Welcome to

Nautilus

Creative Therapy

Naut-ilus | sailor, voyager, explorer –
engaged in navigation––––––––––

We travel and explore at your pace

Nautilus Creative Therapy offers therapeutic support to adults and young folk who work with their innate creativity, strengths and inner wisdom to navigate and explore being, belonging, and Self as dynamic, interconnected and whole.

We take a transpersonal, holistic and person-centred therapeutic approach to help you bring new meaning, insight and awareness to your inner and outer patterns, systems and connections in life. We value the whole human—psychological, emotional, somatic, energetic, intergenerational and psychospiritual—experience.

You don’t have to be an artist

We focus on what emerges in process, not on finishing any kind of art piece. Creative therapeutic expressions are more like maps made in the language of our unconscious: sensations, symbols and metaphors. Creative therapy speaks this language.

When we can’t find the words, when we know more than we can tell, we work with your creative expressions and what draws your attention to gently explore those parts of Self beyond the ego that are most in need of our care and compassion.

We know more than we can tell
—Michael Polyani

Dr Ashley Haywood (PhD/She)
Therapist, Writer & Artist

My therapeutic approach is creative, transpersonal, holistic and person-centred, drawing on other healing modalities such as trauma-informed somatic therapy and Internal Family Systems, as well as my doctoral research on creativity, minds and complex systems.

I’m a therapist, poet, parent, story-teller and creative researcher who is passionate about creativity and meaning-making—how we carry meaning from one place to another, often between unconscious and conscious layers and across mind-body systems—to arrive at something astonishingly new. These are also the creative moves behind insight, integration, self-discovery and personal growth.

My creative therapy space is a container held with unconditional compassion as we tend to the alchemy that brings insight, self-discovery and personal growth. 

Alchemy is the path of turning our wounds into wisdom
—Hermes Trismegistus

Work with Ashley

  • 1:1 Creative Therapy

    We work together at your pace to explore, discover, integrate and grow


  • Groupwork

    Creative therapy workshops for small groups held online and in person


  • 1:1 Creativity Support

    Reconnect with your innate creativity and personal creative process


Offerings