An Origin Story
I’m Maggie. I’m who created this project “Together in Paradise”, but the offerings that I am sharing through this page are really a weaving together of all of the influences and teachers who I am grateful to have learned from as well. The work presented here is also derived of the deep explorations and experimenting and testing of my own intuitive knowing and the body’s inherent and ancient wisdom. The body connects us to billions of years of intelligent evolution of life, and is not only a source of pleasure and richness of experience, but a direct pathway to the knowledge of all ages. In communion with the contents of this earthly plane, I have come to recognize both the extreme darkness and unrelenting grace of the human experience. Magnifying this grace without bypassing the darkness is really the objective of my process in both my own learning and my teaching. For me, this means holding space for the radical liberatory theory and politics to intersect and join forces with somatic psychology exploration, breathwork, and creative expression in its infinitely many forms. There is no me, if there is no you. We learn together and we live together, without any exception. This interconnectedness and mutuality is inseparable from all the work of self-actualization that there is to be done. To quote Paulo Freire, ““Liberation (is) not a gift, not a self-achievement, but a mutual process.”
I’m genuinely very excited to engage in the ongoing development of this forum together as it allows me to synthesize a lot more of my skills and interests than simply teaching a yoga class or exhibiting as a fine artist, as I have been doing both for the past ten years in a way that those efforts often competed with one another for my time and energy (and finances). I’ve been immersed in making art since I could talk and became very dedicated to athletics, primarily swimming but also took on water polo, cross-country, track and volleyball. I was, very thankfully to my Dad, introduced to yoga as a young teen as a cross-training tool for swimming. I entered the world of yoga purely to increase my capacity to perform as an athlete, but that performance holistically involved a strong mental and emotional component…I think any serious athlete can attest to how necessary it is to have both your head and heart in the game, and the accidental sabotaging of the enormous efforts of training that can result from being out of the zone in those ways. So, I really can’t rightly say that I ever saw yoga or any activity as even a possibility to be strictly a physical endeavor. I also had great coaches in swimming that included mindfulness and visualization techniques in our training as well. In general, this led me to develop a hyper sensitivity to everything mind-body. I was so concerned with precision of form and ability to focus my energy into the space of that performance, that I was perfectionistically attentive to interoceptive and proprioceptive awareness, tracking and refining everything with constant vigilance. There is also a creative element of the experimentation that takes place in training, what to do and how much to do, to achieve the peak expression of ability. I loved the creative process of training perhaps more than the competitions themselves and thoroughly enjoyed the daily regimen of pushing myself to the edge.
At some point, amidst a shoulder injury and breathing issues (asthma induced from the overwhelming chemistry of a poorly ventilated, heavily chlorinated environment), I hit the dead end of my pursuit of swimming competitively, the elevator had reached its top floor. This plateau felt more like a grave and this realization was the first recognizable ego death of my life. Along with family and personal issues, everything I knew about myself or the functional experience of my life was coming to a blazing crash. I didn’t know who I was, I was so heavily identified what I could “do”. As someone who had taken on their identity as a “swimmer” from such a young age, this loss of sense of self was very emotionally painful, I really felt that I was “nothing” without it. But this forced me to embark on the path to discover who I really was beneath the performance.
For whatever reason, I think because I began engaging in artistic processes so freely, being given a few supplies and free reign to pass many of the hours of my very young life…that I really didn’t self-identify with it. This is not to say it wasn’t important to me, it just wasn’t who I “was”, it was quite truly a form of play. I wasn’t under the illusion that my art making was an identity, it was just a thing I did. It was really an exceedingly commonplace thing, much like speaking, eating or drinking. And of course, we don’t self-identify as an “eater” or a “speaker”, though we eat and speak throughout everyday. At different points throughout school age years, I would receive accolades or recognition of this “talent” and yet it still felt like more of an imperative and most basic function of my life rather than something I could envision as a career or a purpose. I began exhibiting in group shows in the public arts high school I attended (Savannah Arts Academy), and realized I enjoyed the process of exhibiting, and began to produce my own shows, occasionally curating group shows, but at least annually sharing a solo body of work in a public venue. I enjoyed everything from making the post cards and planning the event, to building a conceptual narrative through the language of a collection of art work. The capacity of exhibitions allowing me to feel seen and connected to others at a level of both psychological and emotional depth has been both thrilling and enriching. But the overhead costs and efforts required to produce the artwork and the shows often led me into unsustainable cycles of burn out. My yoga teaching supported my art, and often my art supported the development of my yoga teaching. I would teach 14-16 classes a week, save what I could to buy materials and rent space… then when I sold a piece of art, I could then continue to further my knowledge and professional skillsets by affording the opportunity to attend trainings and workshops. Though at times this was a functional flow moving in and out, more often than not it felt like a competitive dance between priorities for my resources, both in terms of time and money. Even from when I first became certified to teach yoga, I lived in Costa Rica for my training and then also for several months after throughout the following year, and part of my main pull to return to the states was feeling driven to reprioritize my artistic pursuits. So this tug-of-war has often felt like a splitting, rather than a joining of forces.
Though I have actively taught yoga for a decade and most recently was teaching full-time as my primary income alongside whatever art sales I made prior to studio closures during COVID-19.. for full transparency, my adult years have also included working as a sculptor’s assistant, as a bartender, as a stripper, as a secretary, as a nanny, in a furniture design showroom, as a hostess, barista, busser, swimming instructor, swim coach, after school art teacher, running my own DIY magazine project and music venue with my sister, phone book delivery person, and so on. At one point of my life, if counting the different school locations where I was teaching art, the yoga studios, the simultaneous nannying job, restaurant job, and my own art, I was juggling 8 part time sources of income. With no need to self-aggrandize about how I’ve “had it hard”, as I come from the privilege of middle class parents with educated backgrounds.. but much of that labor was maintained out of a sense of desperation rather than desire, as I’m sure many of you reading are familiar with the predicament of being underpaid and/or underemployed. The more I have since learned to own my self-worth and power of choice, the less desperation I have encountered while still maintaining integrity towards all of my values. I was often discouraged by the illusion presented when not able to witness any of the challenges accompanying people’s career paths, as it often seemed like there was some sort of magic, or some miracle of “being chosen” that I was simply not being bestowed or blessed with. This illusion (sometimes based on my own assumptions, but also often based on someone sharing a self-constructed mythology rather than their reality) served to disguise the true path of many, rather than showing in equal measure the hard work, pitfalls, and mishaps, and/or the handouts or periods of being supported that had all actually been important in paving their way. It is important for me to not get stuck into the story of comparison, and to realize that my actual lane is mine alone, in connecting to the vital essence and purpose of my life…but while I was judging myself unfairly in comparing my career timeline to anyone at all, looking back, it was especially unfair to myself to be doing so without the basis of knowing someone else’s full story.
My father retired from a career as a psychologist to veterans of military service and their families, as well as having been a lieutenant colonel himself, and an athlete who played football at a collegiate level and continued to run marathons into much of his later years. My mother is a wonderful ceramicist, and taught elementary school art as a career, with all of the imagination intact that would be required to raise four children, and teach art to so many others. I am some amalgamation of course of nature and nurture and have “followed my bliss” across many different expanses that have led me to where I am today. As I have found myself doing the integration processes that are required in order to become truly self-loving, more and more of my energy is able to live in full presence in the moment and in my body, rather than haphazardly acting from woundedness or emotional immaturity. It also allows me to reflect back on my “story”, without any sense of resentment, blame, or hang-ups. What has been, simply was. It has led me to where I am today, I’m in love with myself and my soul precisely as I am now, so I have immense compassion and love for the full journey, not “in spite” of the many difficulties, but with tremendous gratitude and appreciation for those challenges, as they were all very formative and directive to my growth and understanding.
As I have hit different obstacles or limitations, it has been my highest priority to move closer and closer to the most direct and clean path of my desires being realized and my soul being expressed throughout all areas of my life. I have re-charted and re-mapped my path time and time again. Shifting my volition away from the sense of lack that pushed me to make choices that ran me into the ground, and into a much deeper loving space, in which my choices are derived out of the motivation to love and care for myself first and foremost. That shift from living from a place of lack to living from a place of love, has dramatically transformed the experience of my life and the way I am choosing to share and create from. My work and my person no longer serve as a performance attempting to validate my existence, but as a fountain from which my life now continually self-enriches and self-replenishes and also overflows to enrich the lives of others.
In diligently working to self-actualize while also putting food on my table and keeping the lights on and maintaining my values and my need to love and care for myself emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually… I kept looking for the glitch in the matrix of an economy that asks us to constantly trade on our life force and compromise ourselves in order to survive…I kept seeking for another turning of the Rubik’s cube that might lead me to experience this wholeness which I knew deep in my being to be possible! This created intense ache and longing that I could not avoid any longer…where could I truly bring my whole authentic self, to show up fully in my work and throughout my life? Where can I go where I don’t have to costume or decorate or mask myself or hide my depth in order to fit into the confines of an hourly role? Where could I simply “be”, but also express and share and receive simultaneous soul nourishment and physical sustenance?
What would my existence look like if the many and various parts of myself, all of my skills, talents, passions and interests could coalesce? How could all of these elements move into collaboration with one another rather than competition? Do I really deserve to break the mold of misery and compromise that is sold to us as mandatory by capitalism? Do I even deserve the full realization of my soul and pursuing my dreams for myself and my dreams for the world to become liberated and in love?
All of these ongoing inquiries have motivated the long gestation to birth “Together in Paradise”. A year or so ago, I began to conceive of how I might best come to offer a more sociopolitically radical framework for body-based learning and healing. I first wanted to call it “Together in Paradise Utopia Training Academy and Propaganda Shop”, to openly acknowledge that I am trying to share and educate towards a school of thought, philosophy and way of life that would ideally result in us all living in an ungoverned/anarchist utopia free at last from the global culture of “power-over” that has been proffered through imperialism. I eventually came around to Together In Paradise Vitality Studio, one part art, one part movement, one part breath. My continued exploration of somatics, psychology, and creativity as well as my desire to shift the consciousness of the world away from domination and oppression, all began to relate more tangibly to one another and to take form together in developing this project. It excites my curiosity and appetite to continue to expand and deepen and experiment with that intermingling of passions. I hope to share with you a wide range of practices and tools that might assist you in the process of remembering and recovering who you are and reconnecting you to your own inherent power, truth, and soul expression. In that relationship of recovery, to encourage a more benevolent relationship to your body and mind and to the world outside of yourself, that is inseparable from you.
The mission for “Together in Paradise” is:
“Living fully as ourselves and lovingly with each other. Together in a paradise of our own making.”
I commissioned the legendary dancehall sign painter, Nurse (@nursesigns) to try to touch the essence of this mission through the custom signs that were created as the art for our wearables. And I feel incredibly blessed and honored to have his touch on the visual expression of this project.
I’ll leave ya with a lil essential piece of my influence and inspiration which were foundational to both naming the project and to its ethos... a favorite song of mine by Reverend Gary Davis, “Let us get together right down here.”
Let us get together
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Let us walk together
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Let us do our living
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Let us have our heaven
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Let us walk together
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Let us do our rejoicing
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Let us do our shouting
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Let us fight together
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here
Right down here