expression of your awareness of yourself spoken in first person, present tense. Tell them how you understand what they said. Use only their exact words when referring to their expression of awareness. Let each ask their questions and also answer them for themselves.

Then, what do I do?.... Nothing.

If you could truly do nothing, you would be a Master and miracles would happen. No trespassing physically, intellectually, or spiritually. Maintain permission clarity. Any action is an interruption of the person's awareness continuum.

Reach Completion

At the end of a session, finish any "business" that feels incomplete. Ask for the group to do the same. Determine how you are different from the beginning. Then release any energy that you decide is not in your best interest. Clean and Sort. The Past is but a memory that you can change or release.

If you don't know where you are, you won't know where you've been.

Resource Links

Amazon Book Tags:
"Media Consciousness"