Transcript
WEBVTT
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We're really stretching it.
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On this episode of Big Sexy Chat, We've got the incredible Vera from Flexibility with Vera joining us to talk about why stretching isn't just for the bendy babes of the world, it's for all of us.
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Whether you dream of touching your toes, slipping into the splits or just making it through the day without groaning every time you stand up, Vera's got the moves to help.
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So grab a comfy seat, take a deep breath and let's get into it.
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Hi, welcome to Big Sexy Chat.
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I'm Crystal, I'm Murph.
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We're just two rad fatties sitting around Chewing the fat Twice a month.
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We'll be chatting about current events.
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Hot topics.
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Sex, sex toys, fat politics, about community, cannabis, cbd, you name it.
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We're going to talk about it.
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We are very excited to have you a part of our community.
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Welcome and enjoy.
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Hey there, welcome back to Big Sexy Chat.
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My name is Crystal and I'm here with my co-host, my lovely co-host Murph, and today we have an amazing guest.
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Her name is Vera and her website is Flexibility by Vera, and we're going to talk about why we all need to stretch more and also maybe learn a few tips about going into the splits, although I'm a little worried.
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So anyway, welcome, welcome both of you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, I keep seeing this meme and I'm sure it's targeted to me, thank you.
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Thank you, I keep seeing this meme and I'm sure it's targeted to me.
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You're not really old, you just need to stretch.
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Have you seen that one?
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Yes, yes, yes, they're like, they're definitely, but I, it's true, when I stretch, I feel so much better and I'm less cranky too.
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But anyway, welcome vera, and you pronounce your name, vera, and tell us all about you and about your website and about what the work that you do and how you got into this.
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All that fun stuff.
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Yeah, so thank you for having me.
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I run flexibility with Vera, which is my little personal training and flexibility training business.
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So a little backstory.
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I hated fitness for a very long time, especially being the fat kid growing up.
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I was always picked last, I was coming in last.
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I was just like not a fan of gym class.
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But of course you know Y2K, diet culture, all like you know Tumblr, weight Watchers, all that kind of stuff was like really thrown in my face.
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So I did try and work out often.
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I went to Weight Watchers as early as 11.
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I had a personal trainer by the time I was 13.
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Really like, oh, I want to get rid of like these rolls and stuff.
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I didn't have rolls when I was 13.
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When I look back I'm like who was I kidding?
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I wasn't that big, I was a child and so you know, all this time I was like trying to work out but I hated it and by the time I moved out I was like I'm just not going to do this.
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But I still tried to lose weight because diet culture and I ended up trying waist training, which is wearing a steel bone corset and while it's not necessarily bad for you if you're doing it properly, as in probably like, you're tying it correctly, you're only wearing it for a certain amount of time, not super long periods of time, and you're working out in between wearing it.
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I wore it for up to 10 hours a day.
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I tied it incorrectly half the time and I did not work out in between wearing it.
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So my core muscles so my abdomen, my glutes, my back they completely atrophied.
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The strongest part of my core at that time was my glutes, so they were kind of holding up my back, my front, like everything, and so obviously over time it just wasn't doing enough because everything else had gotten so weak to the point of I actually thought the corset was actually helping my pain, so I just kept wearing it, making it worse.
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It was about I think it was like October, maybe seven or eight years ago now I realized I actually couldn't get out of bed without crying into pain and I'd be crawling around and it was just so bad.
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I went to the ER and they were like, hey, congrats, you have back pain, like the most in the population.
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I'm like thank you for nothing.
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They literally gave me no advice.
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They gave me some Tylenol and sent me on my way as I'm like hobbling down the streets of Toronto and unrelated.
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But two days later my appendix burst, which was a whole other issue, but basically after my back gave out, I came across someone online Roz the Diva, a plus size pole pole dancer in New York, and I saw her in a YouTube video and I was like wait, someone my size is doing something, something so cool, and just flying around that pole like nothing.
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And I was so amazed and I never did it.
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I was like, whatever, I'm putting it in the back of my mind, I still hate fitness.
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Fast forward, about a year after this ER incident I went to a club with my friends and they had some pole dancers there and I was like I thought of Roz and I'm like I could do that.
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I'm still hobbling around in pain because I haven't been doing anything the last year, but the next day I signed up for my first pole dance class and a splits training class that day and I was awful at it, but I did have a lot of fun with it and I had so much fun that I kept doing it and doing it and trying other types of fitness.
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But I really fell in love with flexibility training.
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So by the time the pandemic hit, I was like well, obviously I'm not working right now, like most people everyone's kind of sitting around on their couch but I've been really enjoying stretching these last few years, so why not get certified to teach it?
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And it was November 2020 when I had my very first class called Flexi Fatties, and I've been a flexibility coach ever since.
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That's so awesome.
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I love that story.
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I mean not that the fact that you had to go to the yard in your appendix almost, but the rest of it.
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Yeah, that's fascinating.
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Do you still do pole dancing at all?
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I?
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don't too much, because ever since I moved a little bit outside of Toronto, there aren't many studios around me and I'm in an old house.
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So I do have actually a pole I had in my old place, but I do not trust the ceilings of this house because it was built in the 40s.
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I'm too scared of that.
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So I haven't, unfortunately since.
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I haven't, unfortunately since.
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But I have so much love for that community and still supporting everyone I know who does that or did it or still does it.
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I was just going to mention that Murph Roz and I have had discussions before about having her on.
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We should have her on sometime.
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Yeah.
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She's really great, she's so fun.
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She's cute, such a fun person.
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I've been to New York a few times.
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I've done classes with Roz since finding her originally, but I really have to thank her for being someone who could show me that joyful movement was even a thing, because I didn't believe in that.
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I thought everything was just going to be awful.
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I was always going to be in pain and, based on what the ER doctor said, I just figured that was like this was my life.
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But you know, seeing Roz doing what she does, I was like, oh, you can do that Okay.
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Seriously watching pole, any kind of pole dancing or any kind of pole work.
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I'm just always like, yes, like anybody who puts in that kind of time and can do that, I'm always just like this is incredible, same kind of thing here, like we don't have something like that where I live, like I would have to drive 45 minutes to like go to a class.
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But yeah, it's always something that has interested me.
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It's one of those things where, like you said, joyful movement, like if you find something that you enjoy that kind of thing, it's, it's the best way to do it.
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Yeah, it's so fun and it is very, very like strength-based, like you have the core strength you have to have for that, and I will say, like, between doing the pole dancing and the flexibility training at the same time, like that really did help my back pain like in tremendous ways.
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Ways because I was really building that strength at same time while also stretching Right.
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I'm curious how long?
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Because a lot of folks like you said you know difficulty with movement, difficulty with the fitness industry and those types of things the practicing makes you know you get better at it.
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You've got to keep kind of going back to it.
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How long, would you say, did it take for you to really start seeing alleviation of the back pain or like more promising kind of you know getting out of that?
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Yeah, I, honestly it's.
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It kind of comes in waves, right.
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So, like I can't say like it was this time and my back pain was cured.
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I would say, though, within a week I started noticing differences though, wow, because I did go to three to four classes a week and even then I was like, oh, like, and you know it's a slow, it's a slow progress, um, especially for where I was with my back, and you know, sometimes, even though you are doing something consistently, it can still go backwards, um, so there's always ups and downs, like I even say now, unfortunately, I can't say like I've cured my back pain, but I have gotten it to a place where not only do I know how to relieve the majority of the pain, but I don't have to deal with painkillers, I don't have to get MRIs.
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I know some people who've gotten surgery for their back pain and I'm very thankful that I'm at a place where I know what to do so I don't ever have to go there.
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And there are days where I do wake up and I'm like I actually feel no pain at all and I love those days.
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But I never thought I'd even have those days before, even on the days where I'm like you know, it's a little, a little bit stiff, but once I stretch it's, like you know, a two out of 10 kind of feeling, like it's like, oh, it can get there, it can get that low, like the pain can be that minimal.
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Is is such an amazing feeling, yeah, that sounds fantastic.
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I'm curious you said that you had your first class.
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Was that in person or was that like virtual?
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What?
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What formats do you give for your work?
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so that one was virtual um, especially yeah, it was.
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It was during COVID, like there were still lockdowns happening, at least in Toronto then, and so I've actually I would say I mostly still do virtual.
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I did actually kind of I don't want to say like blow up or go viral, but I did get a lot of my audience from TikTok, and TikTok threw all my stuff to people in the US, even though I'm up in Canada.
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So I was like well, it doesn't make sense for me to just stick to one spot when obviously so many people need this and so many people feel more comfortable moving in their own homes rather than having to go to a space, especially in larger bodies, like we don't feel welcome in gym spaces usually, like almost ever Right.
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So I prefer to teach a virtual because of that.
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But I've teached in person.
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I've had some.
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I've even taught in New York.
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I've taught little events around Toronto, which is super fun.
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I do love doing that, but I love being able to reach as many people as I can with this type of movement.
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That's awesome, did you realize?
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Okay, I need to slowly build up extra tools, because something I think about because I don't go to gyms, I don't like being in those spaces is I try to buy whatever equipment and have it at home.
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And I see that you've got it.
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Looks like some yoga equipment or some yoga tools.
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What types of things should somebody have to get started?
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What?
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types of things.
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Should somebody have to kind of get started?
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Honestly, as long as you have a good yoga mat, I kind of went the road of I need everything and anything that's ever been created which you don't.
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You really don't, I think.
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Even if you have a chair or a stool and you have a yoga mat, that's really all you need, because there's so many things you can use that are household items, instead of going out and buying things Like, yes, I love using yoga blocks and a strap and even having an exercise ball or a bolster, but those things like okay, blocks, you can use the chair or the stool Strap, you can use a belt or a towel, even a bolster, couple pillows.
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There's so many household options for all these tools.
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So, really, as long as you have a good mat that is supportive of your body because there are different types of mat widths, so I do suggest a higher width because of usually knee pain, because most of us have that but as long as it's supportive to you and you feel comfortable using it, then that and a chair and you're set.
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I don't feel any pain in my knees unless I'm on my knees, and I wanted to ask you about that.
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So I'm around a lot of fat women, a lot of fat people, a lot, and it seems like one of the biggest fears is when they fall.
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I always say BGD, big girl down.
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When I fall, it's an effort to get back up and you know I really have to push off on things.
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I wonder if you have any tips for that for people who you know, people, oh, let me help you.
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I'm like don't help me, you can't possibly help me.
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You're just going to rip my arm out of my socket.
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Okay, I promise you, my body's going to tear it out all up.
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But do you have any tips around that how people can get up more gracefully and where it's less painful for our knees?
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Yeah, I would honestly say practice.
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And by practice I mean don't just, like you know, go out on some ice and fall, but if you're in your home and you have a sturdy chair, not a chair with wheels I never suggested a chair with wheels nearby you will just make it worse.
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Yeah, exactly, Um, you don't want to be sliding around there.
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I would say, really, take your time coming down onto one knee and onto both knees and then bring one knee up the other knee up, to stand and use that chair for support and practice that, Like even once a day.
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I think can be very helpful to just practice that movement, because in the end you're thinking it's a lunge and a squat, basically like in a very rough form when you're trying to get up and you know, and of course, when you have the chair there, you can use your arms, you can really help yourself up.
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But to practice getting up and down off the ground to help strengthen the muscles will really help and also when you're strengthening the muscles it will take pain out of the knees.
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Great idea.
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I would have never thought of that yeah, I'm curious.
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Um, you know it sounds like the majority of the folks that you market to is it's body inclusive.
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So it's, it's anybody, everybody, but I think a lot of folks.
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You know we've we've found our niche with the fat community.
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It sounds like you've found a niche with the fat community.
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It sounds like you've found a niche with the fat community too.
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What kind of like frequently asked questions do you get from from our folks?
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I would say actually, the most often asked question is how can I have better sex?
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And like, how can I open my hips for better sex?
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It's the comment and it's funny because that's not just with fat people but it's with every.
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Everyone wants to know how can I have better sex with flexibility training.
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That's a right up our alley Cause.
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Guess what?
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That's one of the questions coming for you, so that makes sense.
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Yeah, it's always very interesting to me because I think I'm like, oh, you want to be able to do like this hike with your kids.
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Or I know someone who did want to go walk around Disney World with their kids.
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That was their second concern.
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The first concern was to have better sex and that's such a common thing and I love that because, honestly, you should be able to feel comfortable when you're having sex and if you're flexible, you will be more comfortable with it because you can just move easier.
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Is the sex thing, the hip flexor tightness.
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It can be hip flexor tightness, it can be glute tightness, it could even be a core issue.
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There's actually just so many muscles If I'm not mistaken, there's around 17 muscles in the hips and so it could be any of those, it could be multiple of them, it could be our fascia, it could be the tendon.
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It's a lot of.
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What is it?
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But what I love about flexibility training is because you can't actually just stretch one muscle.
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Every time you're stretching one muscle, you're probably stretching like three or four other muscles without even noticing.
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So doing those hip stretches, like working on your hip flexors and say a lunge, will actually also help your glutes.
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It'll also help your hamstrings and quads and things like, say, for a straddle.
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So sitting in a wide V shape will really help the adductors.
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So the inner thighs, which help open up our legs, which people love to see you do that in bed but like to have that, and then you're also working your glutes right.
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You're strengthening the opposite muscle that is stretching.
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So that's one thing I just really love is you're getting in so many different things, depending on what you're working on at that time.
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Yeah, and I'm curious, you know the stretches that you talk about.
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I love, first of all, that you use the writing, you know the code words so that nothing gets taken down on TikTok with a little devil emoji I'm always like, oh hey, but I think one of the things that I had found you before we talked about interviewing you and I'd found you on TikTok and it was those types of things that I was looking at.
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I think one of the things that really interests me was that you can be very flexible while also being very fat, and that was something that I you know like I can bend down and touch my toes very easily.
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I'm all torso, so it's like.
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But I've had people just be absolutely amazed.
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You know that I can do that, and I think that that's something where our, our community sometimes feels left out.
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You know they feel like I'm too fat to do this or I'm too like.
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What would you say to somebody who's kind of stuck in that thought process or that, that feeling?
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um, I'd probably tell them to come to one of my free classes and see, because there's one.
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The issue I find with the fitness industry as a whole is they don't offer many modifications for a lot of things.
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It's you're going to do this and if you can't do that, well, you're going to sit out.
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Um, and that's.
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That's so wrong, and I think it's so excluding um, because you can do almost any movement with proper adjustments of the body or using props.
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So I always think, like you know you don't, you may not be able to touch your toes right now, like sometimes that's not always accessible.
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If your hamstrings are very tight because you're sitting for long periods of time, they're weak, they need a little bit of loving before they get there.
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But in the meantime you can still stretch them by bringing your hands to a chair and pulling your tailbone up to the sky or adjusting the weight in your feet of how your hips are sitting over your legs to still get that stretch.
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And you're going to notice that even doing that for, say, doing a passive stretch.
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So a passive stretch is just holding it for a long period of time, doing that and just breathing through it, your nervous system is going to relax and you're going to get further.
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Maybe you can bring your forearms down to the chair within five minutes, like it can actually happen very fast.
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And because flexibility training is a matter of controlling your nervous system, your muscles technically can go into a split right off the bat if they really wanted to.
00:20:27.125 --> 00:20:28.268
Would it be painful?
00:20:28.268 --> 00:20:36.432
Yes, but the nervous system is actually protecting you and that's why, if you tried on your own, you wouldn't be able to.
00:20:36.432 --> 00:20:42.345
But if you maybe had a little too much to drink, you could go pretty far because your nervous system is basically shut down.
00:20:42.345 --> 00:21:00.923
It's like, yeah, we're good, we're safe, and so it's really a matter of practicing safety within our nervous system to get a bit further each time, and that's why I do believe anyone can be flexible, because anyone can work on regulating their nervous system to a place where they feel safe in these movements.
00:21:02.925 --> 00:21:07.813
That's fascinating to me, the psychology behind it.
00:21:07.813 --> 00:21:09.015
It all makes sense.
00:21:09.015 --> 00:21:19.153
You know, when you're trained to do mindfulness practices or you're trained to try to calm down your nervous system, that you do feel more loose, that you have more space to move around.
00:21:19.153 --> 00:21:22.968
It just feels like there's a heaviness lifted.
00:21:22.968 --> 00:21:25.527
So that that makes sense to me why that would happen.
00:21:25.527 --> 00:21:26.330
That's interesting.
00:21:26.330 --> 00:21:28.961
I always love the psychology behind things.
00:21:28.961 --> 00:21:35.259
Um, so there's this place called like um stretch lab or something like that.
00:21:35.259 --> 00:21:38.865
They're like pretty, pretty famous, like in, at least in our area.
00:21:38.865 --> 00:21:43.453
Um, it's usually like someone stretching you.
00:21:43.453 --> 00:21:45.205
Oh, it's like an orgasm.
00:21:45.700 --> 00:21:48.609
Yeah, that's, it, looks like it oh yeah.
00:21:49.000 --> 00:22:08.553
I'm curious, like do you, like we're talking about sex and stretching like is there opportunities to bring other people, your partners, so that they can help you stretch, and are there, like specific things to do for that in terms of opening you up for more sexual positions with a partner?
00:22:08.980 --> 00:22:15.092
Yeah, you know it's interesting because I don't normally teach partner stretches.
00:22:15.092 --> 00:22:27.170
Again, it's the nervous system, Like people are at different levels and it's hard to gauge where they are if that person stretching at them isn't quite sure and not super in tune.
00:22:27.170 --> 00:22:30.951
If they are, that's probably safe to do, but you got to be careful with it.
00:22:30.951 --> 00:22:38.403
But as long as you're really communicative with how your body is feeling there's, I would say go for it.
00:22:39.862 --> 00:22:53.608
The one I love is you're in a wide V, so again a straddle position, and then your partner is also in a straddle position, but their feet would be on the inside of your ankles and what they do?
00:22:53.608 --> 00:23:06.972
They grab your arms and they lean back, so you end up going forward and of course, if they are leaning all the way back with their backs on the ground, you are in a full pancake split, which can be very intense.
00:23:06.972 --> 00:23:14.356
Also, your head is in their crotch, so hopefully the person you're stretching with you are feeling really comfortable with them.
00:23:14.356 --> 00:23:24.555
But there are a lot of fun partner stretches that I've seen and have done a couple of myself that are very fun.
00:23:24.555 --> 00:23:46.415
But I think that straddle one is definitely one of my favorites because you do get to really open up your hips that way and you get to have like this moment with your partner, because then you can kind of alternate between like almost like a I want to say a seesaw going back and forth to stretch your hips out for some fun times after.
00:23:46.415 --> 00:23:46.516
Yeah.
00:23:47.859 --> 00:23:48.601
That's awesome.
00:23:48.601 --> 00:23:54.565
Do you have a specific set of stretches that you do before you get intimate with somebody?
00:23:55.405 --> 00:23:57.747
cat-cow.
00:23:57.747 --> 00:24:00.648
Those are all dynamic stretches because you're not stopping and pausing.
00:24:00.648 --> 00:24:20.426
Those are really good because you're getting the blood flowing and you're getting your joints lubricated so they can move easier.
00:24:20.426 --> 00:24:29.688
And once the body is warm, that's usually when people are doing more athletic things, more sexy things, more intense things.
00:24:29.688 --> 00:24:32.211
So I always love a good warm-up.
00:24:32.211 --> 00:24:34.736
So like hip circles are kind of my go-to.
00:24:36.323 --> 00:24:51.426
If I have a bit more time is when I would do things like pigeon pose, where I have my one foot forward, kind of at a 90 degree angle to my hip, my other leg is back behind me, where I can really stretch the back of my hips.
00:24:51.567 --> 00:24:52.990
So so, like in the glute area.
00:24:52.990 --> 00:24:56.367
I really love that one because it also does help open the hips.
00:24:56.367 --> 00:25:08.353
There's also a bit of an emotional release a lot of people find and that is just one of them where it's like it just feels so juicy that when you go to a robot you just feel like lighter and happier.
00:25:08.353 --> 00:25:12.386
It's like all right, like let's get into this kind of motion.
00:25:12.386 --> 00:25:35.555
I do also love things like legs up the wall, where you are lying flat on the ground and your legs are literally up a wall, but then you can go into that straddle position where you're in that V shape now but your feet are up and you can actually work on opening and closing your legs, which again will strengthen your outer hip, stretch the inner hip.
00:25:35.555 --> 00:25:42.413
But then it also brings in that blood circulation into your hips and legs, which can be really fun too.
00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:47.791
You really could do your stretches in bed A hundred percent.
00:25:48.961 --> 00:25:55.740
I actually love stretching in bed, especially when I wake up, especially if I'm sleeping.
00:25:55.740 --> 00:26:17.295
Funny, I love doing some good stretches in bed, like things like a supine twist where you are lying on your back and you bring one knee up and kind of bring it across your body, because then I can also use pillows to kind of support me and make it a little bit more comfy, cozy stretch session versus something that feels very intense and sweaty.
00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:21.248
That's a very good stretch for your sciatica, I think.
00:26:21.869 --> 00:26:22.070
Yes.
