Explore the GIT

Jay Tropianskaia, RP   | Director of Training

Senior Faculty

Jay Tropianskaia, Senior Faculty, has been a part of the history of the Gestalt Institute of Toronto since 1985 when she trained with the founder Jorge Rosner who brought the theatrical dynamism of his teacher Fritz Perls into a uniquely spiritual and humanistic framework. From 1994 she worked with Executive Director Joanne Greenham to refine the curriculum to ensure excellence of training of psychotherapists, which introduced Gestalt Therapy to the broader community of health care professionals. On Joanne Greenham’s untimely death in 2014, it fell to Jay to bring the GIT one more step into recognition as a meaningful contemporary therapy through providing a competency mapping and curriculum for recognition by the newly formed CRPO. The new curriculum marked a shift in the Five Year Training Program to the internationally based Contemporary Gestalt approach which is embodied, relational and field centered. In addition to her life commitment to the GIT, Jay is a Registered Psychotherapist and Clinical Supervisor, in private practice in Toronto.

Carolina Edwards, RP   | Executive Director

Senior Faculty

Carolina Edwards. In addition to being senior faculty and an RP in private practice, since taking over as ED and co-director of the GIT, Carolina has gained a new full time job. Having distinguished herself as a pioneer in the field of educational audiology since the early eighties, Carolina is now the first Executive Director to represent the GIT on several Boards, to coordinate Toronto’s first international Gestalt conference and to give the GIT a public face in government legislative action. This plus having spearheaded the renovation work at the new building. As Senior Faculty, she brings her knowledge and experience with such diverse areas as disability, youth and the training of educational professionals to her love of Gestalt. She has become a role model for the practice of Gestalt therapy with compassion, insight and gentle humour.

Luisa de Amaral, RP   | Faculty

Luisa de Amaral, RP, CGT, IMG, OACCPP. Luisa’s passion for travel, adventure and bio/cultural diversity has taken her across many borders and led to her broad understanding of diverse cultures and issues of importance to her clients. After experiencing the magic of Gestalt, she gladly gave up a career in medicine and has not looked back since. She’s been working as a Gestalt therapist for about a decade and is currently in private practice in Toronto, where she works with individuals, couples and groups. Having been a grassroots environmental justice activist, Luisa now focuses on applying Gestalt principles to support dialogue, in solidarity with people’s struggles. She has additional training in Art Therapy, Couples Therapy, Sensory Awareness and Theatre of the Oppressed. Her trauma-informed bottom up approach embraces the paradox of human existence with sensitivity and playfulness.

Gita Lakhanpal, RP | Faculty

Gita Lakhanpal, OT Reg (Ont), RP, MES, is a Registered Occupational Therapist and Psychotherapist with over 20 years experience in community mental health, primary care, and hospital based care. Throughout her career Gita has provided education and training for group and individual psychotherapy therapy for interprofessional health care providers. Gita works from a humanistic, embodied, integrative and evidence-based framework. Her practice is informed by neurobiology, attachment theory, sensory awareness practice and the multi-cultural traditions that are the basis of mindfulness and contemplative practices. Gita approaches psychotherapy as a creative exploration to support the poetic and pragmatic aspects of being human.

Lauren Nancarrow Clarke, RSW   | Faculty

Lauren Nancarrow Clarke, MSW, is a Gestalt social worker psychotherapist who has worked with individuals and groups in community mental health and hospital settings for nearly two decades. Lauren is committed to incorporating gestalt, mindfulness, and evidenced based treatments to serve clients holistically. Lauren is an avid ecstatic dancer practicing and training for over twenty years. She is passionate about how the body’s information supports our ability to be present with one another in honest ways. Lauren loves learning with her clients, groups, and supervisees about being embodied, with open heartedness and curiosity.

Shan Qi, RP | Faculty

Shan Qi is a somatic, trauma informed Gestalt psychotherapist and trainer who has worked deeply with survivors of catastrophic trauma using phenomenological relational heart to heart humanity. She shares this training with health care practitioners, from any discipline who are interested in the use of the embodied self, which we call Presence. Shan is also a graduate of the Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy Program in New York, and has completed training in somatic experiencing, psychodrama, and sensory awareness.

Michael Cottrell, RP | Faculty

For over 36 years he has been teacher, counsellor, spiritual leader, meditator, healer and psychotherapist. With a post-graduate certificate in Gestalt Psychotherapy, a Masters in Divinity (Western), a diploma and teaching certificate in Early Childhood Education and Child Development (Conestoga), and an undergraduate degree in Social Work (Waterloo), his work with others has been one of support/challenge , healing and personal development.  As an openly queer relational gestalt therapist he is passionate about supporting clients and other queer therapists, to embody their own experiences. Michael believes that through queering relational Gestalt Therapy we bring a richness of depth and breadth to life. 

Fiona Moola, RP(Q) | Faculty

Fiona J. Moola joined the GIT faculty in June 2023.  She is a registered psychotherapist (Qualifying) and a graduate of the GIT Five Year Training Program. Fiona is a woman of colour with ancestral roots from apartheid South Africa.  Having obtained her doctorate in 2011 from the University of Toronto, she is an Associate Professor at the Toronto Metropolitan University in the School of Early Childhood Studies, a Research Associate at the Grandview Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor, Status Only, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, University of Toronto. Fiona’s pedagogy, clinical practice, and research is strongly underpinned by social justice, critical health psychology, humanism, and health equity perspectives. Fiona has a particular interest in racial wounds, disordered eating, childhood disability, learning and educational journeys, as well as experiential research traditions.  Fiona is dedicated to lifelong learning and the constant pursuit of curiosity.

Charlene Avalos

Charlene Avalos has worked and lived in the Aboriginal Community since 1980 when she became the first Band Social Worker for the Heiltsuk Nation in B.C. She has worked at Native Child in Family Services for the last twenty seven years. She helped develop the Mooka’am Treatment Program under the guidance and direction of numerous Elders and traditional people in southern Ontario. She is a strong believer in the healing power of traditional ceremony and practice interwoven with contemporary intervention strategies. She has a Masters Degree in Social Work, is a graduate of the Gestalt Institute of Toronto, and has studied Psycho dramatic body work, play therapy and theraplay to name a few. She teaches courses at Ryerson University including Aboriginal Approaches to Social Work.

Michael Clemmens

Michael Clemmens, PhD is a licensed psychologist with a private practice in Pittsburgh, PA working with individuals and couples. He is a faculty member at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. He travels nationally and internationally teaching and offering experiential learning opportunities. He is the author of Getting Beyond Sobriety: Clinical Approaches to Long Term Recovery published by Gestalt Press and the articles “Culture and Body,” “Gestalt Therapy as an Embodied Relational Dialogue” and the editor of the soon to be published book Embodied Relational Gestalt, to be published by Gestalt Press.

Ruella Frank

Ruella Frank, PhD, has been exploring early infant movements and their relationship to the adult since the mid-1970s. She brings many years of experience to her work as a Gestalt psychotherapist — as a professional dancer, yoga practitioner/teacher, student of various movement theories, and student of Laura Perls, co-founder of Gestalt therapy.

Ruella is founder and director of the Center for Somatic Studies, faculty at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, faculty at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy, and also teaches throughout the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Russia.

Shirley Gillis-Kendall

Shirley Gillis-Kendall, Beedahbun nemki kwe, is Turtle Clan and a member of the Alderville First Nation. She has worked extensively within the Toronto Aboriginal community for over thirty years developing and implementing programs for children, individuals and families within all components of the Medicine Wheel. The foundation of Shirley’s ‘holistic health for life’ plan was the awakening of her spirit with a definitive ‘recognition of being’ as an Anishnawbe-kwe with inherent gifts, rights and responsibilities. Shirley returned to formal education to support and give credence to more than thirty years of self-directed studies. She received a Diploma, Magnum Cum Laude in Applied Holistic Nutrition and is a Certified Nutritional Practitioner under the Canadian Nutritional Practitioners of Canada. Her diverse career has led to her current position as Director of Services and Well Being for the Kunuwanimano Child and Family Services.

Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb

Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb is a psychologist, psychotherapist and has been a Gestalt Therapy trainer since 1979. She is the founder and director of the Istituto di Gestalt HCC Italy.   She has edited seven books, authored two books and hundreds of papers and chapters on various aspects of Gestalt therapy theory and method. She has led Gestalt therapy training workshops in over twenty countries and also cooperates with many research groups on psychotherapy internationally. She is the director of the Advanced International Training Programs in Gestalt Psychopathology and Contemporary Disturbances, Training Programs for Supervisors and Summer Programs for psychotherapists for personal work and professional updates.

Jan Roubal

Jan Roubal, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychotherapist, psychiatrist, supervisor and psychotherapy trainer.He teaches psychotherapy at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, where he also participates in the work of the Center for Psychotherapy Research.Jan works on the leading edge of Gestalt therapy and research including his groundbreaking work on the Gestalt approach to depression, how we present and think about case studies,the experiment, and simplifying the way we speak about field theory and phenomenology in the therapy session He publishes texts mostly on psychotherapy in clinical practice and has co-edited two books, a Czech publication on Current Psychotherapy (2010) and Gestalt Therapy in Clinical Practice: The Aesthetics of Contact (21013).In addition he is the chair of the EAGT Research Committee.