Treatment Table Podcast

She Was Diagnosed at 30… But Refused to Let It Define Her Life

• Mathew Ah Chow • Season 1 • Episode 9

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0:00 | 37:11

What would you do if, at 30 years old, you were told your body might never work the same again?

For many people, a diagnosis becomes their identity.

They stop training.
 They stop moving.
 They start focusing on everything they can’t do.

But what if that’s not the full story?

In this episode of The Treatment Table, I sit down with Tara,  a single mum, healthcare worker, and someone living with multiple sclerosis, who refused to let her diagnosis define how she lives her life.

This is not just a story about MS.
 This is a conversation about mindset, identity, and what actually drives recovery.

What You’ll Learn

  •  Why a diagnosis often leads people to feel stuck 
  •  The mental shift that separates those who improve vs those who don’t 
  •  The biggest predictor of recovery (and it’s not your scan) 
  •  How fear and “Dr Google” can make pain worse 
  •  How to stay active, train, and adapt after a diagnosis 
  •  What clinicians often miss when treating pain and injury 

Who This Episode Is For

  •  Anyone dealing with pain, injury, or a recent diagnosis 
  •  Active adults who feel like their body is holding them back 
  •  People who’ve been told to “just rest” or stop training 
  •  Anyone wanting to understand how mindset impacts recovery 

If you found this episode helpful, make sure to follow the podcast and share it with someone who needs to hear this.

More information on MS: 

https://www.msaustralia.org.au/

https://www.msplus.org.au/about-us/intouch-magazine

🎧 Episode Resources & Links

See you next week on the Treatment Table!

SPEAKER_01

And go on. There's nothing I can do about it. And I'm just gonna stay in bed and I'm gonna become my diagnosis. Or I can go, let's be like the alli here. Wait, yeah, cool. I've got this diagnosis, but I don't really want it to be my whole entire personality. How do we make sure that you can prioritize the things that make you feel good? And those are like the cliche answers, but they are it's nutrition, it's sleep, it's exercise, it's reducing my stress. All those things for me make such a huge difference.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the Treatment Table Podcast, your guide to a healthier and happier youth. I'm your host, Doctor of Physiotherapy Matthew Archow. And each week we share simple strategies to help you move better, feel better, and live healthier. So whether you're juggling work, family, training, or just trying to stay active, this podcast is here to help you take simple steps towards better health. So before we dive in today, please make sure you follow and subscribe to the Treatment Table Podcast so you don't miss out on our weekly tips to help you stay active and pain free. What would you do if at 30 years old you were told you had a neurological disease that could affect how you walk, how you move, and how you would live for the rest of your life? For many people, that diagnosis becomes their identity. But today's guest refused to let that happen. She's a single mum, she works she for work in healthcare, she trains a lot at the gym, and she refuses to let her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis or MS define her life. So today I want to bring on a special guest onto the treatment table to share a truly inspiring story. Someone who's faced significant challenges but continues to live her life with incredible positivity and strength. One of the things that I see often in the clinic is how a diagnosis can sometimes shape someone's identity. Quite often a patient will come in with back pain, they've had a scan, they've seen a GP, and it says a disbolt. And they go home, they jump on Dr. Google, and all of a sudden they're thinking about what they can't do and all the limitations that are associated with that. What's really interesting is that the research actually shows that one of the biggest predictors of recovery is one simple question. Do you believe your condition will improve? And today's conversation is about refusing to let the diagnosis define who you are. Today I'm joined by Tara. So thank you so much for coming on the treatment table.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. Um shall we get into what kind of started this whole process for me?

SPEAKER_02

Let's go. Yeah. Can tell us a little bit about yourself first and then we'll dive into Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm now 33. I am a single mom. I work, like you said, shift work in healthcare. Um, I'd pretty much grown up super active. Um, definitely from my teens all the way into my 20s. I was a dancer, I went to the gym a lot, I trained as a personal trainer. Um, so I was always moving, always on the go, super busy. I spent most of my 20s holding down full-time work, full-time uni. I just wanted it all all the time. And I definitely have always set myself like a probably very ambitious list of goals for my life and what I want to achieve out of it. So I've always been pushing forward non-stop, like constantly going, going, going, which sounds like very inflated, but I think at the time I didn't see any kind of issue with it. But now that I've been diagnosed, there's been like so much more reflection into just how hard it has been to adjust from that kind of mentality and lifestyle to how I go moving forward, and then that you know, change in my whole future and how I have to adapt to that.

SPEAKER_02

What's a normal day look like for you at the moment?

SPEAKER_01

Um, so I definitely work shift work. So my roster pattern is a little bit all over the place. That's day shifts, night shifts. I kind of move around a fair bit. Um, I try to get some time in at the gym every day, definitely on my days off, more so than my days on. Um I enjoy going out for walks, doing things like that. I have a very active three-year-old. So keeping up with him is a whole challenge to itself. Um, he loves to run around, he loves to play, he's always on the go. Um, so yeah, typical day for me is getting up, looking out with him, hanging out with him. Um, we he either goes to daycare and that gives me the time to do what I need to do with my day, or he's home and we are trying to do some stuff together. Um, a work day is usually about 12 and a half hours long. So those days are long. They require a lot of planning and effort, you know, eating right, training right, sleeping right. So, yeah, there's a lot of like moving parts to a typical day for me.

SPEAKER_02

And can you give us a bit of a background into, I guess, like you said, what led you here and um the process that you've gone through in the last three, four years?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So um it would have been about four years ago that I started my new job. So I just had um my little one, and it would have been about six months after having him that I went back to work. I worked full-time during that time, shift work on and off. And yeah, I just thought that all of that time period was just adjusting, you know, being a single mom during that time plus, you know, shift work in general. That was huge. And I was I was definitely feeling it at the time. I found it really hard to keep up with sleep, keep up with training, keep up with nutrition. I just all put it down to it being the biggest adjustment period I've probably been through in a really long time. Um, fast forward to November of 2023, and for about a week I'd started noticing some stuff creeping up, and it was just some numbness and tingling around my face, and I had pain in my right eye that I've never had before, and I was putting it off for ages. I was like, this will go away. I just need a really good sleep, I just need some rest. And it got to probably nearly a week of that, and ignoring it, which you shouldn't do, um, that I woke up one morning and my whole vision in my right eye was so wrong. I felt like I was trying to look through like a water droplet. It felt like there was a big shadow in my vision. I had so much pain in that eye. And when I was trying to like put my glasses on, take them off, try and make sense of it all, nothing was really kind of coming back to normal vision for me. Um, the more I walked around the house trying to make sense of it, the more I noticed like my even my colour had changed. And so vision in my left eye versus vision in my right eye, they were two totally different colours. And I remember calling my mom being like, I'm meant to be driving my little one to daycare, and I don't think I can do that. And she was like, Yep, let's go to the optometrist and see what's going on. And she came and picked me up, and we went to the optometrist, and she kind of looked at my eye and was like, There's nothing like structurally wrong with it. Retina wasn't detached or something quite obscure. There was no injury to the eye, but she's like, You literally can't see. And the whole eye chart, I couldn't see it, even as she added lens after lens after lens. And she kind of said to me, Like, you need to see an ophthalmologist. I'm gonna call in a FAVA, like right now. And I remember driving from her clinic to the ophthalmologist and did what you shouldn't do, and that is Google my symptoms, and it said optic neuritis. And I was like, This makes no sense because it literally said frequently associated with multiple sclerosis. And I was like, I don't have that, there's no history of that in my family, it's not even in my realm. So I was like, can't be that, and I went to the ophthalmologist and he sat me down and he had a look at my eye and he checked the pressures and he did all these extra tests, and I had no field vision. And I pretty much just had worsening eye pressure, my pupil couldn't even like constrict under light. And he goes, This is optic neuritis, and I went, No chance, not a chance. And he goes, if you don't walk out of the hospital with an MS diagnosis today, you will walk out in the next five or ten years, and that was like a kick in the gut. Like, how do you tell somebody that and think that that's just gonna be like, oh, okay, thank you. Um, so yeah, he wrote me a letter and referred me off to hospital. And I sat there for a few hours, and then the next team of doctors were like, Yep, this is definitely looking like optic neuritis. And they said you'll need an MRI, and we can't do the one for you today, but we want to treat your vision with some steroid therapy, so you'll have that for the next four days, and then we'll do the MRI as soon as we can get you in. So for four days I sat there basically being like, So they're thinking it's like uh optic neuritis, and that's heavily linked with MS. And all I could hear in the back of my head was this ophthalmologist saying, if you don't get diagnosed today, you will soon. And that for four days was all that played on my mind. And they sent me in to the eye clinics every single day that I was in the hospital, and my vision was getting worse and worse and worse. And at one point they said, This might not even be MS, this may be way worse than that, because we've never seen such profound vision loss in somebody that's presenting with MS. And then you're like, oh, so there's even worse out there. Because for me, like MS was not really something I'd ever thought about. I looked at the symptoms online and it was like muscle weakness and difficulty walking and speech difficulties, and I was like, I have none of this. Um, you know, and they're like vision changes, and I was like, well, I wear glasses, so that's that's my baseline, you know, numbness and tingling, and it was like, well, everyone gets that, you know. Stand up the wrong way or lay down the wrong way, and you're gonna have something going on. So for four days I spent in the hospital.

SPEAKER_02

What was going through your head for those four days?

SPEAKER_01

I just like at first I was like, is my vision even gonna come back? Because I didn't even know if this like was gonna get better considering it was getting worse. And what does that mean for me? I'm six months into this new job that I had worked so hard to get and I had wanted so much in my life. And I was like, so am I gonna be able to go back to work? And how do I provide for myself, provide my kid, put a roof over our heads if I don't have employment? Um, how do you go from having something that feels like so natural, like your vision that you've had your whole life, and then potentially have that taken away from you? Um, and then if it is MS, like, well, what does that mean? Because I feel like the horror stories of MS are everyone comes to you and go, Oh, I know somebody with that, and they're disabled, they're in a wheelchair, they don't walk anymore. And I was like, at 30, that's not what you want to think is the trajectory of your life. You want to think like I'm gonna travel and I'm gonna have this really cool career and I'm gonna do all these things that I've set my mind to. And so to then kind of think that all of those things that you'd put in place for yourself are now up to like chance or potentially never gonna happen for you, that's huge. Um, and I think as well, you start wondering like, well, what does that mean for like the people around me? Like, what does that mean for like my relationships like with my mum or like my friends, or you know, who is gonna want to stick around you when you've got this huge disease, like that feels like a big burden, and it's not, but at the time it felt so massive. Um, and so I had the MRI on the Monday, and I remember like sitting in that machine, and it was like an hour and a half scan, and all you can hear is your own thoughts, and so it was just like one of those things where I don't think I've cried so much in four days, but yeah, it was it was definitely a time. And I remember going back to the eye clinic after I'd had the MRI, and he read the report by accident that I hadn't been told that I had MS. So the like he felt awful about it, but he just was like, Oh, yeah, okay, so you've got MS. And I just burst into tears. And I was just kind of like, okay, like I would like to go now. Um, and I cried the whole way back from the ophthalmologist all the way to my room and called my mum, and I was like, You need to come now. Um, and I remember like my friends were all there, and my mum was there. We're all sitting around my bed, and we just sat there like game planning it. And it probably would have been a good two or three hours later when the neurologist walked in. And I think in that time we'd had so much time to chat it out and discuss it and like you know, make a game plan that by the time they walked in to be like, hey, like let's have a chat, I was like, I already know, so like let's ask some questions. In a backwards way, that felt really good because I think if I'd found out in that moment, I would have been all emotion and not had an opportunity to like talk. But having it come out and then be able to like kind of pull myself back together, I was like, okay, like now we can talk about this and like let's figure this out because I don't want to feel like hopeless in this situation.

SPEAKER_02

Can you give uh listeners a bit of an idea of what MS is?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I sure can. Um so MS is uh it's essentially an autoimmune disease. So the immune system starts to attack the surrounding like sheath around the nerves, um, typically in the brain and spinal cords. So um you'll start to see different lesions come up in response to inflammation and it attacks those sites and then they demyelinate so that the sheath erodes away. And that essentially disrupts the nerve signals from actually getting the signal or the message across clearly. Um, so that's why you can get a whole range of symptoms. It can be like numbness, tingling, difficulty swallowing. It kind of really just depends where the lesion is to where the symptoms kind of correlate. Um, the brain, they always said to me was, you know, there's a lot of room for error there, I guess. They said, you know, you can have lesions in the brain and they don't touch anything. So you can go symptom-free with those lesions. But then in the spinal cord, they're a little bit more risky because that's where you're, you know, you've got less room for error. You've got your mobility at play, you've got, you know, sensory stuff that can have a big impact. So um there's three different types of MS. Um, so relapsing remitting is what I'm diagnosed with. It's pretty much what like 85% of people have. Um, you go through periods where you're completely fine and you have no symptoms at all, and then you can relapse, which is new um sites that demyelinate in the brain or the spinal cord. Um, usually over time that becomes secondary progressive. So after a prolonged period of relapse, remit, relapse, remit, you get this kind of steady decline that just continues to progress the disease onwards. Um, and then there is the primary progressive type as well, which can pretty much just be this constant flow of MS symptoms.

SPEAKER_02

I think we just want to break it down a little bit simpler. So I think correct me if I'm wrong, in the process, our body starts to break down the covering of those nerve signals. Yeah. And so that makes it really hard for those signals, which are like electrical currents, rushing through the body. And that's why the symptoms vary so much. But I guess, like you said earlier, what we tend to think of MS is the really end stages of it where you're in a wheelchair, you know, you lost all control um of your body, and you know, the all those more severe cases. Um, so it would have been quite scary initially, like you said, not knowing what was happening with your eyesight and losing that and coming through. I really want to go back to that moment where you were sitting in the MRI room, and if you haven't been in an MRI machine, it is a bit like a cave, but it's really noisy, and I guess it is time where you have to sit completely still and completely, you know, trying to hold your breath at certain moments, and there's no one else in the room, you know, they're talking through a microphone. How did you manage in those moments where your brain naturally goes to worst case scenario? How were you able to kind of at least keep it together? Because it sounds like you were able to, you know, put a plan together very quickly, but in those moments where your brain starts running to worst case scenario, how do you manage to pull it back?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'm very worst-case scenario sometimes in my train of thought. Um, so I will always default to like worst-case scenario. And yeah, you're you're right. You're sitting there in this cave that is very noisy. And if you haven't had one before, a lot of people find them very overwhelming. And yeah, I was sitting there the entire time, and I was like, Well, I haven't had anything before this that's made me ever question whether or not I've had MS. And I was like, I've I've never had problems with my walking, or I've never really had all of these like worst-case scenario idea of what MS is. I don't tick any of those boxes, and so I was kind of like, well, if this is MS, cool, like I can I can deal with this as long as the vision comes back. Um, but I think at the time, yeah, you're sitting there being like, well, maybe it's wrong. Um, and I know when they definitely said to me that there was potential that it was gonna be way worse than MS, I didn't even want to look into what they were suggesting as like a possibility because I was kind of like, MS is like my threshold right now for how far I want this to go as my like worst case scenario. And I was always like somewhat hoping that they were gonna turn around and be like, no, you don't have it. Um, it's just I don't even know what else it could have been at the time, maybe a migraine. But at the same time, I was kind of like, well, better I find out today and know that I can do something about it early, then potentially get missed for the next five, 10, 15 years, and then have another episode where they go, oh, now you have heaps, you know, heaps of lesions in the brain or lesions in the spinal cord that can make you feel significantly more physically impacted, mentally impacted, emotionally impacted. Because I think we always talk about the physical symptoms of MS, you know, the numbness, the tingling, the sensation changes, the difficulty walking. But there's so much more to it than just that. And there is like a lot of mental stuff that goes through with the MS. And I didn't realize it until I obviously started this diagnosis process and then started reaching out to like different like professionals. Um, but when MS affects certain regions of your brain, like that's gonna predispose you to like anxiety and like even like quite low moods at times when you are feeling your symptoms like really flare up, and like chronic pain will do that to you as well. Like, so if you're sitting there in pain and then you're sitting there thinking like everything is like gonna be out to get me, like that's a very hard mentality get to get stuck in. But I guess like in a way, I've always looked at like my time working in healthcare, and you see people like go through challenges all the time, and so it's like, well, you can either do one of two things. I've seen people that have had a diagnosis and gone, well, there's nothing I can do about it, and I'm just gonna stay in bed and I'm gonna become my diagnosis, or I can go, let's be like the outli here, where yeah, cool, I've got this diagnosis, but I don't really want it to be my whole entire personality. And that's not to say in the last three years that I haven't had moments where I have felt so defeated by it. You know, you go like to the doctor's appointments, you go to the MRI, you go to the blood test, you go to see the specialist, you sit through massive long infusions for treatment, and you're like, oh, every month feels like MS. And like every day starts to creep up. If I don't go to the gym today, I'm gonna be sore tomorrow. Like, and it's all this big revolving door of like everything that like kind of has to keep you going. But I think if you get to this headspace of like just conceding defeat, like you're you're literally not gonna have the life you wanted. And I think I've always been too ambitious with what I want out of life to let like this kind of be the last thing that I had, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Was there a moment where you were in the hospital or recently diagnosed where you decided that you weren't gonna let? It affect your ambitions or your goals?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think in that like little window when we were all sitting in bed, well, sitting around my bed, I should say, after I had been told by accident, I was very quick to be like, that's it. Like I've lived with it for however long, and it's never affected me. So it's not gonna start now. And in retrospect, that was probably almost too ambitious of a mentality because I think like it is something I have to live with, and it is something that I have to acknowledge because ignoring it doesn't work, but also like leaning all the way into it is also never gonna work. Um, so it just became like something that over us, and it's taken its time, like it's definitely a process that has evolved over years where I've had to readjust my expectations. So like I still have all the career goals that I had when I started, and I was really well supported when I went back to work, and they were like, no, you can still do all the things you want to do in this job with this diagnosis. And so that was very uplifting for me because I was like, Oh, I'm like, I've done all this for nothing. Um, you know, when it comes to traveling and things like that, like I still get to do that, you know. I'm just a little bit more prepared, you know, when I when I go. Um, you know, when it comes to listening to my body, that's one thing I've really had to learn to do. I used to be so on the go, so like, let's go, let's go, let's go. I'd leave at five in the morning and come home at 10 o'clock at night, having tried to fit everything into my day. I can't do that anymore. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just me learning to like rest when I need to rest, move when I can move, and then adjust it accordingly. And rather than like trying to beat myself up and be like, well, I haven't done all the things that I said I was gonna do, something's still better than nothing.

SPEAKER_02

If you take us to one of your harder days or your darker days where you feel defeated, what are some of the I guess conversations you're having with yourself to pull you out? Because I know that can be very, very hard.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think so last September was my first relapse that I've had since diagnosis, and that was a really hard, really confusing time. I had been overseas, came home, had all the things going on, and all the symptoms that were creeping up at the time I had not experienced before. And I remember trying to reach out to my treatment team, and it took a few days for them to get back to me. So there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unknown, and I guess a lot of frustration because you're like, I don't know what's going on, and I need somebody who does. Um, and they were very suspicious that it was a relapse, and I had to go back through like a week of treatment to try and reduce some inflammation. And I think in the aftermath of that, I was kind of like, Oh, it's only been two years since I got diagnosed, and I'm already relapsing, and I'm meant to be on this really strong drug, why is it not working? And I would go into like these appointments and I would be like, this symptom's here and this symptom's here, and I've got this and I've got this, and they would go, Yeah, I don't know, like because it's so individual, you know, and not everyone has the same experience. But when I was getting to the point where I just hit my limit, like I was just like, I'm so sick of being told I don't really know. And it just kind of turned into this like moment where I was like, Well, if you guys don't know, I'm gonna figure this out for myself because feeling like this every day, like, how do I keep doing this? So it became like, all right, well, let's let's have a chat about what I can be doing. And I had a really fantastic appointment with my doctor, and she was like, just because the MRI says it's all good, and the blood tests say the drugs are doing what they're supposed to do, you're not feeling right. So, how do we fix your quality of life right now? And how do we make sure that you can prioritize the things that make you feel good? And those are like the cliche answers, but they are it's nutrition, it's sleep, it's exercise, it's reducing my stress. All those things for me make such a huge difference. And so, you know, it became okay, well, you know what? I am gonna start reaching out and and offloading that to other people if I need to. You know, I started working with a naturopath to try and get my, you know, food and my gut looked after. You know, I started working with a psychologist to tackle the mental side of it because I don't think I ever truly acknowledged that there was gonna be days in this diagnosis that were gonna be bad. Um, and that helped heaps. You know, I've been working with you for pretty much since the diagnosis I got referred to you. And like that's been so massive in keeping me moving and keeping me on track with training and movement, and I have had such a great appreciation for my body in that time because I've learned that you know, I've got neck pain, but that's maybe not all it is. Maybe it is coming from other places and and it's other things, and I need to be working on different bits and pieces to support my body and make it work for me. Um, because when you sit on social media and you see everyone sitting there being like, oh, like just do this, it's like, well, that works for you, but that's not my circumstances. So it's been about finding the people in this time that have my best interests at heart and are looking out for me from their like, you know, specialties as well. So that's been, I guess, huge. But then I also couldn't have done a lot of this without like the support of like my friends, my family, my partner, having my little one be like so motivating that I don't think any of that would have happened without any of them.

SPEAKER_02

How has the gym helped you get through the uh some of those bad times? I think that how does that help, I guess, mentally as well?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think it's definitely a big mental thing. Um, because you go in there and and you're proving to yourself time and time again that like this is hard, but I can still do it. Um and every time I've said I can't do something, I I go and do it. Um physically, it's huge. If I don't move, my whole body seizes up and it goes into the worst spasms and the worst pain. And you know me very well to know that when I have skipped the gym or I've been too busy to prioritize that training, my body pays for it. And we see a massive difference in my symptom management when my body is moving and when it's being looked after. And so it is, you know, looking after all the accessory stuff and not just the big stuff. And it's less for me now about going in the gym and ego lifting or like trying to get like you know what all these people are doing all over social media. I don't care about that. I just care about that my body is working with me and not against me.

SPEAKER_02

Awesome. Well done. Keep going the gym.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Where can our listeners find out more about MS?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, so there's a few resources, always go to the legit stuff. Um, so MS Intouch is one of the like local sort of services here in New South Wales. Everyone's kind of got different states, have got different MS resources. Um, there's like an international federation for MS, so you can have a look at there. They've got a lot of resources for like um not only for patients that are being diagnosed, but for caregivers and for friends, family people that are affected by it in their own ways. Um, but yeah, MS Australia is kind of the big one here. So they do a lot of fundraising, they do a lot of support. Um, they've got their new building in Lidcomb that is, you know, built for purpose, really. They've got everything and they really push nutrition. They've got dietitians, they've got, you know, EPs, physios. So you can see like that, even from like the official word of mouth, that these are the things we should be doing and and looking after ourselves.

SPEAKER_02

What advice would you give to someone who's been recently diagnosed with a chronic illness? Something that's not gonna change very soon.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's definitely one of those things where you have to grieve it. Um your mind and your body are now gonna do two totally different things, and that's okay. It's just like picking yourself back up. You're allowed to have like a bad day about it, you can have a bad week about it, and you can feel angry and sorry for yourself that you've been handed a card that you didn't want to be dealt, but at the end of the day, like use it as your motivation to like push yourself into something else and like to a different direction. I think for the most part, I can live a pretty normal life around it, and that's you know, my experience with it is not gonna be everyone's experience with it, but yeah, it's definitely doable.

SPEAKER_02

Before we finish today's episode, I want to leave you with the exercise of the week. After hearing Tara's inspiring story, it's a really powerful reminder that movement is something we should never take granted for. And even if it's a little bit of movement or it's some light movement, we need to try and keep moving. Not just physically, but also for our mental health and our emotional well-being. So this week we're gonna try something a little bit different. We're gonna go for a 20 to 30 minute meditation walk. So I find this really helpful when I'm feeling flat, tired, I don't want to exercise, my brain is jumping around a million miles an hour, I can't sit down to do a seated meditation or a lying down meditation. So I'll go for a walk. My favorite is just to go down to the beach or down to the water, and that seems to really help to clear my head. But this could be anywhere, you go to your park, your local neighborhood, even just around the block. Now, key thing, you need to leave ideally your headphones and your phone behind. This allows you to be present and in the moment and not get distracted. I know this is really difficult, but please give it a go. So as you begin walking, I want you to start to slow your pace down. This is really important to start to bring awareness to your body. It might feel a bit awkward initially, but this is gonna help to start calm your nervous down and bring your awareness to your body. Then you're gonna start to feel your weight shift. You're gonna feel your foot contact the ground, the left foot, and then you're gonna feel as your right foot goes across to the ground, you're gonna feel your weight moving from left to right through each step. You don't have to change how you walk. I just want you to be aware of how you're walking. So bring in awareness to that foot, whether it's shoes, whether it's barefoot, just feeling that contact. And then you can start to feel what are your shoulders doing, what are your head doing? Are you slumped over? Are you upright? And then we bring up attention to our breathing. What are we again? Don't try and change it, don't try and fix it. We just bring in awareness through. I want you to feel that breath coming in and out. Want to feel the breath coming through the nose and to your lungs, take your ribs out nice and wide. And then we start to bring awareness to our senses. You might feel the air on your skin. Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it windy? You start to hear the sounds around you. Are there sounds close to you? Are there sounds far away from you? And all of a sudden you'll start to hear things that you didn't hear before. And then being really aware of your body as you start to move through the slow conscious walk. Again, really important. We're not trying to change it, we're not forcing these movements. We're just bringing awareness and a presence. The other thing that I like to do as I become a little bit more calmer and a little bit more aware, a little bit more present is I ask myself, what am I grateful for today? And what was really inspiring from Tyra's chat today and for her to share her story was that we all should be grateful for our body. It's something we all take grateful. It's something we all take granted for. We're all trying to improve, to get fitter, to lose weight, to get stronger. Sometimes we just gotta be grateful. It might be grateful that we're able to go out for a walk. Tara talked about how scary it was for her to lose her sight. Just to be able to stop. This morning I was able to see a rainbow and to be able to stop and acknowledge that how amazing it is that our eyes can process nature. Sometimes it's being able to feel the wind on your skin. Being grateful for your body brings a lot of calmness and a lot of presence back. And so during this moment, take time to appreciate your body. Remember, you only get one body through your whole life. So cherish it. Thank you, Tara, so much for coming on and being so brave and sharing your message. It's truly inspiring, and I hope so many people get to listen and hear your story. Uh, thank you for being so positive, and I really believe that you give a lot of hope and brightness to a lot of people, and I think this message will hopefully find them in that need. So thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for joining me on today's episode of the Treatment Table Podcast. If you found this conversation inspiring, please make sure you follow and subscribe so you don't miss out on our future episodes where these simple strategies can help you move better, feel better, and live healthier. If you know someone who might be going through a tough time, whether it's an injury, a health diagnosis, or just feeling limited in their body, please share this episode with them. It might be the reminder that they need, that their circumstances don't have to define their potential. So remember, keep moving, and I'll see you back here next week on the treatment table.