Peg Mulqueen
Mary Taylor
From a young age and into adulthood. Peg Mulqueen experienced first hand the extraordinary value of contributing whatever you can to your situation, especially if you can think outside the box. She also learned early on that things don’t always turn out the way you’re hoping they do, but that if you stay connected to others and roll with the punches a new, sometimes more interesting and effective path through the territory ahead may present itself. In other words, Peg unknowingly started learning about yoga from a very young age.
Ashtanga Dispatch, left to right, Jen, Peg and Meghan
You probably know Peg as one of the voices behind the Ashtanga Dispatch. The other voice is that of her daughter, Meghan, who is currently stranded (happily) in Tasmania awaiting travel restrictions to be lifted. Their podcast has offered over 53 interviews reflecting an evenhanded look into the lives, practices and opinions of Ashtanga yoga practitioners and teachers worldwide. But who is Peg Mulqueen, and what prompted her to begin a podcast that has inspired many to look deeply at this practice so many of us love?
Peg’s early years were tough ones for her family, yet due to the difficult and unique circumstances they were incredibly enriching as well. When Peg was five her dad was in a serious car accident that resulted in him being in a full body cast, out of work and confined to the living room of their tiny Baltimore row-house. So Peg would ride the school bus home from kindergarten in time to fetch the lunch her mom had prepared for the two of them earlier in the day. She and her dad would then settle down to play checkers on the checkerboard he’d painted onto the breastplate of his cast.
“You’ve got to add the manure if you want things to grow!”
There’s no doubt that those long, lazy afternoons with her dad are part of what contributed to infusing in Peg a lifelong perspective that some of the best things in life come out of disaster. Plus, as she readily admits they also had something to do with the fact that she remains a fierce checkers, backgammon and poker player as well. So it was no surprise when I spoke to Peg earlier this fall while she was waiting out the pandemic at her home on a farm outside of Bozeman, Montana, that the first thing she said to me was, “I was out shoveling manure into the compost this morning and it hit me how symbolic that was. You’ve got to add the manure if you want things to grow!”
Fresh out of grad school, Peg settled in the rural farming community she’d grown up in. It was like most small US towns of the 60’s where class and economic discrepancies along with underlying racial injustices were not only imbedded in the culture, but existed in plain sight. Railroad tracks ran through the center of town separating well to do suburban white communities from those that were predominantly black and were struggling economically. The haves on one side (subconsciously relieved by their luck at being born on the easier side), the have-nots on the other (mostly resigned to the injustices of the system and just trying to survive).
Peg, no stranger to difficulties in life, was drawn to do something, to contribute in some way that might have a positive impact for those she saw suffering. She took a job as a counselor at the local school where the disparity between students from opposite sides of the tracks was highly evident. Kids from one side of town went home, enjoyed family dinners and parents to help with homework. Most of those on the other side of the tracks were left to fend for themselves when school was out of session because their parents worked weekend shifts and multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. What if, she wondered, those kids had something to do, someplace to go, not so much in order to “keep them out of trouble” but more so that they’d have a place to go with access to computers and internet and supportive adults; a place they belonged and could blossom. With this seed of an idea, Peg managed to get a grant so that the school would remain open and staffed one Saturday a month and could be used as a community center for all kids.
The experiment worked! Just ass after school programs flourished kids—and faculty—from both sides of the tracks interacted without the trappings and barriers that traditional classroom settings often imposed. People learned to see one another through a new lens and to communicate. Of course underlying systemic inequalities didn’t magically disappear, but for those involved, the program fostered an ability to step through a doorway onto a new path, so that they could interact, learn and create a tangible setting in which everyone mattered.
Peg often thinks of those times because in her mind, starting the Ashtanga Dispatch podcast was driven by a similar desire. She’d fallen in love with Ashtanga but also saw the obvious; that although the vinyasa movements combining breath, movement and gaze are incredible, not all bodies are designed to do every pose. Yet there can be an underlying misperception (imposed from within our without) that if you can do the more difficult series you’re a more advanced yogi, or that if the more extreme postures are out of reach you’re less advanced, less valuable as a yogi. For Peg, creating the Ashtanga Dispatch podcast, like the community center, was an aim to underscore commonality in the midst of difference, bringing people together and opening new conduits for thought and communication to create a healthy environment within which to evolve.
Ashtanga Dispatch, Peg and Meghan
Like so many of us, Peg came to yoga through a side door, not expecting it to be something that would stay with her for life. After a number of years working for the school, Peg returned to university for a doctorate in education leadership. As a superintendent or administrator she figured she might be able to instill in the broader school system the same enthusiasm for education, individual development and change that the community center had provided.
It was during this time that she was also introduced to yoga. Peg was avid about kickboxing, taking classes at the local gym. One day, at the suggestion of a friend, she decided to check out the yoga class just down the hall. It wasn’t love at first sight. She enjoyed the stretching and getting into interesting postures, (which came relatively easily to her), but she would always sneak out at the end of class before the corpse pose in order to do a bit more kickboxing to round out her day. She laughs now that after a while with this routine, when her yoga teacher got pregnant and had to stop teaching, that she asked Peg to take over her classes, and that Peg agreed to do so. Being a teacher by training, before teaching her first yoga class Peg searched around for books on the subject so she could make her first lesson plan. To her delight she found John Scott’s step-by-step guide to Ashtanga yoga. The system made total sense to her; an intelligent method for building a practice that could be modified for any student.
But as she explored the practice over the next few years, studying also with non-ashtanga teachers, Peg noticed a sense of dissonance sometimes when Ashtanga was practiced with an undercurrent of competition or dogmatic precision. She was surprised to see that the all too familiar pattern of railroad tracks separating the haves from the have-nots (flexible from the non-flexible, old, or injured) could surface even within yoga communities in spite of the fact that most people were practicing with an aim toward ahimsa in mind. A workshop with David Kyle, whose inclusive teaching style renewed her enthusiasm for Ashtanga, made her realize that the competitive edge that can surface is a problem of misunderstanding and miscommunication and can therefore be addressed without abandoning the system.
While her interest in yoga was creeping in to “ruin her life” Peg continued on with her doctorate and was promoted as Director of Counseling. Her two kids, Meghan and Billy, were thriving and it seemed everything was falling into place around her. But when it came time to renew her contract, her gut told her something was terribly wrong. So she turned it down and decided to teach yoga instead. Eventually, Peg went on to support her friend and fellow practitioner, Jen René, in starting an alternative Mysore program—one they hoped would make Ashtanga accessible to a broader and more diversified population. Their simple, convivial teaching styles worked and soon the studio was thriving.
Not surprisingly, when Michelle Obama, began including yoga as part of the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House, Peg was there as part of the team teaching yoga to eager kids and their families. Like so many of us, during the Obama administration, Peg was filled with great hope. She’d experienced first hand that life isn’t always fair. She’d been appalled—even as a young child—by our nation’s built in inequities and the racism that is divisive, dehumanizing and often causes great suffering. When a black president was elected, there was hope. A seed of change was planted. But the Obama era ended and it became obvious how far in the opposite direction the pendulum was going to shift. The mood in Washington changed from optimism, equality and inclusiveness to one that revered the haves and denigrated the have-nots. It was then that Peg, her husband Robert , the kids and their dogs decided it was time to move to Montana where they’d spent summers over the years.
Peg and Meghan on the farm
Living on a farm represents to Peg, among other things, the interesting necessity of learning to embrace paradox or the ability feel comfortable holding two disparate perspectives simultaneously. Those afternoons playing checkers with her dad had taught her this too. She’d known that he was the strong one, the one who was there to take care of her, but that it was her turn to take on those roles so he could recover. He made life fun and safe, so being comfortable with paradox was too.
Peg feels that holding paradox isn’t an encumbrance, but a means of expanding one’s vision and perspective. She encounters this daily on the farm where there is freedom, spaciousness and natural connection to diversity, yet at the same time you must work, focus on the details and learn about how things interpenetrate. One great example of that to Peg is her dog, Indie (above in the green jacket) whom Peg and Meghan rescued from the streets of Mysore about five years ago. Indie represents the agility and adaptability of mind, required on a farm and in life that facilitates the capacity to see interconnected patterns that allow diversity to thrive.
Peg with Mary at the Confluence
Check out a couple of Peg’s current favorite books that bring yoga to life:
“Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of plants” by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a beautifully written account of how the scientific, practical and mystical roles of plants work seamlessly together to inform us.
“Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” by Lori Gottlieb is a poignant and yet humorous read that speaks directly to the human condition in times of difficulty.
