Virgil: the poet & guide featured in Dante’s Divine Comedy; a mythic wise companion that walks beside us through the unknown.
In this spirit, Virgil Therapy honours the inner knowing that lives within each of us. The creative intelligence that knows how to move toward meaningfulness and change. Experiential and creative arts therapy simply makes the space to hear to that intelligence. And follow its quiet light home.
Alongside you on the path of becoming.
I’m Jerico Mandybur (AThR), an ANZACATA-registered experiential and creative arts psychotherapist and the founder of Virgil Therapy. My work integrates creative expression, embodied inquiry, and contemplative practices to support clients through complex emotional experiences, identity exploration, and meaning-making. I combine evidence-based rigour with a sensitivity to the imaginal, symbolic, somatic, and spiritual dimensions of healing.
My therapeutic approach emphasises presence, deep listening, and the creative process as pathways to personal insight and knowing. With an attuned and non-hierarchical style, I offer a compassionate container for clients—from adults, teens, and children above 8 years—to engage with inner complexity and emerge with greater clarity and resilience.
I have worked in settings across disability and aged care (including dementia and palliative care) and have held therapeutic workshops for organisations like the Sydney Opera House, The Galeries, and more. In addition to my work as an arts therapist, I am the award-winning author of five books and tarot/oracle decks, a creative coach, and a writer.
Read on to learn more about my therapeutic frameworks, formal qualifications, lived experience, psychological approach to the tarot, and professional ethics.
Frameworks
My approach is informed by phenomenology, mindfulness, depth psychology, and the MIECAT form of inquiry; a postmodern arts-based therapeutic framework that values relational presence, emergence, lived experience, and multimodal forms of expression as profound sources of knowledge.
The now moment
I approach each session meeting the present moment as it is. This means letting go of “fixing” or “outcomes” and instead, cultivating curiosity about what is happening between us—sensations, images, emotions, gestures—as pathways to greater understanding.
The somatic
The body is a vital part of our creative and emotional life. Art-making and creative expression can act as a bridge to embodied awareness. Grounding and sensory awareness practices support nervous-system regulation and deepen connection to the here-and-now.
The more-than-human
Ecological and archetypal paradigms tell us that healing happens in relationship—with self, others, the natural environment, and the spiritual. Art allows us to connect to both our materials, our inner knowing, as well to our sense of belonging to the human and more-than-human world.
Training
As a creative arts therapist professionally registered with ANZACATA, as well as Meditation Australia, I am engaged in ongoing clinical supervision, training, and professional development.
Qualifications:
Master of Therapeutic Arts Practice (2025)
Diploma of Meditation Teaching & Earth-Based Mindfulness (2021)
Complex Trauma Training Certificate - CCTP1 (current)
Certificate of Embodied Transformation (2019)
Certificate in Autistic Wellbeing (2022)
Dementia Training Australia: Meaningful Engagement (2025)
B.A (1st Hons) Art History & Theory, Gender Studies (2009)
Post-Grad Diploma of Advanced Journalism (2011)
National Police Check, Working With Children Check
NDIS Training: Orientation, Supporting Effective Communication, Supporting People to Stay Infection Free
Lived experience
My approach as a creative arts therapist is inseparable from my lived experience. As such, I value offering a therapeutic relationship that deeply affirms my client’s own experiences, and acknowledges (and seeks to unsettle) the oppressive systems we exist within. My own identities include being:
꩜ A first generation settler from a mixed CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) background.
꩜ An NDIS participant with a lived experience of autism, ADHD, and CPTSD.
꩜ A proud member of the LGBTQ+ community.
My experiences have confirmed that healing and meaning-making are a collective, decolonial, and creative process. This is what has sustained me through trauma and disconnection: art-making, imagination, embodiment, spiritual practice, and reverence for the animate world—leading to generative new ways of being.
My practice now is to walk alongside others, supporting them to experience a deeper sense of meaning, belonging, and wholeness.
"The wound is the place where the light enters you." — Rumi
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"The wound is the place where the light enters you." — Rumi •
Tarot: A therapeutic & creative approach
Alongside being a creative arts therapist, I’m also a tarot author and scholar. As such, some clients may be curious to incorporate the tarot into therapy sessions.
I view tarot cards as an imaginal, symbolic language that can offer powerful metaphors for our experience. When it resonates with a client, I welcome incorporating the tarot (or an assortment of other creative card decks) into creative arts therapy and holistic counselling sessions. From a Jungian framework, the archetypes and metaphors pictured within the tarot offer a wider, higher perspective on a current tension; a creative thought experiment and a potential new way of seeing, or being with, an issue.
Used with therapeutic intention and a mindful embrace of the present moment, the cards become another form of creativity. A dialogue between different parts of yourself, in service of insight and wholeness.
Ethics
As a professional member of ANZACATA (the Australian, New Zealand and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association) I abide by their Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, which upholds principles of integrity, confidentiality, and respect for the dignity and autonomy of all individuals.
This includes:
Maintaining professional boundaries and confidentiality
Practising within my scope and qualifications
Respecting cultural, spiritual, and individual diversity
Prioritising informed consent and client safety
Commitment to ongoing professional development and supervision
Read the full ANZACATA Code of Ethics.
Thresholds
A newsletter by Virgil Therapy
A companion for your journey inward, Thresholds is the Substack of Jerico Mandybur. A place where she offers regular essays, personal reflections, and creative practices exploring the art of inner life. Subscribe now for your FREE 20-min somatic centering practice.
