I am Barbara Pompe-Gelissen, a body-oriented Gestalt-Art therapist, supervisor, international Gestalt bodytrainer, mother, grandmother, wife, and friend. I was born in Utrecht in 1957.

In the middle of my quite happy life, I got stuck. In Gestalt Therapy I started to feel my needs and I was able to experience my feelings. I discovered myself, my creativity, simplicity, and playfulness. My needs required more depth and I shifted my path.

I started following the art- and theoretical gestalt training at BOLT in Nieuwaal near Zaltbommel, Holland. I was trained by Magda and Aie Maris, Gestalt therapists from the very beginning. I am happy with this solid and creative basic training, it has allowed me to change.

I have worked as a Gestalt therapist for over 30 years in various capacities. Soon, I became interested in my bodily senses, their possibilities, their sound and feeling.

I have built up my bodywork experience as a trainer by teaching at BOLT and by offering bodywork days in my practice. I found depth in training with Seymour Carter (Sensory Awareness) and Anodea Judith (Chakras and trauma work). I integrate bodywork in all my groups and other therapy contacts. I teach Gestalt bodywork at the GNGI (Georgian National Gestalt Institute). I also train these young Gestalt therapists in body-related topics, such as sexuality.

The Gestalt experiments caught my attention when I was in Gestalt training. These are in the gestalt bible: Gestalttherapy, Excitement, and Growth of the Human Personality, written by F. Perls, F. Hefferline, and P. Goodman. The experiences gave me a lot of insight into myself, and how I dealt with myself and others. Experiencing it myself made me more open to what was new and what was hurting.

In my project “Tickets for the Mind” which I started in 2021, I developed the experiments in a creative contemporary form. And together with Sarah-Alice Miles, we developed a card deck; MoreMe, finding Self, which describes small personal experiments for gaining awareness. I gave an online workshop on this topic at the EAGT conference in Madrid (2023) Experimenting gives me many new possibilities. It's far from finished.