You don't need to be fixed.
You need space to feel.
Holistic art therapy and presence-based practice in Dubai — workshops and private sessions with a certified practitioner who has spent twenty years building cities, and now works on the people inside them.
What's running
Two ways in. The work is the same underneath — you make something, and it tells you something.
Small groups, materials on the table, something made by the end of it.
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Letting Go & Refocus
A facilitated session on what to put down before deciding what comes next. Delivered for teams and for open groups.
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AI, Sustainability & Future Cities
Cross-disciplinary work on what AI changes about a city and what it must not be allowed to flatten.
Private sessions with Nahla, in person or online.
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A first conversation
No preparation and no commitment. You describe where you are; Nahla tells you honestly whether this work helps.
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Holistic art therapy
Creative arts therapy with a certified HICAT practitioner, working at your pace rather than to a curriculum.
Smart cities and inner lives are not separate worlds.
Whether the work is a policy or a healing session, it reconnects a system with the human experience at its centre. That is one practice, not two.
- Held, not fixed
- Certified Holistic Integrated Creative Arts Therapy — a method, not a wellness aesthetic borrowed for a workshop. You are not here to be repaired. You are here for space to feel, and the method holds when a session goes somewhere difficult.
- Dual expertise
- Twenty years leading innovation and policy work across the Middle East and Africa, alongside a personal journey through emotional healing and creative practice. The approach is not theoretical; it is integrated and lived.
- Irregular smoothness
- Nahla's own term for it: processes that flow, adjust and breathe rather than frameworks that stay rigid. Structure enough to trust, loose enough to follow where a session actually goes.
Start wherever
you are.
Most people arrive not quite able to say what they are looking for. That is a normal place to begin from, and it is what the first conversation is for — thirty minutes, free, with no preparation and no obligation.
Or take something with you.
Not everyone is ready for a conversation, and that is fine. There is a free e-book, and it costs an email address — nothing else follows unless you ask for it.
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The free e-book
Yours to read on a phone, at the end of a day, with nothing to prepare and nobody to meet.
People who have been in the room
Participants in their own words, and two of the rooms.
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One of a kind experience — I felt appreciated and valued.
D.R Workshop participant
★★★★★
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It was an eye-opening workshop that helped me find a starting point to know myself better, and to explore and prioritize my body, mind and soul wellbeing. Thank you for the amazing insights — I am looking forward to attending more workshops by you.
N.B. Workshop participant
★★★★★
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The workshop was really useful — it met my needs in understanding myself better, connecting with others, and learning how to improve many things in me. Thanks a lot to the mentor, Nahla ElBanhawy, for her valuable time and insights.
A.E Workshop participant
★★★★★
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Draft — reserved for a testimonial being collected
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Draft — reserved for a testimonial being collected
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Sikka Art & Design Festival
“Smart, But Not Wise” — a talk on what intelligence costs a city, staged at Al Shindagha, Dubai.
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Raquda Foundation for Art and Heritage
Solo exhibition at the Jesuit Cultural Center, Alexandria — painting from the intangible heritage work.
Nahla ElBanhawy
A certified Holistic Integrated Creative Arts Therapy practitioner, architect, and facilitator at The Holistic Academy.
With over twenty years spent building businesses, advancing technologies and shaping cities across the Middle East and Africa, she now channels that same vision of transformation into the human journey — helping people navigate life's chapters with creativity, balance and self-discovery.
- Certified HICAT practitioner — Holistic Integrated Creative Arts Therapy
- Facilitator at The Holistic Academy
- Architect, 20+ years across the Middle East and Africa
- Speaker, Sikka Art & Design Festival, Al Shindagha