Julie Püttgen, MFA, MA, CMHC, SEP, SoulCollage® Facilitator
There's a powerful seeking in all of us, and in order to live its blessings, we need good containers, good tools, and good friends along the path. Inevitably, we're going to run into monsters, beautiful and otherwise. We're going to feel sometimes as though all our searching is pretty inconvenient. Couldn't we just settle down, already? We're going to wish to give ourselves away, and when that happens, it helps a lot to have frameworks and points of reference to help us find center again.
My own lifelong frameworks are art-making, Buddhist practice, pilgrimage, and depth psychology. I come to Everyday Regalia from backgrounds as an artist, expressive arts therapist, art professor and activist, meditation teacher, lover of movement, backpacker Dharma bum, essayist, would-be trainer of rescue pups, and Buddhist nun. I've been around the block, tried many things, succeeded and failed, and carried my heart through many of this world's wild, beautiful, boring, terrible, sacred spaces. All of which feels relevant to working with people who dare to trust their creative and intuitive processes as they come into fierce, tender, inalienable wholeness.
The Expressive Arts invite spontaneous creativity to access strengths and insights that may lie outside everyday perceptions. I also draw on Somatic Experiencing, a trauma-resilience modality that works with the present-moment experience of the body. I engage with meditation/mindfulness practices for self-regulation, resourcing, and embodied reconnection with the ground of Being. And I draw from SoulCollage® as a beautifully accessible, satisfying, community-building wisdom-modality.
As I open up Everyday Regalia from a purely personal practice into something I am sharing with a larger circle, I draw from all of these, and from the deep well of contemplative creativity. May all beings know wholeness and live it well.
My own lifelong frameworks are art-making, Buddhist practice, pilgrimage, and depth psychology. I come to Everyday Regalia from backgrounds as an artist, expressive arts therapist, art professor and activist, meditation teacher, lover of movement, backpacker Dharma bum, essayist, would-be trainer of rescue pups, and Buddhist nun. I've been around the block, tried many things, succeeded and failed, and carried my heart through many of this world's wild, beautiful, boring, terrible, sacred spaces. All of which feels relevant to working with people who dare to trust their creative and intuitive processes as they come into fierce, tender, inalienable wholeness.
The Expressive Arts invite spontaneous creativity to access strengths and insights that may lie outside everyday perceptions. I also draw on Somatic Experiencing, a trauma-resilience modality that works with the present-moment experience of the body. I engage with meditation/mindfulness practices for self-regulation, resourcing, and embodied reconnection with the ground of Being. And I draw from SoulCollage® as a beautifully accessible, satisfying, community-building wisdom-modality.
As I open up Everyday Regalia from a purely personal practice into something I am sharing with a larger circle, I draw from all of these, and from the deep well of contemplative creativity. May all beings know wholeness and live it well.
Julie Püttgen is a proud member of the Society for Embroidered Work.