Opening To Grace
Opening to Grace welcomes you
OPENING TO GRACE (OTG) is an independent Gestalt therapy centre based on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
Opening to Grace began its journey in the early 2000’s as the Terrigal Gestalt Institute, directed in latter years by Dinah Eades Buchanan. TGI was originally focused on academic Gestalt training and development, and ceased operation as a training Institute in 2016. Through the Opening To Grace framework, Dinah now offers individual Gestalt Counselling & Therapy, Spiritual Direction, Clinical & Professional Supervision, Professional Development: Workshops & Seminars, and occasional Healing Retreats.
Dinah’s personal, professional, and spiritual development focused work provides you with compassion and support throughout your journey. Grounded in the Gestalt approach and contemplative practice, Dinah’s individual and group sessions flow naturally from a synthesis of contemplative practice underpinned with heart-centred Gestalt practice.
Dinah Eades Buchanan
OTG Founder & Retreat Facilitator
Our Aim
The aim of Dinah’s work through the Opening to Grace framework is to inspire clients and participants to access and develop their own unique creativity, healing, and wisdom, enriched by an unfolding growth journey of depth and compassion.
Services include:
Opening To Grace Healing Retreats
Our Opening to Grace healing Retreats are an opportunity to come together to create a sacred space for healing, transformation, and growth.
These Retreats combine the Gestalt approach with contemplative spiritual practice, as a way of entering a sacred healing space. From here we acknowledge that we are already moving toward healing and wholeness. Profound physical and emotional healing and change is available when the sacred is consciously acknowledged at the heart of the healing process, and the framework of Gestalt offers a vital and compelling backdrop to this healing work.
These Retreats offer participants a supportive space to experience profound healing and change within a spiritual framework. We also explore therapeutic and healing processes from a practitioner perspective.
NOTE: Our next Healing Retreat is scheduled for 2027
Facilitator: Dinah Eades Buchanan
For further info contact Dinah at dinahbuchanan18@gmail.com or 0439 752 710
Our Offerings
Gestalt for Healing
Our Opening to Grace healing Retreats provide an opportunity to come together to create a sacred space for healing, transformation, and growth. You will experience the Transformational Gestalt approach which combines Gestalt Therapy & contemplative spirituality. Retreats are open to those in professional helping roles and anyone interested in healing and growth work through a spiritual lens. All spiritual faiths and beliefs are welcomed and honoured in a spirit of deep community.
Individual Sessions
Individual Counselling / Therapy / Spiritual Direction sessions with Dinah are available Monday to Saturday.
Sessions are conducted within the foundational framework of the Gestalt approcah, with a focus on creativity and experimentation to facilitate awareness and insight. Dinah’s practice has a relational focus and the work is grounded in compassion. Essentially, Dinah has a passion to share this life’s journey with others and build community in a deep and profound way.
Clinical & Professional Supervision
Dinah currently offers Clinical Supervision for counselling and psychotherapy practitioners, and Professional Supervision for practitioners in all allied heath, pastoral, and educational contexts. The supervision space is a ‘brave space’ – facilitated to allow supervisees to examine and reflect on their work / vocational practice in a context of support, challenge, and encouragement. Gaining awareness is key to good reflective practice and support for this process is essential. Please contact Dinah on 0439 752 710 to arrange a session.
Join our Community
This Prospectus outlines the online training in Transformational Gestalt Practice currently offered by Opening To Grace. This program has been developed to introduce practicing clinicians, and those in ministry, to an overview of the Gestalt modality through a spiritual framework, so that it can be integrated into existing practice and ministry. The program is personally tailored for each participant and delivered as a combination of online teaching and mentoring sessions, PDF teaching units, Readings and Handouts, and experiential tasks, over the duration of an individually tailored program (within a 6-12 month period).
Opening To Grace Blog
The Darkness Within …
Somehow we came to believe that the darkness itself is hell, As though it exists apart from God. But God is in the darkness too. In the unlit places, in the hidden places. In the [...]
~SINGING BEAUTY INTO BEING ~
There is a sound beneath the chaos of the world A tremble in the bones A breath at the edge of Silence ~ It is the sound of the birth of Beauty Born not of [...]
The Shadow …
It could be said that the point of our journey in this one life we are given is to unravel the great mystery of who we are. We spend much of our lives carefully constructing [...]
Our Constant Companion …
We 'die' many times before our actual death ... We are growing and expanding emotionally and spiritually throughout our lives and at each incremental transition we have to say goodbye to an older version of [...]