Mountain Climbing Engineer Becomes Yogi

Lillian Cuthbert ’83 loves to teach. She tried it first as a graduate student in electrical engineering at NYU, then served as a part-time adjunct there after she finished her PhD in 1988. She had to leave, though, when she took a job that required her to travel. Retired since 2018 from a long career as a financial software application developer, she is excited to finally be back in the classroom—as a yoga instructor. 

Teaching, she says, “feeds back to the whole idea of community that I got actually from MIT.”

Cuthbert earned her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from MIT and was the women’s crew coxswain. She remembers doing problem sets with her roommates and says she found the academic atmosphere supportive. “It was already so hard there,” she says. “Everybody pushed everyone else, and everyone would help each other.” 

Being on the crew team added another layer of community to her experience. “You can’t take the boat out unless everyone is there,” she says, “and you could just tell if someone had a bad night—the boat will feel different. It was really nice to get that close to people.” She sees similarities between the way she bonded with her teammates and her current yoga practice: “You build a group of people.” 

A lifelong New Yorker and self-described “complete city person,” Cuthbert seeks adventure far from the confines of Manhattan. She has climbed the highest mountain on every continent (known as the Seven Summits), starting with Mount Kilimanjaro in 2004, which people warned her was “kind of like a gateway drug.” She ended with Mount Everest in 2018, the trip that made her decide to step away from her desk job forever. Since then, she has continued to climb all over the world, in places as varied as Peru, Greece, and Alaska. 

When she’s not scaling a mountain, she teaches 12 yoga classes a week, and she recently became a certified Pilates instructor as well. “I love it,” she says. “It’s a wonderful second career.” 

Among her favorite classes to teach are those at the YMCA that cater to seniors. “It’s very positive. They know each other from other activities, and they build each other up. It’s so nice to see,” she says. “I’m really good for older people, because I’m 62 and I get a lot of [them] who are like, ‘Oh, I can’t possibly do that,’ and I say, look, I can do it, so you have no excuse.” 

In January, she and her yoga business partner will lead a group of around 10 people on a trip to Munnar, in southern India, through their studio, Humble Warrior. As with previous retreats they have organized, the daily routine will include an early morning yoga class and meditation, a cultural experience, more yoga, and an evening activity, as well as plenty of locally sourced meals.

“There’s a lot more to yoga than just movement,” Cuthbert says. “We talk about the philosophy and the way of living. It’s a nice way to just get away and immerse yourself in wherever we are, and learn about your body, and learn about your mind as well.”