Professional training
Training that grows the practitioner, not just the practice.
Two distinct pathways — a three-year Diploma of Gestalt Therapy for those entering the field in depth, and a focused Career Decision Coaching certification for working counsellors, coaches, and HR professionals.
A note on Lifeworks & GTI
A personal stream of training alongside the institute.
Lifeworks has run training since 1987. In parallel, the Gestalt Therapy International (GTI) provides a structured institutional pathway with a wider faculty, formal cohorts, and accredited programs. The two are companions rather than competitors: GTI carries the curriculum at scale, while Lifeworks holds the more intimate, mentor-led work — small groups, supervisory relationships, and the specialised Career Decision Coaching certification.
If you are looking for a full accredited institutional program, GTI is usually the right door. If you are looking for direct apprenticeship-style training with Vinay, or for the career coaching certification specifically, the pathways below are for you.
Curious what Gestalt actually is before you commit to training? Start with Gestalt therapy defined →
At a glance
- Diploma of Gestalt TherapyFour years · 108 days face-to-face training · cohort-based
- Career Decision Coaching™Home study · self-paced · script, software & templates
- Supervision & mentoringFor practitioners already in the field — by arrangement
Pathway one
Diploma of Gestalt Therapy
A four-year professional training in the Gestalt tradition, currently offered in Shanghai. The program is built around roughly 1000 hours of training and asks far more of a trainee than attendance and reading. It is, in the end, an apprenticeship in a way of living.
Year one
An integrated grounding in theory, skill, and practice. Trainees become experientially familiar with the basics of Gestalt — contact, awareness, the present moment — supported by readings and written reflection.
Year two
The foundations turn outward. Emphasis shifts to applying Gestalt principles in working with people: experimenting in the chair, holding a process, learning to trust what is emerging in the field.
Year three
More advanced terrain: shame, groupwork, couples and family work, psychopathology, character and personality systems, sexuality, ethics and practice management. Trainees begin supervised casework.
Year four
Developmental approaches, the transpersonal, work with trauma and abuse, addictions, working with children, Gestalt in organisations, and Gestalt in the larger ecology. Supervised practice intensifies, culminating in the Advanced Diploma of Gestalt Therapy.
The philosophy
The training is designed to grow personal agency and an authentic working style, married to genuine skill and theoretical grasp. Because Gestalt is an experiential approach, the course involves substantial self-exploration and a willingness — as the old phrase has it — to risk being alive. It is not a therapy group, though, and trainees need enough self-support to meet the intensity of the work.
We do not hand out recipes for “how to do therapy.” The point is to learn to trust the process, to draw on resilience rather than formula, and to develop faith in one’s own clinical wisdom rather than adopting borrowed beliefs unexamined.
What the journey asks of you
Training is a long passage. It invites trainees to stretch, to attend to unfinished business, to take responsibility for their own lives, and to stay with feeling rather than manage it away. Sometimes that is joyful. Sometimes, even with care, it is painful. What is required is a willingness to experiment.
Progress is weighed primarily through personal development and attitude, not just hours logged or theory recited. Gestalt is, before anything else, an approach to living; the personal and the professional cannot be neatly split, and the course is built on that recognition.
Standards we hold ourselves to
- · The timetable is set at the start of the training year, with disruption kept to a minimum.
- · Trainers carry at least five years of therapeutic experience and adhere to a professional code of ethics.
- · Trainees are treated with respect, as individuals, and the learning of both individual and group is supported.
- · No discrimination on the basis of gender, class, cultural background, sexual orientation, disability, or belief.
- · No hidden costs — additional financial requirements are spelled out at the start of each year.
- · The program keeps evolving in response to feedback, contemporary practice, and the standards of professional bodies.
Pathway two
Career Decision Coaching™ — practitioner training
A self-paced home-study certification for counsellors, coaches, and HR professionals who want to add a focused, high-value offering to their practice. Built around a method that delivers a clear career outcome in a single day.
A single-session method
The method is designed to produce a concrete result — two well-grounded career paths for the client — in one focused session. The protocol is repeatable, and you can stand behind the outcome.
Quick to learn, quick to apply
Roughly a week of study and you are ready to run sessions. Clear directions, a full session script, and your choice of paper templates or proprietary software.
A largely untapped market
People change careers three to five times across a working life and most need real support through it. Yet few practitioners offer career work beyond one or two assessment instruments. This method is more layered and more robust.
Fast financial return
Sessions of this kind typically range from $600–$950 in private practice and $950–$1,600 in corporate settings. At the lower end, two sessions cover the course.
Diversify your offering
Whether you are building a private practice or working inside HR or a job agency, this becomes another genuine income stream — and, internally, a way to deliver noticeably better client outcomes.
Deeply satisfying work
The reward, in the end, is the client walking out with clarity about a direction that fits who they actually are. It is work that tends to leave both parties more alive.
Home study package
Everything needed to start running sessions.
Self-paced and complete: instructional videos, a full session script, the choice of pen-and-paper templates or the proprietary software, and a licensing agreement covering professional use.
US $1,950
One-time cost · lifetime access to the materials
Which pathway?
Not sure where you fit? Write, and we will work it out together.
Some practitioners come for the Diploma; others want only the career coaching certification; others again are mid-career and looking for supervision or mentoring. A short email is usually enough to find the right next step.