Tony Africano is an accredited Analytical Psychotherapist, holding a Graduate Diploma in Analytical Psychotherapy and Advanced Diplomas in Psychotherapy & Professional Counselling. He is a full clinical member of The Psychotherapists’ and Counsellors’ Federation of Australia (PACFA Reg #20581).

He runs a busy and successful private psychotherapy and counselling practice in Mount Lawley, named The Lindsay Centre and has lectured in psychotherapy and counselling since 2002.  As a Senior Psychotherapist, Tony Africano also provides clinical supervision to many professionals across a wide range of mental health and allied fields.

Tony began training in the combat arts from the age of ten and has been actively involved in training and teaching in the martial arts for nearly 40 years.  His traditional roots have been mainly within the Japanese karate school of GoJu-Ryu.  Later, he also went on to train within the Shito-Ryu and Shorin-Ryu styles of karate.  Having attained black belts in all three systems he augmented his training locally and internationally in many other martial arts including Tae-Kwon Do, Thai Boxing, Ju-Jitsu, Kung-Fu and the Japanese art of sword mastery known as Kenjitsu and Iaido.

At a very young age, Tony achieved the title of State Kata Champion and continued to train and teach at both national and international levels.  He has spent many years teaching children and adults, specialising in women’s self-defence courses with the YMCA and also, more recently, within the West Australian state and private school systems.  He has attained state and national titles in the National All-Styles tournament circuit, in both the Kata (forms or patterns) and fighting categories of the competition.  In addition to his own achievements he has coached other competitors in both state and national arenas.

In 2007, Tony travelled to Japan to train in Okinawa and was graded successfully to the level of Shihan Godan or 5th Degree Black Belt, under the auspices of Grand Master, Kosei Wakugawa. (‘Shihan’ is a Japanese word meaning ‘Master-Teacher’ or ‘Master-Instructor’).  Hanshi Wakugawa, (born in 1920), is a 10^th Dan holder in Gojyu-Ryu and is considered a living ‘Intangible Cultural Asset holder in the field of Okinawan Karate & Martial Arts with Weaponry’ by the Okinawa Prefecture.

Tony has always held an open and respectful orientation to all traditional martial arts, however, in recent years he has turned his attention to a close-combat and self-defence practice that is more ‘street-wise’ and reality-based.  He now trains in ‘Goshin-Do’ or ‘The Way of Personal Combat’ and runs a school of self-defence in his spare time, coaching and teaching individuals, groups and corporate classes.

 

Professional Development and Business Mentoring

Tony has now also accumulated extensive experience in coaching and mentoring executives within an enormous range of business and professional settings.  He not only draws upon extensive contemporary psychological and business training and experience, but also from traditional Eastern philosophical approaches to facilitate an individual’s progress and success through the provision of Professional Development and Business Mentoring.

The benefits of Professional Development & Mentoring:

• Dealing with personal and professional ‘blocks’ or impediments to your bottom-line capacity to generate an income.
• Professional support in your business development and professional journey.
• Improvements to work-related effectiveness and performance.
• Improvements to conflict resolution skills in the work-place, thereby enhancing professional effectiveness and profitability.
• The discovery of common ground between adversaries where ‘win/win’ solutions can potentially be created.
• The ability to learn from failures or setbacks.
• The ability to create safe, non-judgemental learning environments for management and staff, where all points are heard and dealt with professionally and with integrity.
• The ability to enable staff and management  to realise their full potential by confronting and overcoming self-doubt and fear.
• Improvements to team-leadership skills, facilitating harmony, co-operation and unity of purpose amongst staff members at all levels.
• Ways to initiate or re-ignite the flame of enthusiasm and passion within an individual and/or staff teams and leaders.
• A strong sense of heightened self-esteem, confidence, direction, discipline responsibility and motivation on your chosen professional path.

From enhancing an individual’s effectiveness in sales performance to honing managerial skills and team leadership, professional development training and coaching is certainly a very worthwhile investment, ensuring improvement, growth, fulfillment and sustainability to any professional career or business enterprise.