Gestalt Practice
We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. ~W. B. Yeats
Gestalt practice is a simple, human way to cultivate presence—developed by Richard “Dick” Price. It’s not psychotherapy and not a belief system. It’s practice: slow down, make clear contact with what’s here, and choose your next workable step.
Dick shaped the work after his own hard experiences in the mental-health system. He moved away from diagnosis and coercion toward a nonjudgmental, noncoercive craft of awareness. In this approach, participants are not patients. The reflector reflects and supports; they don’t interpret, fix, or advise.
The focus is how we meet experience rather than what we’re meeting. We start by “taking our seat”—connecting with breath, body, and support—then return to this ground throughout.
Basic tools include:
- Showing up, turning toward, offering time and space, and adding breath.
- Continuum of awareness: noticing inner sensation, outer perception, and thought.
- Contact / enter / express: meet an experience, take its "seat," and allow some expression (words, breath, sound, or movement)—slowing down and pausing to support noticing now.
Gestalt practice happens in community. In an open seat, one person works with a reflector while the group offers quiet presence; it’s learning-by-doing, not performance. Somatic influences matter: posture, breath, and small adjustments are trusted doors into change.
What emerges is practical: awareness in and of itself is healing. Dick said that awareness can lead to choice which can cultivate trust.