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 Associate Certification Course in
Gestalt Psychology

(Inspired by the Work of Fritz Perls & as taught by Dick McHugh)

Course Syllabus:
This course is a deep dive into Gestalt Psychology, where mindfulness becomes the foundation for every tool and intervention. Instead of just talking about change, you’ll experience it. You'll engage with the core principles of Gestalt in a way that sharpens your awareness- of your perceptions, patterns, and how you hold yourself back. The aim? To help you show up more fully and authentically in both your personal and professional life.
Access to curated pre-work content
Additional key concepts to deepen your understanding
Excerpts, study materials & reading resources
Assignments and reflective mid-course work
Interactive peer work and learning in pairs
  • Your certification kit also includes the Gestalt Psychology Manual- an in-depth guide of over 750 pages.
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  • It’s not just a course-book; it’s a comprehensive, go-to resource that will stay with you long after the course ends, supporting both your learning and your ongoing practice.
01. Pre-Work
3 Modules | 20 hours
  • Introduction to Gestalt 
  • Intro Day
  • What is Gestalt 
  • Gestalt Mentors 
  • Language creates experience
  • Gestalt Psychology 
  • White Triangle 
  • Intro to unfinished business and chair 
  • Role Identity
  • Psychodrama
  • Balance in Key (Polarity Collapse)
  • Integrating masculinity & femininity polarity
  • Memory and Cognition 
  • Trauma & Gestalt 
  • Abnormal Psychology

Why Pre-Work Matters:

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The pre-work is your first step into the world of Gestalt Psychology that builds an essential foundation. Once you enroll, you’ll get access to a collection of resources- videos, audios, and PDFs that help you get familiar with the tools and how they show up in real life. It’s designed to help you set clear intentions for the course and build a solid understanding of the core principles before we even begin. This content is structured to help you:

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  • Clarify your course objectives

  • Build a strong conceptual base

  • Prepare for live classroom learning

  • Deepen your understanding of Gestalt Psychology principles

02. Course Syllabus
4 Modules | 34 hours
1. Forming Beliefs: The way we see the world isn’t random- our beliefs are built by putting together pieces of experiences, patterns, and perceptions. In this module, we look at how the mind organizes information (using Gestalt principles like closure and similarity) to make sense of life and how those mental structures shape the stories we live by.
 
2. Psychodrama: Through role-play and experiential work, this module helps you step into situations, conflicts, and relationships not just to understand them, but to feel them, move through them, and integrate what’s unresolved. It's where inner awareness meets theatre.
 
3. Sensing Contact: This is about tuning in. To your body. To your breath. To what's happening now. You'll explore presence as a lived experience and learn how contact with the moment deepens your awareness of yourself and others.
 
4. Gestalt Cycle: Human experience is not static, it moves in cycles. Awareness, contact, assimilation, withdrawal- these are natural rhythms. Here, you’ll explore how to flow with these cycles instead of resisting them, allowing growth to happen in its own time.
 
5. The Gestalt Prayer: Inspired by Fritz Perls, this part of the course invites you to meet yourself without guilt or blame, and to stand in your own ground instead of chasing someone else’s path. It’s about responsibility, the kind that sets you free.
 
6. Unfinished Business: Old emotions don’t just disappear, they stay in the body, in gestures, in tone, in avoidance. This module helps you identify those unresolved pieces of the past so they can be seen, felt, and brought into the light gently, but honestly.
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7. The Empty Chair: This classic Gestalt technique lets you speak to the parts of you (or others) that you’ve never really addressed. It’s role-play with real emotional depth where inner dialogue becomes outer expression.

8. Figure & Ground: What stands out in your experience? And what gets lost in the background? This concept explores how we perceive and prioritize moments, emotions, or people and how the context always shapes the content.

9. Pendulum Theory: We all swing between extremes, between parts of ourselves that feel like opposites. This module looks at those oscillations and how, over time, we can find rhythm and integration between them.

10. Collapsing Polarities: Light and dark. Strong and soft. This part of the course invites you to stop choosing sides within yourself and instead, make space for both. Because balance isn’t found by eliminating a part, but by understanding the whole.

11. Systemic Constellation: Every one of us is part of a larger system family, culture, memory. Using spatial arrangement and role-play, this module explores those invisible dynamics that influence who we are and what we carry.

12. Allowance Before Acceptance: You don’t have to jump straight to “I’m okay.” First, can you allow what’s here to just be here? This final module is about learning to sit with experience without rushing to fix, judge, or escape and letting acceptance grow from understanding.

Next live training dates are from 14th Aug to 17th Aug 2025.

A transformational 4 day live training experience, offering a hybrid flexibility: 

  • Attend in person in Mumbai or 

  • Join online from the comfort of your home

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Timings  12pm to 10pm on all days.
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Admissions are open. Apply now to check vision alignment and join the course.
Early bird registrations currently ongoing.

03. Integration Submission
3 Modules | 6 hours
1. Skills Showcase Video
A detailed video demonstration where you bring Gestalt tools to life, showing not just what you’ve learned, but how you apply it in practice.
2. Written Integretion:
This is where your understanding of Gestalt theory comes through on paper, an in-depth evaluation of your grasp of key concepts and frameworks.
3. Live Integration: 
A live, one-on-one conversation with a senior moderator that explores your skillset, insights, and how well you embody the spirit and structure of Gestalt in real-time.
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The health indicator of human beings is imbalance, this keeps us alive. And it is through the restructuring of balance how human beings live and grow.
- Laura Perls 

BY THE ANIL THOMAS FELLOWSHIP

joelcferns@anilthomas.co | +91 9930748410

Copyright © 2025 Anil Thomas. All Rights Reserved

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