Expanding Awareness and Contact through Experiential Learning

Abstract

AbstractA Gestalt approach to change and adaptation focuses on awareness and contact and therefore requires learning. Experiential Learning is the primary holistic process of adaptation, which integrates interdependent pairs of opposites to be most effective. We explore how Experiential Learning can provide a framework for Gestalt practitioners to make the learning process and our approach to it explicit, thereby increasing awareness. In addition, through the process and content of Experiential Learning, we provide suggestions for using Gestalt experiments to build flexibility in using learning styles that empower us to have choice in the way we make contact. We build awareness that learning is present in every life experience and is an invitation to be engaged in each experience. We become aware that we are learning, how we are learning, and—perhaps most importantly—what we are learning.