In English only
Date: 19. and 20.11.2026, Ljubljana, in-person full-day workshop (with pre-workshop), 19.1.2027 group online supervision
Lead Faculty: Dorothy E. Siminovitch, MCC, in partnership with Jasna Knez, MCC
In an era where artificial intelligence increasingly supports performance, productivity, and even reflection, one coaching capacity remains profoundly human: the ability to stay fully present with complexity, uncertainty, resistance, and relational dynamics as they emerge in the moment.
Resistance is one of the most misunderstood, yet most essential, phenomena in transformational coaching. Coaches regularly encounter moments where clients hesitate, withdraw, intellectualize, overexplain, become compliant, lose energy, or repeatedly return to the same themes without meaningful movement. Traditional coaching approaches may interpret these responses as a lack of motivation, accountability, or readiness for change. TheThe
Gestalt perspective offers a fundamentally different understanding.
From a Gestalt lens, resistance is not something to overcome or eliminate. It is meaningful information emerging at the boundary between the person and their environment. Resistance reflects how individuals organize safety, identity, belonging, and self-protection within the realities of their lives and systems. At times, it represents wisdom, integrity, and healthy boundary management. At other times, it reveals outdated adaptive patterns that once supported survival or acceptance but now limit awareness, agency, growth, and authentic choice.
The coach’s task is to recognize resistance’s function, remain in relationship with it, and work skillfully with its energy. Masterful coaching requires noticing what emerges beneath the surface: in the body, emotions, relationships, silence, tension, energy, and subtle data.
This advanced experiential masterclass explores resistance as a dynamic element of human change. Participants develop greater awareness, intelligence, relational presence, and embodied capacity to work skillfully with clients’ protected, avoided, defended, or unarticulated aspects.
The program integrates Gestalt coaching principles like awareness, presence, contact, experimentation, field sensitivity, somatic awareness, and the paradoxical theory of change. Participants learn to distinguish between intelligent self-protection and limiting patterns hindering growth. The experiential, reflective, relational, and practice-based learning environment allows coaches to explore resistance in clients and themselves, deepening their presence, responsiveness, and grounding in uncertainty, tension, and transformational possibilities.
This workshop is designed for coaches who want to move beyond model-based interventions toward a more mature, relational, and transformational coaching practice. It supports the development of mastery-level coaching competencies through deeper awareness, expanded use of self, and the ability to work creatively with the living dynamics emerging within each coaching conversation.
• Distinguish between resistance as a resource and resistance as an outdated limitation
• Develop the capacity to recognize resistance somatically, relationally, emotionally, and contextually
• Strengthen the ability to work with resistance without overriding, rescuing, fixing, or colluding
• Expand your repertoire of Gestalt-informed interventions for transformational coaching
• Deepen coaching presence and use of self as primary instruments of intervention
• Cultivate awareness, intelligence, curiosity, and psychological safety in coaching conversations
• Increase confidence in navigating complexity, uncertainty, and emotionally charged moments
• Practice making adaptive choices when resistance is active in the coaching process
• Strengthen mastery-level coaching capacities aligned with advanced ICF competencies
This workshop is especially valuable for external and internal coaches who wish to deepen their coaching mastery, refine their coaching presence, and strengthen their ability to work beyond technique into transformational relational practice. The workshop is appropriate for experienced coaches, internal coaches, leaders using coaching skills, coach educators, and coaches pursuing PCC or MCC level development.
Participants will receive an ICF certificate, including 16 Coach Continuing Education (CCE) credits, plus group supervision 2 CPD hours applicable toward International Coaching Federation credential renewal requirements.
Championed by Dorothy E. Siminovitch, Gestalt Coaching is a presence-focused approach that identifies critical moments of awareness and choice that emerge in real time and create long term transformational impact.
Dorothy E. Siminovitch, PhD, MCC, is the founder and president of Gestalt Coaching Works, LLC, an internationally recognized coach, consultant, speaker, educator, and author. She pioneered the application of Gestalt theory and practice in professional coaching and has delivered Gestalt coach training internationally since 1996. She is the founder and co-owner of the Gestalt Coaching Program in Istanbul, co-founder of the Gestalt Center for Coaching, faculty at Hudson Coaching Institute, and recipient of the 2023 ICF Toronto Lifetime Achievement Award in Coaching. Dorothy specializes in coaching for awareness, leadership presence, derailment recovery, high-performance leadership, groups, and teams. Her book A Gestalt Coaching Primer: The Path Toward Awareness Intelligence is widely recognized as a foundational contribution to professional coaching development. Known for her warmth, wisdom, and transformational presence, Dorothy inspires trust, awareness, courage, and meaningful change in individuals and organizations worldwide.
17:00 – 19:00 CET | Ljubljana
Pre-workshop introductory session: Introduction to the foundations and principles of Gestalt coaching, including a live MCC coaching demonstration by Dorothy Siminovitch. Participants will be introduced to awareness-based coaching, relational presence, emerging awareness, and working with the data of the moment through an experiential Gestalt coaching approach.
09:00 – 17:30 CET | Ljubljana
Two-day in-person advanced experiential workshop: A deep dive into Gestalt coaching and working with resistance in a masterful, relational, and transformational way. Participants will explore: resistance as creative adjustment, awareness intelligence, relational and somatic dynamics, emerging awareness, contact and interruption patterns, working with resistance in real-time coaching conversations, and mastery-level Gestalt coaching interventions. The learning process includes live demonstrations, experiential exercises, reflective dialogue, supervised practice, and real coaching case work.
17:00 – 19:00 CET | Online
Group online supervision and integration session: A follow-up reflective and supervision-based session designed to support integration of learning into coaching practice, deepen awareness, and explore real coaching experiences and challenges emerging after the workshop.
Full program certification: 1.200,00 EUR + VAT
Can be paid in 2 instalments
Special Price:
The programme fee includes:
APPLY HERE