The Femme Flexor: Revolutionizing Pelvic Floor Health with Wanda Cotie

 In this episode, I welcome Wanda Cotie, developer of the Femme Flexor, to discuss her journey in creating a product aimed at helping women strengthen their pelvic floor. She shares her background in commercial real estate, her experiences with pelvic floor issues, and her decision to develop the Femme Flexor as a non-invasive, resistance-based solution. 

We cover Wanda's insights on pelvic health's emotional and physical aspects, the product's development process, and the benefits of integrating movement and resistance training to improve pelvic floor strength. Wanda also emphasizes the importance of understanding one's body and provides practical advice on using the Femme Flexor effectively. 

For more information on The Femme Flexor be sure to check out their website: https://femmeflexor.com/

TimeLine:

00:28 Introduction and Guest Welcome 

00:46 Wanda's Background and Journey 

02:24 Personal Health Struggles 

06:00 Discovering Alternative Therapies 

09:37 Developing the FemFlexor 

16:36 Using the FemFlexor 

24:45 Future Plans and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Hi there. I'm here today with Wanda Cody, who is one of the developers of the Fem Flexer, and we're going to talk to her about her journey and this product. So welcome, Wanda. Thank you so much for being here today. 

Thank you very much for having me. I'm really, I'm really happy to join you, Dr. Sarah. 

So tell me how this product came about because the FemFlexor is a product to help women strengthen their pelvic floor.

What made you interested in doing something like this?  

Wow, so let's see if I can give you the Cole's version. So I've spent a better part of 25 years. I've worn a couple of hats in business. So I am a commercial real estate broker. I'm a leasing specialist by perfection. So, I've worked with companies like Starbucks and Tim Hortons, and I've helped them with their site selections and negotiated leases over those years, um, approximately 20 years ago, maybe a little longer, 23, maybe.

I always had this interest in normalizing intimacy, so I have my own journey on why that lives in me, and we can get to it if we wish to, but  I'm a single mom. I raised three daughters. I definitely have had pelvic floor weakness from all of that, but mostly I was having a lot of pain in my sciatica nerve.

And in the other side of my world, I opened a business called Wicked Wandas. So, I bought a, I started a different type of an adult theme store, but  against kind of the traditional space. So it was very made for, uh, comfort for women to be educated for customers to come in and understand what's going on in the world.

So, I kind of changes, I changed the idea of an adult store. And of course, then I had other options. All this access to every product available to human beings. So, I personally went through a journey of, uh, I had side issues so bad and it wasn't so much leakage. It was pain. I was having a lot of my legs hurt and I didn't know what was going on.

So I went through my own personal journey of understanding. What was happening in my body nobody was talking about pelvic floor weakness really at that time I think we'd heard about a kegel while we were having prenatal classes, but nobody really understood that So I have a doctor and I'm having problems.

I have fibroids I have pain and they want to give me surgery and I'm kind of like whoa. Whoa, stop the presses here. Let's just Stop, let's not have surgery. Let's try to understand what's going on in my body right now. So I've been in my thirties at that point. 

How did you do that? How did you get that information?

Because it wasn't, I mean, that's not easy information to get. It's a little bit easier today with the internet, but you know, 20 years ago, if your physicians weren't helping you helping guide you along this journey, what did you do? 

Well, I had, I had a special understanding or started to have a special understanding of our vagina personally, um, or 1st of all, and then talking to a lot of people that are having emotional issues.

We've talked about trauma we've talked about. So I have these all these discussions on a daily basis. I'm talking to people about their intimate needs and their intimate wellness and their discomfort with themselves and new moms. And I'm having this and I might. Wow. Wait a second. 

So as they're coming into your store, you're having all of these conversations and you're just embracing what's coming in  and realizing the full spectrum of issues that, that women have at all points in their lives.

Right. So it's not, it wasn't just to me, it was like, Oh, it's not just a leak because sometimes I leaked. Some days I didn't, so I was like, oh, why some days this why and I'm an athlete from very young on. I was into gymnastics. So  I understood strength and I understood mobility enough that I was like, okay, let's see if I can make sense of this.

So, here I have a doctor who's a gynecologist and I have 3 great big fibroids in my, in my uterus  and he's telling me to go and have surgery. So he's put me into medical menopause at that point. And then they're saying, okay, we're going to go take this out. And at the same time, I'm having back problems.

So I have a doctor's like, oh, you have a problem at your L1 and your S1, your facet joint is crushed. You need surgery. So I'm like,  that's a whole lot at once. And I just A lot at 

once. And can we just talk about medical menopause for just a second? So, you know, menopause is hard for a lot of women, but medical menopause means we take out your ovaries.

Or your ovaries stop working and usually that happens pretty instantaneously. Right? I mean, during surgery, it takes maybe, you know, 10 minutes, your ovaries are out, which means you go from normal hormone function to no hormone function pretty rapidly, which is a very rough transition for most people, unless you have hormone replacement. 

Of course. And so I, I just, again, I'm, I'm not, uh, I'm not a doctor. That's for sure. But I, I couldn't help, but piece together certain things that didn't seem right. So I, I just like, before I do anything, let's just stop. 

Yeah. 

Let's understand what's going on. So I said, okay, my core is strength or my core is weak right now.

So let's try and work on my core. Let's see how I can get to this. So, I mean, regardless, I said no to surgery. I started looking for alternative therapies. I said, let's take the fibroids out of my body before we have back surgery. Let's not take out my, my ovaries unless there's something wrong with them.

So I went on a fight for myself because I had enough information about what would happen to me as I entered menopause in my thirties. And I was like, no, this is not my solution unless I'm stuck with it. So I really just put all the Male doctors said, okay, thanks for everything. Just let me take some time. 

I found something called uterine immobilization right through research program that was being done at the University of Montreal. I literally read a  magazine about this new treatment for fibroids. And I was like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. So I picked up the phone. From the from the magazine, and I called the number and I ended up  talking to a doctor who was running this program at the University of Montreal and we spoke and I said, I'm 30.

I think I was like, 35. I was very young. And I'm like, I don't really want to lose my uterus yet. Blah, blah, blah. So he's like, oh, I think you'd be a great person for this test subject. So they set me up with Dr jolly out of the general hospital here in Ottawa. And she was amazing. Amazing forward thinking gynecologist.

From her time, I believe she's just probably retired, but real forward thinker, very cutting edge when it came to hormones and how we can have hormone, you know, replacements. And so we had so many discussions and I started to understand that my body was. Way too young to go here. So I tried the embolization.

We went through that. I was the youngest person in Canada to have embolization. 6 weeks after I had the embolization, I actually went into labor and gave birth to my  5 brains. That was pretty wild. So, anyways, long story short, we, we managed to. We managed to hit the first problem, which was, 

and that embolization, right?

Which is when you block the blood supply to the uterus, which will, you know, hopefully get rid of the fibroids that worked for you. 

It shrunk them enough that my body started to get rid of them at that point. And I ended up with a DNC one morning. That's a long story for another day, but anyways, it, uh, it was kind of funny.

Um, but it started, it started giving me hope. That I could save my ovaries until I was way older, and then I start working on this problem that I had, which  was multifaceted because I recognize my public floor was, of course, compromised from having 3 babies,  but also really emotional. So, I started to understand that there was an emotional connection between our body, our somatic system.

Our public floor, all of those things that live inside of us. So,  instead of trying  to attack it in a certain way,  I had this idea that if I could move my pelvic floor, because I had a public floor therapist, actually a therapist. Not a pelvic floor therapist yet, but she was a, she worked with sports medicine.

And so the 1st time she kind of felt upside and she's like, do you mind if I get a little up close and personal? And she started to manipulate the inside of my vagina. And she's like, oh, you've got a bulge here. And I'm like, okay, how do we do that? Well, here's how to perform Kegels. They have, they're, they're okay, but you know.

Maybe you can try this, uh, the squats and the lunges and all of that sort of thing, which I did, but I still was having this pain and discomfort in my pelvic floor. So, I decided to try something along the line of a resistance. Band, so kind of like a Pilates product and it gave me a thought. I was like, oh, maybe if we could relax that pelvic floor while we move it.

That instead of strengthening at it like this, maybe we could use a different approach and we could go gentle. We could go resistance and we could take your time to rebuild that area. But also. Enjoy that area. A lot of people are so afraid, you know, everybody's so, so afraid of themselves and there's a lot of trauma out there when it comes to this part of our body.

So if a muscle has memory. I started to kind of go, well, if this muscles had a poor, uh, or if this body's had a poor, um, experience and somebody comes towards you and you've been slapped in the face a few times, you kind of clench. So, I thought, why aren't people feeling the same way about the vagina? If somebody comes near it, if they go near it, it's become a place of.

Stress instead of  comfort. So we approached for muscle training for a totally different standpoint. Um, and I started working with the public floor therapists and I've, you know, I've shown femflexor to the University of auto over the years. We, we've seen it as a new approach to gaining comfort with this part of our body.

I think there's a lot of fear that goes around and the misunderstanding of how our body works. So, before we go into really heavy duty treatments, which there's lots of treatments out there. So, we look at this as a 1st phase of getting to know your body, understanding how your public floor. Is made and works for you and then treating it nicely create some blood flow in it.

It might be a little bit arousing. It might not for some people, but definitely the repetition  of that product when you use a muscle. And you use resistance training, you know, yourself, it'll take 6 to 8 weeks to rehabilitate or start to see some strength in the muscle. We don't want you to go out there and strengthen so much. 

You're stressing yourself, we want you to relax and learn how  those muscles work for you and how  wonderful it feels. When you can approach yourself with love and care and softness and gentle and feel  alive, right? So the blood flow helps you wake up.  

How do you get people to do that? I mean, you have the product when you get the product, you have like, counseling that goes with it too, or discussions or coaching because I think that's such a big part of it.

Part, I mean, you can say that to me today and then I would go use the product, but be stuck with the habits that I have, right? Because so much of that tension, I mean, so many women do hold a lot of tension in their pelvic floors and it's, it is a lifelong habit, right? It is a very difficult thing for a lot of people to, to give up. 

Yes, it is. So good question. Um, we are just coming out of what we would call our  couple of years of. Testing beta testing, and then starting to get feedback from the general public. So, uh, we do have somebody 1 of our partners. Her name is when when. When is the, uh, director for synaptic health  out of Calgary, and she works in a rehabilitation clinic as a not for profit in the not for profit world.

So, she is our new partner when it comes to, um. Preparing the discussions on how to use this product properly, because I don't have a medical background. Um, and we don't really want to turn it into a medical product. We really do have lots of those things available to people. This is a 1st way. Of understanding how.

All of this works together and just supplying. A new idea. A new approach, a first approach as well, as you're younger, if you have pain, 1 and, you know, 1 and 4 young people will have pelvic dysfunction as early as 20 years old. So we're trying not to just say, oh, this is for a leak. This is for your lifestyle.

This is to move. This is just purely move your muscles, get your blood flowing. And recognize if you want to use it as a resistance device, we will teach you how to use it with your kegels. So there is some, uh, some stuff on our website right now that shows how to use this product for a 10 minute meditation, a guided meditation through yoga, uh, some yoga instructors.

So that is coming to us more and more. We have other people doing that with us. And then we have Wen who will walk us through How to breathe. Exactly. There is some Kegel information on my, on my website, but knowing how to breathe through your Kegel is really important. Your breath is, 

it's, it's so important, right?

It's everything. Like the breath is everything, right? Breathing is always the hard part. So who's your target audience? Who do you want to use this product or do you really just want everyone to use this product so that every, every woman or everyone with a vulva is more comfortable with this part of their body? 

Eventually, I'd love to see that as, as a tool that people can explore with, um, most people that are using this right now are recovering or recovering the recovery. Sorry. They're post post post natal. They've just had babies. They have a little weakness. They're starting and then I have the women up until really into their 60s.

If they're still sexually active, then chances are, particularly as you approach menopause, you really need to keep those  we do kind of decide at this point, maybe we don't need that in our life anymore. 

There's a lot of discussion about why we become menopausal women and like, hormonally, yes, there's lots of reasons, but,  uh, there's a lot of reasons why women hit menopause and  feel like their desire has dropped off. 

Yeah,  and it's interesting. I mean, some people are still very sexually active and it's an important part of their life and other people are happy to move in a totally different direction.

Right. I think it's 

unhappy, right? Yeah. It's so 

individual. So can you talk about the product? I mean, what, what is it? Okay. 

Well, actually I have one right here. So the femflexor is the simplest approach to pelvic floor that you could ever imagine. Simple. I don't know. How come nobody thought of it first?

Cause it's  

we like to make things complicated, 

right? So it doesn't have any. Diagnostics, we don't have Bluetooth. We don't have anything. We have tiny little units. Super, super soft. This is very small. Yeah, this is made out of silicone. This is a medical silicone. It's made here in Canada. It's super, super soft, so when you squish it down, it's going to look no bigger than a tampon.

Yeah, I 

think it's going to Oh, it looks big. They're afraid maybe they'll lose it. So we do have some education on  how our bodies made and where things can't go. But on purpose, I have not left a string  because I don't want it there. I want it up over your pubic bone and I want you to just move with it.

Some people like to wear it around. Some people have had some successes  using it as a passeree short term while they're shooting around and going shopping. Everybody's quite unique in that. But as we asked people to use it 10 to 15 minutes for pelvic floor muscle training, 10 minutes at a time is enough.

You don't think you're doing much, but because that light resistance,  When you breathe out, you squeeze in  and 

people feel it. So it's a, you know, a silicone insert. I'm trying to think of how I would describe the shape  a little bullet. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's kind of bullet shaped. It's, it's bigger than a tampon, but flexible.

Um, do people feel it 

when it's in place? So most people, when they first insert it, we'll feel that it's Fills their canal for a few seconds, like they're going to feel it a minute, maybe 2 minutes. Then you start to not feel it. So, literally again, if you're not in like. Stage 3 prolapse, I mean, we're talking early stages, so we're talking late to, you know, stage 1 and stage 2 prolapse.

And I don't really want to go into that because I'm trying not to medicalize 

it. Yeah, I 

really are just trying to approach this from a different standpoint, which is repetition. Movement and believe me, that creates blood supply. So you that at the same time as you utilize the toy,  then you might actually find that this is a nice time to go love yourself a little bit.

Okay. That whole movement can help with, um, so there's like, it's, it's just a therapeutic little product. So it's like, if you have  vaginismus and you just want to try to move a little bit,  tiny little piece. So we, we, we will explain in our new videos that are being done right now, how to approach different, uh, different things that are happening in your body by using it differently.

Do you think it's easier for women to do Kegels with it? That it helps with biofeedback because they get a little bit of  it takes bonds. 

Absolutely. Dr. Like, when you put that in it, you know, if you go to the doctor and they're like, hey, sweet down, right? Yeah. It's really hard to walk around. I'm trying to squeeze down.

Most women are going to squeeze on their, and their, their rectum is going to shut. 

Yeah. They 

don't, they can't isolate that muscle. This takes the guesswork out of that. It's so simple. It's like, when you Kegel with it, that's, I mean, the big, the biggest pain point that people are looking for help. They're not usually like, hey, I need to call my somatic system or anything.

So people looking for help are mostly looking for help because they have, they have weakness and they've been told that Kegels, right. Could be their friend at this point, but most people, again, don't Kegel properly. So this allows them to Kegel without distractions. Yeah, it's not hard. Every product on the market is solid.

Every one of them. 

Yeah. 

Every one of them. So I was like, no, I want the movement. I really want that movement for people because it wakes things up a little bit too. Yeah. You're like, Oh me. Yay. Me. I'm still here. So, 

you know, I think some people might look at this product and wonder when they would use this product and when they would use something like a vaginal weight,  do you want to comment on that?

I mean, I think the vaginal weight is a lot. Um, it's creating a lot more strain, right? And it can definitely increase pain for people, but do you have a comment on when you might use one and when you might use your product? 

If you have a compromised pelvic floor and you are already have. Things falling.

Yeah, 

probably don't want to put weight there. So that's where I see the products that I have available for me. I own wicked one is in Canada. So, like, I really have every product you could imagine. So, I love the public 1 for certain things and I sell a lot of dilators and we work with have great lubrications that I think is so important to know what you're putting in your body because you are, which, or, and I was really against having something made.

Okay. Offshore, because I buy that stuff every day. I know it's in it, you know, so I'm really cautious about the companies that I work with. It's interesting. 

I've talked to a lot of people who have made products and when you make them offshore, it is much harder to control what's in the product, right? You lose control of that manufacturing process, no matter how careful you are.

Yeah, I mean, unless I'm a billionaire, like we vibe, I don't have people standing beside watching to make sure nobody has, you know, and it's not, it's, it's a horrible thing to think, but it, it really was. I could have done this offshore really inexpensively, so I could sell everybody a FemFlexer for 25 or 30 dollars, but  it just wasn't the approach I wanted to take and I'm still very happy with that decision.

So we may make some more in the U. S. We may make them in. You know, but definitely don't see the need. Unless we want to digitalize it, which it does have a patent to digitalize, but I just find there's so many things that distract us in our life. The simplicity of this product is what I love about it. I have, you know, if you want to make it exciting, match it with your favorite toy. 

And watch when it happens, there's something we call it the floor gasm. So it's 

very 

orgasm. It's like, wow, look at all the blood supply. That's crazy. So  we want it is 

true. I mean, increasing the blood supply. It's such a simple thing, but it, it changes the tissue, um, in so many ways, right? And gets all of those tissues to feel better and to work a little bit better to where can people find this product?

Well, we are, we are online femflexor. com. We can sell online. We are just in the midst of growing. So, uh, into the U S we've had a lot of, uh, a lot of people asking. Um, so we're, we're just preparing to be able to supply that sort of demand. So we're in the, we're in the stages. So I can sell and we make these all by hand.

So for now. They're available at femflexor. com. They, um, how expensive are they? We sell them that way in, in the U S that would sell for 60. So, um, and we, we, we work with a company called Sutil lubricant, my favorite company who has just went through FD. A approval now are available in the U. S. And are the official lubricant for fun factory now.

So those are the kind of people I really love to work with and female brands that are really care about what we put in our bodies. That's kind of the movement. So yes, indeed, people can get it femflexor. com. I can ship it right out. We have a little warehouse and we, we service Canada for now, but yeah, we certainly can put it in the mail at this point.

What are your next steps? Well, we have some investors going to help us scale hopefully to the next level. So I can put this into every store and be able to maybe get the price down a little bit so that we can make it super accessible for as many people as possible. But I'd really love to see  every person get this at the beginning of their journey. 

As a person with a vulva and go through this life, having a great relationship with this part of our body. Yeah, we, we give it out to everybody and then we feel this disempowered and empowering the side of us. So important being able to say yes or no. So important having autonomy over her body. So important.

It's my whole life journey is to have people  demystify what's going on inside their bodies. Simplify it. And find the right solution for what's going on in their life before. Yeah, before you jump down this great surgeries and all these things. Yes, there's stuff there. Let's start with the simple approach of getting to know yourself and being able to. 

Even to kill properly is really hard to do. So it's very 

hard to do, right? And I think sometimes even just finding the words is can be so difficult for people, right? It's not part of our body that we're comfortable talking about. It's not part of the body that people are comfortable examining and touching.

You know, it feels very foreign to a lot of women and that should not be the case. So I really applaud your journey. Um, and you know, you're making this education, your life's work.  

It is my life's work. I have to leave this place better for my three daughters than I found it. And I really feel that when we can take control of our bodies, take control of our pleasure,  take control of whatever's happening in here, we can say no to whatever thing we wanted to, but we've been raised without that.

Socializing in our, in North America, women are still like laughing things off and they still say, Oh, I don't feel comfortable about that. And I'm like, No, we're going to get comfortable by talking about this  or 

even, uh, you know, living with pain or dysfunction, right. And just assuming that that's normal and something that you have to put up with.

And a lot of times it is just muscle asymmetry, right. Where one muscle is tighter than the other muscle and finding that balance can, um, you know, restore normal function and get rid of the pain. But, you know, a lot of people aren't talking about it and just living with it. So, yeah, I can't imagine all of the discussions that you've had over the years, right?

And it just shows how many women are, you know, looking for an answer and just not really sure how to find it. 

It's interesting because I have a medical community call me for certain things. In Ottawa,  I get called from the hospital and,  hey, there's a patient that's going through this and this and this, and I don't want to go through it on the, on the, but to call  Wanda from Wicked Wandas for some help for somebody tells me that it's a really big gap in the medical community and they don't know how to go for.

This is a bridge. This is a discussion. It's a bridge. It's a way to have those discussions. And we're really looking forward to helping FemFlexor. We may start that. Flexor foundation, so we can help a lot of women around the world and, 

you know, sometimes in medicine, we're really good at the big picture, but we're not really good at getting down to the small details and saying, oh, you know, this is, you know, what I think would really help you.

Right? And that's, you know, 1 of my, um, goals is to know what's really out there and, and what different things can help. Women, right? Because everybody wants something that's just a little bit different. And so you really have to know what's on the market. And that's not something that you learn in school. 

No, it's not. No, it's not, but I've watched them all come to light. And I, I see the electro Sam. I see this. I see I have a million questions about things like that, that I would be curious about as well. However, I just, uh, work with simplicity. I come from a simple background. I'm a. Mom, I'm not sure if I managed to get to through the world as much as I did, but I, uh, I've managed to help a lot of people and I continue seeing that as my life work.

Yeah. 

Normalizing and seeing and telling my fellow sisters and people in the world that they're just perfect just the way you are and to try and find some love for themselves. 

Yeah. I think that's a message we all need. Right. And it's so easy to forget. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time today.

I really appreciate talking to you and I am so excited to see your next steps and what happens to femflexor. So and best of luck getting it in everybody's hands.  

Thank you very much, Dr. Sarah, you're amazing stuff. Keep going. Keep doing what you're doing. It's lovely. And you're helping a lot of people.