Phil Norbury - Diploma Tutor

Philip Norbury is a tutor on TAC’s Diploma in Integrative Counselling. He is a UKCP-accredited Gestalt psychotherapeutic counsellor with practices in both London and Canterbury. Before becoming a psychotherapist, Phil spent fifteen years designing and maintaining gardens, which shaped his understanding of change, growth, and the interconnectedness of all things. When he began his own psychotherapeutic journey, he was delighted to discover Gestalt therapy, which fitted beautifully with his values and intuitions about healing and becoming.

As a Gestalt therapist, Phil is committed to treating the “whole” person – body, mind, and spirit. Like a flourishing garden, Gestalt therapy is diverse, sensory and spontaneous. Phil brings ideas and practices from Somatic Experiencing, Family Constellations and Internal Family Systems into his Gestalt work.

As a tutor, Phil offers an experiential approach to teaching Gestalt therapy. Drawing on his background in education, including teaching English in Tanzania and running creative writing workshops in which he has a Master’s Degree, Phil aims to be very experiential in his teachings, giving students the opportunities to experience Gestalt ideas and practices in the moment, weaving theory into experiments and exercises, giving students real-life experiences seeing Gestalt in action.

Phil prizes authenticity and spontaneity in his classes, welcoming the students to help co-create their sessions. He prefers dialogue, practice and experiment to PowerPoint presentations. Gestalt theory can be quite difficult and complex. Rather than encouraging students to download large amounts of theoretical information, Phil prefers to teach through experiential moments, foster dialogue between students and himself and create something fresh, engaging and meaningful.