Training Faculty

Director of Training

DINAH BUCHANAN
M.Couns., Grad.Dip.Gestalt Therapy, RGN, PACFA Registered, Clinical Member of GANZ

Dinah is the Director of Terrigal Gestalt Institute and is a Clinical member of GANZ. She is a Counsellor & Psychotherapist with many years experience in Counselling, Child & Family Health, Gestalt Therapy, and Group Training. She has offered Counselling & Psychotherapy, Supervision & Group Training for over 15 years on the North Coast, Sydney & the Central Coast. She has also been a Gestalt Trainer & Counselling Skills Educator for the past 10 years. She currently has a private practice in Neutral Bay, Sydney & in Terrigal on the Central Coast.

Dinah’s particular focus includes personal / spiritual growth, depression / anxiety and grief / bereavement especially infertility, pregnancy loss & neonatal loss.
Dinah has a passion for assisting others to discover their inner strengths, move through difficulties, transform their lives and realise their full potential. Over the years she has also developed and facilitated many different workshops, courses and seminars to do with Personal & Spiritual Growth, Dream-work, Communicating & Counselling Skills, Relationship Enhancement, Conflict Resolution, Stress Management and Integration of Spiritual and Gestalt Concepts.

“It gives me great delight to see others open to the possibilities that the Psychotherapy journey has to offer.
As the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, so the intangible ‘more’ awaits us …”

Senior Faculty

TANYA FIELD
Dip G.T, Adv Dip G.T, Clinical Member of GANZ, Dip. C.H.

Tanya has studied and worked in various social and therapeutic fields for the past 15 years, including hypnotherapy, youth work, community development and psychotherapy. She graduated from a 4 year Diploma in Gestalt Therapy at the Brisbane Gestalt Institute.

Tanya has had a private practice in Byron Bay and now on the Central Coast where she has been practicing and teaching Gestalt therapy for the past 5 years. She has a particular interest in working with the dynamics of couples and families; including her own.

Tanya is passionate in her pursuit of building strong communities and sustainable lifestyle. She brings to her practice as a Gestalt Therapist a deep commitment to relationship and a love of supporting others to live connected and meaningful lives.
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Senior Visiting Trainer

MARGARETE KOENNING
Dip G.T, Dip. Social Work, Clincal Member of GANZ

Margarete has worked as a Gestalt Therapist for over 25 years with a background in social Work, working with abused women and addiction. Margarete graduated from the Frankfurt Gestalt Institute, where she studied for five yeyars and later worked as a Trainer.

She conducts regular training workshops for various Gestalt Institutes throughout Australia and facilitates professional supervision for individuals and groups. Margarete has also trained in Europe as a family constellation therapist and facilitates workshops in NSW & QLD.

She lives with her husband in the small community of Maleny. Nature and family are what give her support for work and life.

“The essence of my work is to find a place where we can meet with love. From this place change can happen. Curiosity and respect are the two most powerful tools we can have.”

Visiting Trainer

BRIAN NANNETTI
Grad.Dip G.T, Clincal Member of GANZ

Brian has worked as a Counsellor and Group worker for the past ten years. He has practiced in a variety of settings including General and Psychiatric hospitals and Palliative care. He has worked in welfare settings with women suffering domestic violence, and facilitated groups for men seeking to change their abusive behaviour.

More recently, Brian spent three years as a group and family therapist specializing in the treatment of addictions, PTSD and mood/personality disorders. He is a Gestalt Trainer and Therapist in private practice in Sydney and the Central Coast. He is also involved in facilitation of Yalom style groups and week-long workshops.

Brian is interested in how we keep ourselves safe (and perhaps limited) in relation to others. He believes that therapy is about relationship. It is about co-creating an appropriately supportive environment, where we can explore what lies beyond our once necessary limitations. He lives in Umina with his partner Marion and his two young children.
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Senior Visiting Trainer

BRU FURNER
B.A, Dip. App. Psych (Clin) Clinical Member of GANZ

Bru originally trained as a clinical Psychologist. He has worked since 1967 as an individual and group therapist, in the psychiatric field, university counselling and in private practice. He retired from full time work in 2004. Bru taught psychotherapy experientially for 30 years to psychology masters students (both clinical and educational) at the University of Newcastle and was, until he retired, a teacher of Tai Chi.

He has a particular interest in the body therapies and has trained in a number of those disciplines. He co-founded and co-directed a Gestalt training group in Newcastle (The Gestalt Group of NSW) with Dick Armstrong and continued as Co-Director with Marion Armstrong and later Bruce Chenoweth throughout the eighties.

He and his wife Tracey, who also trained in Gestalt, now spend a lot of time working around their house and garden, travelling and camping in the bush.

Assistant Trainer

DEBORAH HAYNES
Adv Dip G.T, Associate Member of GANZ

Debbie graduated from Terrigal Gestalt Institute in 2008 and is now studying a Bachelor in Psychological Science through UNE. Deb is passionate about the transpersonal elements of Gestalt.
Deb provides a spiritually supportive, honest and genuine approach to the therapeutic relationship. Her interest is to work with children, encouraging and nurturing children’s natural development through awakening connections to themselves and their environment. Deb lives in Greenpoint and has a beautiful daughter named Shaykaya-Jaide who she loves singing funny songs to.

“That which we are drawn to without perception is the innate workings of our heart. The heart is infinite; for long after the human has gone, the individual soul, that held itself in the place of humanity, lives on in its connectedness. Experiences, memories and souls of the present carry forth all that was, all that is and the hope of all that will be.”

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Assistant Trainer

STEVE STRANG
Adv Dip G.T, Associate Member of GANZ

Steve is a recent graduate of Terrigal Gestalt Institute (2009). He began his studies in Gestalt therapy in Brisbane and transferred to the Central Coast in 2007 where he completed his 4 year Advanced Diploma.
Steve’s interests include working with men and women; exploring how we connect with each other as human beings. He is also particularly interested in working with men of all ages and the concept of what it means to be a man in today’s society. He has been involved in Pathways to Manhood as well as developing and facilitating Tribe men’s group on the Central Coast aimed at reconnecting men.

“ I would like to support men and women on their journey to create a deeper connection to ‘self’ and consequently, others”.

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