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The speaker, Barron, shares her journey of hating fitness and being into diet culture, which led her to wear a steel bone corset to try and change her body. This resulted in back pain and a realization that exercise could actually help. She discovered pole dancing and flexibility training, which she fell in love with. She emphasizes the importance of intrinsic motivation and finding joy in fitness rather than doing it for external reasons. She also encourages intuitive eating and recommends starting small and finding movement that is fun and enjoyable. She shares her own experiences with body image and the negative impact of diet culture. She believes in the benefits of stretching and flexibility, despite some studies suggesting it is unnecessary. Welcome to the Canadian Businesswoman Podcast. My name is Esther. And today I have a pleasure to meet somebody I've been following for a few years. Somebody who actually helped me kind of get through the pandemic, just be kind of like a positive light during the whole craziness of that time. So I'm so happy to finally meet you in real life. Welcome to the show, Barron. How are you today? Oh my gosh, I'm doing so well. What a lovely intro for me. I love that. That's so sweet. Awesome. So as we always start, can you please introduce yourself, your earlier life, and what led you to starting your business? Yeah. So my name is Vera. My business is Flexibility with Vera. And I actually hated fitness growing up. I avoided it with all my might because I was the fat kid growing up. And, you know, the weight stigma, especially when you are a child overweight, you're picked last. Working out is considered only to become smaller. It becomes a chore. And, you know, it's just not a fun thing when you kind of have that mindset going into it. So I hated fitness for so long. I really did. And I was also very much into diet culture. I was doing everything and anything I could to lose weight. And it was in my early 20s, I started wearing a steel bone corset. And so it's called, like the term of wearing those corsets is waist training. So you're training your waist to become smaller. And I was doing that in an effort because dieting wasn't working and exercise, over-exercising was not working for me. So I thought, you know what, let's just manually change my body with a corset. And I would wear these corsets for like up to 10 hours a day and I wore them for about a year. Yeah. And I also tie it wrong, which I learned after. So the back of a corset is supposed to be parallel. Mine was angled. So I was already tying it wrong. I was over-wearing it. And they don't tell you that you're supposed to work out when you're not wearing a corset, a steel bone corset, because your muscles are completely inactive. And it's really easy for them to atrophy, which mine did. So my core muscles were weakened to such a state that my glutes and back muscles were struggling to keep me upright. And because of that, my back completely gave out. I ended up like crawling around for a week, mostly lying in bed. I ended up going to the ER because I didn't know what to do. And the doctor was like, congratulations, you have back pain, which was just what I wanted to hear. Also didn't really give me anything besides Advil. So I was really left in the dark of what I could do. So of course I had these pain medicines. I started going to a chiropractor. I went to a massage therapist, but never once did I consider that exercise would actually help the back pain. It wasn't until I came across Roz the Diva, who is a plus size pole dancer out in New York. I saw her on a YouTube video and I was amazed watching her fly around this pole, being my size. And I'm thinking, wait, a plus size person can do that? So in true me fashion, I pushed it to the side and forgot about it for months. And it wasn't until my friend invited me to a club a few months later, where they had some pole dancers there. And I saw them doing that and I thought of Roz. So the next day I went to my first pole dance class and I also took a flexibility class that same day, a splits class. And basically I fell in love then and there. Once the pandemic hit, I was actually gonna become a pole dance instructor, but because of the pandemic, I shifted gears and went into flexibility. And that has been my one true love ever since. I'm witness that you never gave up on the pole dancing. You've managed to sprinkle it in once in a while. So I appreciate that. You know, that's balance, right? Literally. So going into what you usually see from clients or your viewers, people who reach out to you, what are the common mistakes or pitfalls that people kind of have? I see diet culture steeped in at all. Because of that, people have this mindset of they have to work out to lose weight. They have to work out to stay healthy. They have to work out because it's what society tells them to do. And when they have these external factors pushing them, they're gonna fall flat immediately. I'm very much into the idea of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. And intrinsic is very internal, extrinsic, external. And intrinsic motivation is pushing you forward through what you want to do. If you want to feel good in your body, if you want less pain, if you wanna feel energized, then you can actually keep moving forward with fitness and you're gonna find joy in it. But when people are doing fitness because they are forced to, or they're looking at it as a form of punishment, it's not gonna get anywhere. They're gonna fall off. And then there's the whole thing of guilt. And then they're gonna have bad issues or trauma with fitness, and they're not gonna wanna do it. And that's what I always see is people coming to me who either are going through that or have a lot of trauma with fitness because that is how they've always seen fitness. So I always notice that. It's always this extrinsic motivation of like, oh, well, society told me this. The fitness industry told me that. Diet culture said this. And we gotta get that out of their mind because we wanna look at fitness as something joyful, as something fun to do. And that's why we're doing it, not because we need to fit society's mold of what a body should look like. I completely agree. I know growing up, thankfully, I grew up with an African mother, so she was like, no, big is fine. But around me, I was getting the same messages. And when I was younger, I was active. For the most part, it was fine, but I didn't completely feel like I was skinny enough at times, and it got worse as I got older because as you get older, you're working full-time, you start gaining weight. And what kind of like took me the wrong way was a registered family doctor told me that my BMI was too high, and so I needed to lose weight. And from that point on, I was obsessed with that, but I just gained weight. You have to still focus on it. But instead of losing weight, I gained the most weight that I ever had gained in my life. And it wasn't until the pandemic where I was learning to be kinder to myself and not beat myself up for not being whatever perfectionism was in my head that I finally actually lost the weight properly. And it was washing my portions, I wasn't denying myself, I wasn't going to extremes. I was setting realistic goals and loving myself and trying to be healthy and active because I want to enjoy life and my experiences, not necessarily because I wanna fit a certain mold. And so I love that that's your message. And again, maybe that's why I connected with you so quickly and have kind of stayed with you for so long and reinforced that message that was finally getting into my head. So when you meet people in this state, how do you usually work with people and what do you usually recommend? Well, I usually get them to look into intuitive eating. I am not a nutritionist or dietitian anyway, so I'm not gonna be suggesting anything like that, but I always suggest intuitive eating because yeah, you are listening to your body in such a direct way and it does go against diet culture. But beyond that, I have them explore movement that is fun to them, that they like doing. I know one of my, I had one student who instead of flexibility training, which is what I teach, they got really into hula hooping and that was a way to like really fix their inner child, which I thought was lovely because they had a bad experience with it before, you know, even going on a trampoline, like doing things that are actually fun to do. And also starting small. That's like a big thing. I do see very often people who are still kind of, you know, one foot in diet culture, one foot out, they go too hard too fast and then they end up injuring themselves or just burning out and then it's, okay, well now I don't wanna do this ever again. So it's really a matter of starting small and, you know, incrementally growing in that whatever that is you're doing and doing something that you can actually enjoy. Yeah, definitely. Give yourself that small win because a lot of us have already had negative experiences where we've tried to do it before and so we already are not very confident going into it and then we jump into the next fad, the most popular turbo max, whatever nonsense. It's like you haven't been working out at all. You work at nine to five where you probably sit all day. You can't just go from sitting to turbo max, okay? And I also, I had pain most of my life. I had injuries at a young age which I went to doctors for and they couldn't really treat it because again, I've come to understand that there are incompetent doctors but then there's also just a system of how they're trained and they are more trained for chronic illnesses. We treat you with medication, we treat you with surgery. If we can't do that, there's not much more they can do and you do have to kind of look outside to get treatment. So I would have this pain but I kind of was like, oh, I guess I have to deal with it and I didn't realize, hey, that's also why it's been hard to work out because then I hit a point where maybe I'm in pain or I'm sitting a long time and it's hard to be motivated to work out afterwards because I have knee pain and I have this pain, right? So what really helped me was when I finally learned to stretch and stretch regularly. So even if I can't work out, even if the best I can do is walk which is awesome but even if I can't do that, I tried to stretch every day and that made the biggest difference out of anything else that I've done. And I'm so glad that that's your focus. So why are you focusing on flexibility when there's so-called studies that say you don't need to stretch before working out and it's overrated and this, that, and the third? Yeah, well, I started really getting into flexibility for the same reason you did because I had chronic pain, because I had that back pain. Flexibility for me is I was like, oh, oh, that pain is dissipating. That pain is being reduced, what? Oh, it's specifically from stretching and mobilizing my joints and feeling my muscle fibers like expand and compress in that way. And when I think of those papers, they're usually not peer-reviewed which is what a lot of usually gym bros love to overlook that these are not peer-reviewed studies and that there are many, many scientific reviews and papers pointing out how important flexibility is. And I was doing my training for personal training. We, you learn that there's four pillars of fitness. So there is recovery, cardiovascular, strength, and flexibility. And so we can't just take out one of those pillars and just hope everything still stands when we need four, not three. And really, I think flexibility is kind of the base for everything we do in fitness. Because even if you think of running, you are stretching your hamstrings and you are contracting your quadriceps, you are stretching your calves, you are twisting your torso, which are all movements we do in flexibility training. If you were doing a deadlift, again, you're stretching your hamstrings and your back muscles and you're contracting your abdomen, which we do in flexibility training. Literally any type of sport or fitness activity, what you are doing is, at its core, flexibility training. And I think it's kind of funny that there's these people who just kind of be like, mm, you don't need flexibility, you don't need it. But you are actually doing it this entire time as you say you don't need it. So it's just a really funny claim that I see so often when it's no, people definitely need this because if you wanna do a really heavy squat, you're gonna need that hip mobility, that knee stability and ankle mobility to do that. So you do need to train your flexibility for this. Even though you're doing it in the strength training, we can focus it more and really specify the movements in pure flexibility training. And I think you usually talk about that there's different types of stretching too. Can you kind of go through that? Yeah, so there are four types. If I remember them correctly, they are active static, active passive, and then dynamic active, dynamic passive. So what that means, the active means are the muscles contracting to each other, they are actively engaging. And then static is, or yeah, static or passive actually means it's not moving. So if you were to think a forward fold, that is a static passive stretch because you're not moving anything, but the muscles are engaging. Static active is something like a forward fold where you're engaging the muscles, but you're not moving the joint. Static passive is you are not moving the joint, but your muscles are relaxed. So again, you can also use a forward fold for example, it's really on how engaged the muscles are. But I would actually use the example of if you were to use a prop. So if you were to maybe do a lying down stretch with using a strap, bringing your foot in towards your face with the strap, your muscles are just kind of relaxed, you're using something else, that prop to pull you in, and then it's creating the static passive movement. Then there's dynamic active, which is something like hip circles, the joint is moving and the muscles are moving. And then there is dynamic passive, which is also called isometric stretching or PNF, which is proprioceptive facilitation stretch, something weird like that that we don't really need to know, but it's called PNF or isometric. And that is when the muscles are really engaging as in there's contraction and stretching happening at the same time. So if you were pushing your hands into your foot actively and nothing is really moving, but you're feeling the whole world happening on there. And is there a certain time when you should be doing these stretches like before working out afterwards? I would definitely say dynamic active is best to do at the beginning because those are things like joint mobilizations, shoulder circles, like leg kicks even, hip circles, ankle circles, stuff like that is dynamic active. And then we're thinking of static active and static passive I would put towards the end of a session because you're not moving. The joints are completely still and we are just going into the stretch to the deepest degree we can. And so we do want the joints to be lubricated. We want them feeling really good, which is why we do all the dynamic stuff at the beginning. So the joints have that synovial fluid moving through them or not in that kind of cracky popping, everything hurts kind of phase. And so then we can go into a further range of motion when we're going into those static stretches where we're holding them for long periods of time. That makes sense. I pop all the time, I pop crack all the time. Oh, me too, me too. I always say as long as it's not painful, it's totally normal. Usually it's not now. I'm just used to the popping though. So stretching is important, but what comes up also more and more in your posts is that also community is important. You run a lot of events. Can you tell us about the most recent event please? Yeah, so I just did it a week or so ago, Curves and Connections. And that was specific plus size event for the Toronto community. And I really find online there is a lot of plus size community presence. And there's a lot of different groups in different cities. I know there's like Fat Liberation London or So Pal Fatties or like Bigger Bodies Boston and like these groups of people doing events in the plus size community. And I noticed Toronto had nothing. And I was like, oh, we cannot have this. We cannot do that. Especially with a city the size of Toronto. So that's really why I started that. And this is not the first event I've done. I first ran an event a few years ago called Body Neutral Dash. And I think maybe 50, I wanna say roughly 40 or 50 people came out to that, to like a picnic style event where we did have of course a little stretch session, but it's really about just meeting others within the community and showing up for each other and being inclusive and making friends and showing people that, hey, we're here and we are strong, we're stronger together. And also I do really believe that community is anti-capitalist. I do believe that this shows people that like we can support each other within our community. We can support small businesses within each other. We don't have to go to these big box stores to try and find somewhere to fit in. I love that. Yeah, I think that's great. Community is so important. And if you didn't know that before, the whole pandemic craziness, I think a lot of people have kind of reinforced that. Even with the AI movement, I feel like that just further highlights the importance of humanity and having that human touch. Because now you're like, I don't know what to believe, but if you're at least sitting face-to-face with somebody, like you can't replace that, that's the most authentic thing, right? Is there anything else that you want to share that I haven't asked you? I would love to talk a little briefly about the difference between flexibility and yoga because I very often, students of mine will even be like, I love your yoga classes. And I have to tell them, I don't teach yoga. So what I would say about that, because a lot of people get them confused and I understand why, because they look very similar and flexibility, a lot of movements in flexibility training do come from yoga and the same kind of back and forth. I would say I do not focus on yoga because I have always viewed yoga as a spiritual practice, a very, almost like it is a religion in a sense. So I do not want to discredit the roots of yoga, especially as a white, some passing person. And I want to focus more on the fitness side of things, of actual joint mobility and reducing pain in our body when yoga has eight limbs and the movement part of it is only one of those eight limbs and I do not practice all of those eight limbs. So I do not feel comfortable ever saying, I am a yoga teacher because I have not done any yoga teacher trainings. I do not practice yoga. I want to respect it as much as I can. And I definitely let people know if we're doing a move that is based in yoga, but I don't practice it very often and I don't practice all limbs of it. And so that's why I only say I teach flexibility because I'm only teaching the fitness aspect of these movements. I definitely did think you practice yoga. I did make that mistake, even though you are very clear in everything you say. You promise. People always mistake me for a yoga practitioner all the time. So I'm kind of used to telling people why I don't. I always think it's worth bringing up because I want to be as respectful as I can to that practice. And that's why I say I do not do it. You are awesome. You've far exceeded my expectations and I'm so glad we could connect and you could share your wisdom. I'm so glad you're so thoughtful in everything you do. So that's just awesome. If somebody wants to connect with you to get to know you and to get your services, what's the best way to connect with you? Ooh, yes. Well, my website is flexibilitywithvera.com, but on social media, so Instagram, TikTok, all that kind of good stuff, it's Flex With Vera. I'll make sure to include all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show and I will be harassing you to make sure to come back again. I would love that. Thank you so, so much for having me. What a lovely conversation. It was so nice to finally meet you and I'm so happy for our chat. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye.