Heart of Motion
The Heart of Motion Podcast is an exploration of the heart, soul and science of movement - and what it means in our lives.
Movement connects us more deeply to ourselves, to our bodies and to the things and people that are most important to us. Beyond a fitness routine, why do you move? And what moves you? When we can look past the hamster wheel of ''fitness" - we start to realize that when we really live the lives of our bodies - life can be a whole lot more fulfilling, and a whole lot more fun!
Host Susannah Steers is your guide on a quest to understand how we can move better, feel better in our bodies and connect more deeply to our people and the world around us. Join her for some conversation, interviews with experts, and conversations with everyday people about what movement means to them. You might just find movement feels a little different on the other side...
Heart of Motion
When Your Body Changes The Rules, You Find New Ways To Play The Game
Stepping into the gritty Astoria Boxing Club in Vancouver for the first time, Lara Cubitt never imagined it would change her life. "It's old, it smells of empty beer cans and maybe urine?... blood?" she recalls with a laugh. Yet this unlikely beginning set her on a path to becoming a two-time Canadian amateur boxing champion—before multiple sclerosis forced her to reimagine her relationship with movement entirely.
Lara's journey from championship boxer to certified Iyengar yoga teacher unfolds with raw honesty in this conversation. She describes being drawn to boxing almost by accident, initially thinking "I probably won't fight" before finding herself blood-covered after her first sparring session. Her coach noticed something special: "She keeps going forward." This resilience would become crucial when mysterious symptoms began appearing—extreme fatigue, inability to perform, and eventually the devastating MS diagnosis that ended her boxing career.
The heart of Lara's story lies in adaptation. When boxing became impossible, she turned to yoga, initially viewing it as "the exact opposite of boxing." But as her MS progressed, bringing numbness, cognitive challenges, and what she describes as "shut down your life fatigue," yoga became both anchor and lifeline. Eventually completing a rigorous three-year Iyengar yoga teacher training, Lara discovered a new purpose in helping others navigate their own movement challenges.
Whether you're facing health challenges or simply curious about movement's deeper dimensions, Lara's perspective challenges us to value motion in all its forms. After a bone marrow transplant unexpectedly improved some abilities, she embraces each day's possibilities without attachment to outcomes. Her message resonates clearly: presence matters, adaptation isn't failure, and how we move profoundly shapes how we live.
About Lara Cubitt
Lara Cubitt is a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher and former two-time Canadian Amateur Boxing Champion who competed internationally as part of Team Canada. She has also lived with MS for over 15 years and uses her experience navigating severe chronic illness - physically, mentally & emotionally - to inform her teaching.
Lara teaches private clients at their homes & can be reached via email lara.cubitt@gmail.com to arrange sessions.
I'd LOVE to hear from you! Send me a text!
Heart of Motion Podcast host Susannah Steers is a Pilates & Integrated Movement Specialist and owner of Moving Spirit Pilates in North Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about movement, about connections and about life.
Through movement teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops, she supports people in creating movement practices that promote fitness from the inside out. She loves building community, and participating in multi-disciplinary collaborations.
Along with her friend and colleague Gillian McCormick, Susannah also co-hosts The Small Conversations for a Better World podcast – an interview based podcast dedicated to promoting the kind of conversations about health that can spark positive change in individuals, families, communities and across the globe.
Social Media Links:
Moving Spirit Pilates Instagram
Moving Spirit Pilates Facebook
Susannah Steers Instagram
Welcome to the Heart of Motion Podcast. I'm Susanna Steers and I'll be your host as we explore the heart, soul and science of movement as a pathway to more active, vibrant and connected living. Nothing happens until something moves, so let's get started.
Susannah Steers:Welcome to the Heart of Motion Podcast, where we explore the stories, the science and the soul of moving. Well, I'm Susanna Steers and today I'm thrilled to introduce a guest whose journey is as dynamic as it is inspiring.
Susannah Steers:Lara Cubitt is a two-time Canadian amateur boxing champion, a certified Iyengar yoga teacher, a passionate advocate for the power of posture and movement. From the intensity of the boxing ring to the mindful precision of yoga, and through her own ongoing experience living with multiple sclerosis, lara brings a unique perspective to what it means to move, to adapt and to thrive. From coaching boxers at Vancouver's iconic Astoria Hotel gym to helping clients discover confidence and self-efficacy through yoga, Lara's story is a testament to resilience, curiosity and the transformative power of movement. So settle in and get ready to be inspired as we dive into Lara's remarkable journey, one that reminds us all that how we move shapes how we live. Welcome to the podcast, lara. I'm so happy to see you.
Lara Cubitt:Thanks, Susannah, thanks for having me. Such a thrill.
Susannah Steers:I think first can we just dive into your boxing story and your experiences in that sport. What drew you to it and what inspired you to drive to that elite championship level?
Lara Cubitt:A lot of it was just luck and or just things that kind of wound me up there. When I was really young. I wanted to be a bodybuilder, and for a while I did that. From about 13, I started going to the gym, and then, around 15, 16, I actually started kickboxing for a couple of years, and that was because I thought or partly maybe from influence of my parents my dad saying, "what are you going to do though, you're just going to be a weightlifter Like this wasn't a real thing. And then I thought, oh, maybe I'll try something.
Lara Cubitt:I guess I was doing all the things that were a bit tomboy, though, and so I started kickboxing, but I still kept working out at the gym, and this man that I knew was a friend of a friend said hey, I really think you'd like this place. I go to this boxing gym downtown. And I said, oh, okay, and I thought I'll try it. I don't know why he thinks I'd like it, and that took me to the Astoria Boxing Club, which is quite an experience to walk into, certainly back in those days. It's old, it smells of empty beer cans and like, maybe, urine... blood. Anyway, just I was thinking, oh, from the prissy, I want to be a bodybuilder in my white tights and that kind of look to just raw, real something. And I thought, I don't know why he thought I would like this. And I went there one time and then one of the coaches there was hitting us with a stick while we were doing calisthenics and yelling at us, calling us dog- effers, and I was like, okay, wow, this is really intense. And then I thought, well, I don't know if I'll go back there. And then that same man asked about me and I was so thrilled that he remembered me that I thought maybe I will give it another shot. And I went back and quickly refined my outfits from white tights to just sort of cut off, you know, looking like how I thought someone should look in this gym, which is pretty rough. And yeah, it just started and I thought I'll just try it out. I probably won't fight. I don't know.
Lara Cubitt:But all one thing leads to another oh, do you want to spar today? I don't know. And then all one thing leads to another oh, do you want to spar today? I don't know. And then you kind of feel like a chicken if you don't. So then you say, oh, okay.
Lara Cubitt:And then the first time I sparred I just got beaten with blood all over my face, I mean, my shirt covered, oh my gosh. And I thought, oh yeah. But then I also thought, hey, I guess that doesn't bother me that much. And the other coach who ended up being my main coach, he said, well, she keeps going forward. So he was like that's enough, who will actually pay attention to you a little bit? So that was kind of what got me in and got some attention to improve. And then the same thing with the fight was just you want to fight? I don't know, we got one for you, so get ready. And then I fought and it was just really over very quickly. I won quickly, that is. And then it's kind of hooks you because this is pretty exciting, all the buildup, the training and then getting in there, and it's sort of like I realized pretty soon that once the bell goes, it's like a relief of you know, you're not thinking anymore, it's just sort of you're doing something.
Susannah Steers:Well, it seems so interesting when I'm hearing your story and you know you didn't go into it necessarily because you decided I want to try boxing, but to hear you know they were seeing something in you and you were responding and that sort of sheer just keep going forward and okay, I'll try this and, and you know, that must've been something that was really interesting to the coaches at the time. You know she's, she's ready to go.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, cause they're very uh, they discount people pretty quickly in that gym. I don't really believe if you'll show up or something. But if you do show up and you keep trying, then it's a different thing. But it takes a little while to prove it usually.
Susannah Steers:I have pictures of Rocky Balboa's gym. Yeah, it's like a Spinning in my head
Lara Cubitt:Like a Rocky gym kind of thing
Susannah Steers:Was it hard to fit in there, especially in a gym like that, as a young woman in what's seen quite often and maybe not so much now, but certainly a while ago as a men's sport.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, it was strange because there was only one other woman who eventually or that was the person I ended up sparring with and she had been around for a while, but partly because her cousins were also there, a couple of guys and they were most of the people there went there for a long time. So it felt like going into this kind of strange universe that was already established and just being new and I think being a woman was. There's definitely an attention, but I don't know necessarily a negative is sort of a bit of maybe admiration that you're willing to go into this dump of a gym and work out. So I didn't get you know, I caught some flack on my outfits in the beginning, but people weren't unkind or anything and they didn't pay me too much attention in the way that sometimes women would prefer not to have. They kind of just let me be.
Lara Cubitt:Eventually. It ended up being that there weren't many other women that came through there. There definitely were over time, but at the time that I was there it was infrequent and it was the men who got me to be as good as I was, because they ended up being the only sparring partners I could use were men. So that was kind of interesting too, and I think back now of how lucky I was to have and not to have them overdo anything or use their, you know, because they were about the same weight as me but they were stronger, they were faster, but they would work with me in a way that was just enough to push me but not so much to injure me over time.
Susannah Steers:And they respected you enough not to baby you in the moment.
Lara Cubitt:So I think that's such a finely skilled aspect of boxing is that being able to control things on a level and also help someone improve. It's really a fine skill. That's not in a new person.
Susannah Steers:Well, you collected so many wins and so much success. What was the first indication for you that something wasn't quite right in terms of, maybe, the onset of your MS?
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, that was in retrospect. It's so wildly wrong that I should have thought there's something very wrong, as probably could have a doctor, but they did not. Very wrong, as probably could have a doctor, but they did not. So what happened was there were a couple of things that now I maybe wouldn't have noticed then that that was wrong. But I had one fight.
Lara Cubitt:That was after I first won the Canadian Championships, which is a tournament in amateur boxing, and then you have to fight one of the people. If they want to challenge you for your spot, they get two chances to beat you. If they beat you twice, then they take your spot. So this is called the box offs and it's a few months after the Canadian championship. And going into that fight I only had to fight once, but going into it I got.
Lara Cubitt:The level of nerves was kind of it was almost like I had a nervous breakdown before I fought and I was always nervy. I kind of would get that way and then it was all fine once I was in the ring. But this was rather extreme when I look back and my coach is kind of questioning this like what the hell is wrong with you? Anyway, but we got through that. And then I was going to meet my sister who was in Australia for a month and we were traveling and I had to always go to. I always had to go pee. It was just that we thought it was funny.
Lara Cubitt:But I was also suddenly, when I would I cause I was like, oh, I'm going to keep up my fitness while I'm gone so I can go right back into boxing when I get back, and I would go try to go running and I just would not be able to do it. I was so tired and I kept thinking it was jet lag. And you know, this is just strange, but I feel weird. And then when I came back from that trip so those were not that insanely weird from that trip, so those were not that insanely weird but when I came back I started, I just suddenly was unable to spar almost at all. It would take me 30 seconds and I would be just heaving, trying to get oxygen because for some reason everything had changed. So that was very weird. I also got extreme upper back pain that in the beginning was making it through workouts but then collapsing when I got home. So that was also a sign.
Lara Cubitt:But then it sort of went from that, these strange events, to just being so tired that I couldn't make it to the gym anymore and I just I ended up. We thought, oh, maybe it's overtraining, which now sounds sort of ridiculous, so you don't really overtrain in, like how can that be it? But anyway, you think that people tell you, it's all in your head, and then you think, oh well, hopefully. And then I had to take some time off and it was. I had made the Canadian team but I had to say no to fighting internationally that year, which was kind of what got me through the Canadian championships. I was like I'm going to Turkey, I'm going to Turkey, which was where the world championship was, and I had to say I can't go because my condition is terrible. Suddenly, but terrible.
Susannah Steers:That must have been heartbreaking.
Lara Cubitt:It was. Yeah, it was pretty hard there, but not quite to heartbreaking yet, okay. Okay, yeah, I was. You're just kind of focused and thinking like, how am I going to do this, how am I going to do this? And anyway, near the second the next year, the Canadian Championships. It was only about six weeks before things kind of cleared up. And then I thought, okay, when we train really hard, we go back, we win it again and we go. And so I did train hard and was able to win the tournament again and I even won best boxer of the tournament for female boxer that time. And I was like, okay, I didn't feel right but I thought must be okay, probably just residue of having time off.
Lara Cubitt:And then things from there start to go where I lost, a couple of fights I went to. I did fight in France and Italy, which was exciting. I beat the Italian champion and then the French champion was also the world champion and I didn't win against her. She was great, but I did decently. Anyway, when I came home, my coach was like, yeah, you won against the Italian, but we wanted to win against the French. The French one, that was the one we needed to win Kind of disappointed and then from here things go a little bit more downhill.
Lara Cubitt:Like I lost a couple of fights that was almost just in a way that didn't seem right to my coach, and started not being able to lose weight, to make my weight, which was unusual, and then in the end it was that finally we go back to the Canadian Championships again.
Lara Cubitt:Now I'm in a higher weight class because I just couldn't make the other one and that was probably a huge sign that my body was probably flooded with cortisol, like stop it, you know what are you doing, you're starving us and now you want to go get hit in the head like this is enough. And then at the at the Canadian Championship, that one, I think I won one or two and then I lost against the woman who would become the champion. But I lost in kind of an unexciting way, no big thing, just kind of lost. And then my coach said that's it, you need to take a break. And that was the end of boxing, because he just thought that something was wrong and he didn't know what, but he didn't like it and he said you have to take time off. This is where the heart breaks, cause he said you can keep training, but I won't train you.
Lara Cubitt:And this was like yeah, yeah, and no real explanation. I also don't know. I have MS, so this is where I leave boxing and I kind of left everything. I left my friends, I left my coat, I didn't go into the gym Like I just couldn't bear it. And that's where yoga comes in.
Susannah Steers:No kidding. Well, so how did it come in? At that point you left everybody. I mean, I can only imagine that your confidence was in the toilet and you were confused and still not feeling great and not really knowing what's going on. I mean, did yoga start before you had a confirmed diagnosis of MS, or was that something that came after?
Lara Cubitt:It takes a while until the actual diagnosis later on. It takes medically retiring at 29, but we're still a few years out from that. So I had tried. A friend had just invited me to come to yoga some couple times while I still was boxing and I thought, oh, this is hard in a weird different way, you know, like it's sort of maybe even sort of hard that it's boring to me or I'm used to fast and you know, competitive.
Lara Cubitt:And then when I left boxing, when that whole event happened at first, I kind of gripped on and was like I'm still going to run six days a week and you know, but it was all kind of it was falling apart a bit, even the running. So then I thought you know what I'm going to do? The exact opposite, or what I thought was the exact opposite of boxing. And that's how I started yoga, because I thought if I can't do that, I just don't want to be anywhere near it, like I want to do something different. So that's how I started doing yoga and I ended up really liking it and I started in the kind of hot yoga. So maybe it wasn't as extremely opposite in that sense is kind of like unnecessarily hot.
Susannah Steers:You started off with the hot yoga. What gravitated you to the Iyengar stream of things?
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, so that happened. That does happen. Later, various things happen that are again in retrospect, appallingly strange, like my whole body going numb from the neck down for months at a time, multiple times, vertigo, things that would happen. But then they'd go away and the doctor would be like, well, we don't see anything wrong with you. And I was very happy to chalk it up to being nothing because I had already the boxing thing had already happened and I don't think I could have really tolerated more. So I was not investigative, I just sort of oh yeah, well, nothing's wrong, it's just a weird thing that happened to me Again. You know that kind of thing.
Lara Cubitt:So anyway, later on, when I'm working, a bunch of very strange things start to happen. Where I just I there's like the fatigue is so high, my mom's driving me to work and picking me up, and just I'm sleeping under my desk at work. I can't focus anymore. So there was a very strange while I was working at a mining company, very strange kind of uptick and feeling like permanent to what was going on and then I suddenly couldn't move my legs properly, like I went to go running and I couldn't like pick them up and this sort of went into this weird could not run anymore Because when I lifted my legs I couldn't feel them from the waist down and this was kind of starting to be a more extreme relapse. This I knew, this can't be right. That was finally the thing. Like this cannot be right or okay.
Lara Cubitt:And then it triggered all these appointments and eventually finding out I had MS while I was working and then having to leave work because I just was unable to keep up in any way. And so when I left, then I thought, oh my God, I'm not doing anything. What am I going to do? Like that was also heartbreaking. Being told like you're probably never going to work again. This is it, and you're 29. And I was the kind of person who was like nobody's going to take care of me, I'm going to make my own money, I'm going to be really successful, delusional, but still, it was a way of thinking. And then so it's to the complete opposite. And at that point I thought, well, maybe I could be a yoga teacher if I slowly found a way to do the training. See, at that point there was no way I was going to do some fast forward training of like a month or something thing. So I did this once a week over six months, training to become a yoga teacher, and I started teaching and then I believe I had had steroids to recover from that relapse, or maybe it just with the not being able to run. So I still couldn't run but I felt like I got better maybe.
Lara Cubitt:And then once I was teaching yoga a little bit, pretty infrequently but nonetheless then I had a relapse where I really my I mean, I couldn't sign my name. One arm was sort of dead. My foot was dropping. I was completely out of my mind, probably just because I was working so hard to try and stay I don't know cohesive in no real control of my body. I could feel that my core was gone. It was very much like the description that a pregnant woman will say about how the body relaxes so that the baby can grow. It was like that, only with no baby. And that time I was like whoa, this is really extreme.
Lara Cubitt:And my dad had to drive me to a yoga class, and this one I picked Iyengar, because I knew they were a lot about the therapeutic aspects and it felt like a more in-depth study of yoga.
Lara Cubitt:So both those things attracted to me. But when I started Iyengar Yoga, I actually went to people recovering from chemotherapy and cancer session because it used a lot of props, a lot of help and you know, and completely different from even the yoga I had been doing. So that kind of hooked me in, though, because I was like this is amazing what these people can do with yoga and teaching you how to do things even when you basically can't do them. So this was fascinating to me, and then the so I started practicing Iyengar yoga and then I thought I would like to teach Iyengar yoga. But it's a really long program, so it's a three-year teacher training and you have at the end a written assignment, sort of test, and as well as doing an assessment in person with people. You know that you teach and yeah, so that's that's kind of what it's always kind of. Losing something is the thing that got me to something. That's a great part of what I have today yeah, anyway.
Susannah Steers:Well, that I mean it really speaks to your resilience that you just kept looking, because I mean it seems to me MS is such an unpredictable disease. Right, there's just no. I have a cousin who would say yeah, you wake up and you don't know what's not going to work today.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah.
Susannah Steers:And to be able to move through that and you know, find ways to keep going. And find ways to not only keep going in your own body, but to learn more about how to work with other people too. That's pretty cool.
Lara Cubitt:Thank you. Yeah, oh, you know this happened, then that happened, but there's a lot of yeah, there's a lot of pain and things that happen where I did not feel like a resilient person, and depression, all kinds of stuff that happens. So, yeah, but it is a tough one, it's so unpredictable and just the constantly losing things, and I think that it does teach you to be resilient in a way that a lot of people aren't exposed to, without that kind of confronting disability in a real way that you know you can think like, oh, I empathize, but you can really empathize when you feel it and understand what's happening. So that's, I mean, that's a very useful skill for working with other people, for sure, yeah when you're right in it.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, yeah.
Susannah Steers:You're right in it.
Lara Cubitt:You're right in it.
Susannah Steers:Well, you've described yourself as a posture fanatic, and I think I could relate to that in my profession as a Pilates teacher. Yeah, what does it mean to you?
Lara Cubitt:I guess it's. One of the things was that after I had been boxing I saw a picture of myself and I thought, oh, this is unattractive because I was kind of rounded and so it was just pure aesthetics in the beginning, like that's, you know, not attractive. I've got to fix that. So when I fixed it it was just me. This is when I'm still working and me at work. Don't forget your posture. And I would be sitting up straight and probably overdoing it a bit, but training the mind to never forget it.
Lara Cubitt:And then so it starts to peak an interest in this kind of thing and the yoga starts happening as well, and then learning about how posture affects not only that aesthetic, what you look like to other people, but really their interpretation of your personality, your level of confidence, and as well about how opening the chest, sitting in certain ways, the postures, yoga, pilates, those things, how having a core that is coordinated and works to hold you up and balance, and all of that, and how much this affects every single thing in your life.
Lara Cubitt:So I guess it just ended up being sort of something that I just always notice, maybe more than I used to notice. I notice if someone, how someone's sitting, that I mean you can even tell is someone not feeling well. Maybe you're used to seeing them and they're kind of like chest is drooped or just these things that you notice. And then it started being like well, imagine that everybody could have access to this kind of knowledge about what they're doing. That's making them feel worse or presenting them in a way that's not how they want to be presented. So, yeah, so it just became something that I like to read about and look at. Try to teach, find out more about yoga, yeah, pilates all very interesting for this.
Susannah Steers:It certainly makes people watching a whole different experience, doesn't it?
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, yeah, the people watching, I mean. It's sometimes silly, though, because if you make writing someone's life according to how I interpret their posture, which is ridiculous, but it can be kind of fun too.
Susannah Steers:Can you share a story where you might have seen someone who found I mean aside from your own story, obviously, which is powerful enough, but maybe somebody that you were working with that found either new confidence or a new way of being in the world, as you kind of played with this stuff with them?
Lara Cubitt:Well, I was trying to think what this would be and I didn't really think of a profound way. But it's something that you notice in just little things that have happened where one boxer I was working with before a fight. He was quite nervous and you know, but we were getting really close to it. It ended up never happening, but we were getting really close to it. So we're kind of downgrading the amount of heavy, hard boxing we were doing and I was taking him through some yoga, a bit of stretching and stuff, and you can just see I put him into an upper back bend, just kind of lying down, but with his chest lifted and head lifted a little bit. So he was relaxed but his chest was really, really open and this was. He sat there for a bit and you can see the difference in the anxiety level of just from doing that.
Lara Cubitt:You know that this changes the mood and it will happen too with something like working with. I guess this. Maybe it happens more profoundly over time, but just things like this kind of it's so striking that it's that immediate, like one time I was watching a girl training for boxing and then I realized that she was hunching or she had her chest was a little bit drooped and it wasn't a ton. But I said to her that try lifting your chest up and let your shoulders relax and spread across here your collarbones. And then she was like wow, it's so different. You know she started doing it and things like that are just amazing, like that quick, that different. So I've had a lot of those experiences and probably are looking for something a little bit more of a story there, but I guess that's the kind of things that come to mind.
Susannah Steers:I think that's a story in and of itself. I find the same thing. You introduce something new and at first they sort of think it's nothing at all. And then they try it and it does feel different. And then I find it interesting too when you see those little small moments that do add up over time and all of a sudden someone's capable of doing something that they never imagined they could do yeah. Or they're willing to try something brand new where before they might not have had the courage to do it because they didn't really think they could get there.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah.
Susannah Steers:And you just see those things that are little small moments that feel amazing in the moment, but you don't know they're going to add up to anything. And then all of a sudden, a little while goes by and physically you've changed and your confidence is different, as you've experienced yourself Like it really does. This is why I always my little motto at the studio is you matter and how you move matters. Little motto at the studio is "you matter and how you move matters. And I believe that right and it's not that I'm looking to change for change's sake, that there's a right way or a wrong way of doing it, but we all have ways of being in the world. And isn't it cool when you can find those little things that just tweak it up a notch and then you feel better in your body and you feel better in your movement and it's easier to be in the world. You can navigate things differently.
Susannah Steers:That's what I get excited about.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, and I related to all of your just the bits that are written on your website and the things that you said about those things, exactly where I thought like, yeah, I really got her. It is those things, and especially that when you said about the confidence to try something new that they had. Because that is especially as you get older. You see more and more of this kind of resistance just to the kind of I'm not sure if I'll be good at that, and I mean most things you're not going to be good at if you've never tried them, but that kind of like I better not, I don't know if I'll try that and then seeing that change because actually they are already trying things they haven't tried or in a different way, and then it starts to broaden the horizon.
Susannah Steers:Yeah Well, and as you say, with aging, you know, what I notice is, if you don't take those steps, if you don't do those little things, the world starts to get smaller pretty fast and you don't recognize it until you've put yourself in a little box where you haven't done the things and your body doesn't move very well, and then it gets scarier even more to try new things.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, absolutely, and I think having MS is like aging on speed, Like it's just I related to people over 80 so much in so many ways because of just that. It's like that really hyper quickly to that and being unsure of yourself, being imbalanced and not having a way to figure it out, so you're scared. Scared of falling. I've met people who have fallen so badly that then it changes how they approach everything. And yeah, with aging it's like that's happening all the time and getting in front of it is so important.
Susannah Steers:As you say. I mean it's. We talk about movement and and everybody's first thought is that it's physical. Yes, clearly it is, but I always like to think that we're not. We're not separated parts the way we like to think. You know, our mind over here, our emotions over here, our body over here, and they all kind of exist in the same time and place, like a little hologram, and they all affect each other. It's not just a matter of being able to move or not move. All of that affects your whole being.
Lara Cubitt:Yes, what has this journey with MS? Not a chosen movement's sake, but there doesn't have to be some kind of end to it. Like I'm going to win a boxing competition, I'm going to be able to do this pose, or it's you start learning all the benefits of movement that come just to even basic bodily functions digestion, you know, moving a cold along, something like that. It's so important just to do it that your mind can be changed by any kind of movement. Like you'd say, if someone's able, going for a walk is going to be a huge difference. You can change everything with that walk. So, finding ways to move where, when you can't walk, being able to find these things that can happen in a very, very narrow space of working. Like I did teach a yoga class in a hospital once, and this time I taught chair yoga, because some of the people weren't really mobile or they used walkers or whatever and some kind of walking aid, and I thought you know, we're not going to challenge everything all at once here with people that I don't know, and so I thought let's do chair yoga and just the ability to move and think like, oh, I can do some of these things with these props, and how that changes people's life or their outlook, at least for a little while, that they don't know that they can do that. I guess having MS has taught me to appreciate those things more, because I definitely was someone who would always be setting the bar higher as soon as I got really close to it. Bam, move it, and that was how I ran my life.
Lara Cubitt:If I couldn't do something, what did I do? I tried harder and this is taken off the table Like you cannot try harder. That is not an option. You can try to accept. You can try harder to accept what's happening, but that's about it.
Lara Cubitt:So it teaches you a lot about how the mind works, with motivation and trying to find ways to I don't even know if it's motivation but accept or see smaller steps as valuable and using them instead of saying, oh well, that's only that. Why would I bother? Because I think there is an element that when I started you know I've learned that over time, but it wasn't how I started it was kind of like, oh, I can't even do that, so what's the point? Not with the thinking it, actually articulating it in my head, but I think that is partly. It's a level of defeat before starting, because you've discounted these smaller movements or just the ability to move at all, as which now I'm. I'm grateful for that and you know for that. I can see it, I can feel it every day, whereas it isn't how it starts, I think.
Susannah Steers:It seems like kind of a radical presence process, like all the time we talked about being in it and you're in it, it and there's no way around that. So what do you do with that? Yeah, you know, and, and every day it might be okay. I can't get out of bed today, and that might be a thing, or it might be okay. I have some small thing that I'm able to do, and then the small thing maybe makes something else available, or maybe it just makes you feel a little better in the moment.
Lara Cubitt:Yeah, yeah, and then this is basically a whole other conversation. But pretty much from the time I left work there were things that changed, but I deteriorated over time and a lot of it was cognitive things that aren't super visible super visible. But then two years ago I had or over two years ago had a bone marrow transplant. That was just supposed to kind of stop the process, but actually I was given improvement from how I was before, in my even day to day or things, even doing things like this or like saying that I can do some training in boxing. That was off the table so completely, just because I could not do it, and now it's kind of come back.
Lara Cubitt:So it's, yeah, the presence of just being like what is this? What's happening? I don't know that it'll stay. And, yeah, you do, you always have to be present to both ways. If something for some reason changes to the good, taking that in and using it to the best of your ability instead of being scared that it's going to go away, because there's a very good chance of that. But would you want to miss all the time that it's here because you're just want to adjust your mind to dealing with that disability again, and right, yeah, so yeah, I think that that presence is is always something that's always changing. I mean, that's a very lucky experience to have something. I don't think this is the thing that most people with MS are confronting. Oh, and then I improved a bit it just tends not to be in that trajectory.
Lara Cubitt:but you never know
Susannah Steers:Are there, I'm sure there must be, misconceptions about multiple sclerosis and how you move around in the world that you wish more people understood, or the things you've experienced or you see in the world?
Lara Cubitt:yeah probably the primary thing is the idea that just, I mean, it's human nature, I think, is that we want to be able to see the disability in real time.
Lara Cubitt:And one of the worst effects even with all the other stuff, one of the worst effects that I experienced was fatigue that is of a level that's so different to anything I'd ever experienced before that it's hard to you can't even even experiencing it, you can't communicate it to other people, and this is the thing that basically plagues a lot of people with MS. So you know I could go out and look great. So you know I could go out and look great, completely fine, and then just be almost crippled with fatigue, like how am I going to get out of here? I can't be here. Why did I come? Oh, my God, I'm so tired and just being unable to do like.
Lara Cubitt:People think of fatigue as I don't know just having certain effects, but the effects are so much more profound shut down your life, fatigue, that's. I guess people with MS are always trying to explain what this is like, but it's really something where you think I don't know if anyone could get this without experiencing it. It's just like but it's like that is an incredible disability and it just looks like nothing. So people don't can't really conceptualize it, I guess. But I think there's not a lot of empathy for that. I mean, certainly there is to a degree with the people that are close to you. Well, if you're lucky, I do know people that don't even have that. But it's just it sort of opens up this whole.
Lara Cubitt:If that fatigue is like that with this disease, then what else is happening to people that we have no idea and we can't conceive of it. But that wouldn't be the only thing. And I guess there are things maybe just like that. You understand this concept like fatigue, but maybe you don't. And I think that applies to me too with other things. There are a lot of things in the world where you think, oh, yeah, yeah, I get it, I tried it out before or something, and it's like not really, but just there's an OT that I have, an OT that I know in the Vancouver area who her specialty is working with people with invisible health conditions, and that's what she does.
Susannah Steers:It's all about the stuff you can't see, and I think the fatigue is one of those huge pieces that you know. You find a way to kind of sometimes do the things you need to do, as you say, and you go out looking fine and then all of a sudden it hits and okay, I got to curl up under my desk because there is no other option in this moment. It's a lot.
Lara Cubitt:It's a lot, yeah. And then you're too cognitively taxed, like it's sort of this fatigue. It's like taxing your emotions, taxing your cognitive function. So then you're actually in a position where you don't have the basically capacity to communicate why or how you need to get out of there, and then it overwhelms your whole system and then sometimes things go very badly, some kind of you know breakdown of some sort or whatever, and then that triggers the oh my God, why would I go out?
Susannah Steers:You know people talk about before a migraine - they see things or, you know, are there any kind of precursors to an onset of intense fatigue or like something that indicates, okay, I only have like 30 minutes, or I mean, I wouldn't be that exact obviously, but something's coming? I got to go find myself a safe place to be because it's going to go now?
Lara Cubitt:hey think after a long time you start to notice things, but it's almost it can be. After a number of years with MS. It's like almost not an event. It's the state of being that it's always close to that. Just are you going to end up standing for a while? But it won't necessarily end in that same kind of abrupt breakdown way, because you're always preparing in the back of your mind, or even in the front of your mind sometimes, of how you're going to get out.
Lara Cubitt:So you do this and you get used to doing that, so it's not as extreme. But then it just things like even for me it would be starting to fidget and not hearing what people are saying, because I'm losing my kind of way. And then it's like I don't have a time limit on it, but I know it's about to go, it's over. There is because there's not going to be recovery. It doesn't matter. Like, oh, do you want to sit down? Yeah, I can sit down, but it's too far already. It's done. So the dream is over. We got to get out of here, or I got to get out of here, you know.
Susannah Steers:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of planning that goes into so much. I know people who will, you know, read a menu before they go to the restaurant because it you know that kind of thing, you know you're having to plan ahead to make sure that that, as you say, there's an exit plan. I'm going to be okay while I'm there and if I'm not, okay.
Lara Cubitt:I got. I got options, yeah yeah. And not being to planning to not be perplexed by decisions that these are stupid little decisions that other people would not consider. But when your brain is operating at like 20% optimality or whatever you want to call it, it's like you have to plan out what's going to, what you're going to do, so that you don't have to sit there and go back and forth in your head thinking, oh, am I going to do this, am I going to go right or am I going to go left when we get to that fork? That happens every time we go. But you have to decide those things. And, yeah, things like menus, for sure, because otherwise it's like I'll get distracted while I'm sitting there and think, okay, I'm going to choose and I'll just blurt something out. I don't even want to eat, if you know, because I'll feel like under pressure to get this to happen. Make a decision.
Lara Cubitt:Because it's like annoying to people like why would this be such a big decision to you? And that's not even the best example. But yeah, a lot of planning ends up happening and it annoys you that you have to plan this much and people think you're very. It changes your personality entirely. I mean, I was like I'm not even the same person at all. I think people would label me as maybe not quite outwardly anxious, but like that kind of planning and stuff, this does not go unnoticed. It's like why would you care? You would care.
Susannah Steers:You would care, tell me a little bit more about the work that you're doing now. You're coaching, you know you're. You're coaching, you're teaching yoga. You're in hospitals, you're in homes, what, what are you up to?
Lara Cubitt:So, yeah, a lot of my experience with teaching yoga in different places is basically over time. I've done such a variety of things. I'm pretty much open to teaching anywhere and if I'm somewhere for an extended stay, like in a hospital, which I have been, I'll offer to do it and just to teach people that are nearby or you know things like that. So, um, so currently I'd mostly would just teach people in their home and I also incorporate into boxing the. The boxers that I do train get a lot of yoga happening for the warm-up, for the stretch and some things just really apply. That ability to focus and really understand a movement is, to me, yoga. So there are those similarities of kind of understanding. The form and the refinement of the skills is a lot like yoga.
Susannah Steers:I'm going to leave contact information for Lara in the show notes, so if you have questions for her, you can reach her there. Thank you so so much for joining me today and for sharing your story with us. I have enjoyed every minute of it. I hope we will meet in person one of these days. Bye-bye.
Susannah Steers:I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Subscribe and, if you love what you heard, leave a five-star review and tell people what you enjoyed most. Join me here again in a couple of weeks. For now, let's get moving.
