Episode Transcript
You
Hello, my name is Aziz, and I'm the son of a divorced mother.
She is really...
MY SUPERHERO!
That's why it's important.
for me to support women to share.
their uniqueness.
their personalities, perspectives, and emotions about this world.
In these difficult times in human history, we need...
to bring the people of the world.
TOGETHER!
and when we hear the voices of women.
when we listen.
To real lives of women from other countries, we connect our cultures.
without differences.
or stereotypes.
and we get inspired!
by their stories to live a better life.
That's what this podcast is all about.
My guest today is Kamila Nazirova.
Kamila is a Ukrainian.
pole dance teacher and competitor.
a first place in pole sport championship 2020 in Vienne,
an expert certified.
A mom of an amazing girl.
and a postpartum fitness instructor.
Camila has an MBA in International.
management, and she lives in Nice.
France. Camila, how are you today?
Hello Aziz, thank you very much for having me today.
I'm quite surprised and I'm happy to share this experience with your audience.
So I'm doing fine, the sun is shining here in Nice and the weather is fine.
I'm honored, I'm lucky, I'm very privileged to have you here and very excited to know
so much more about you.
So I will begin with this nice first question.
Camila, if the people who know you could describe you, your personality, your attitude, what
would they say about you?
They would definitely say that I'm quite a motivational person.
because I have this aptitude to motivate people.
to do whatever they want.
fitness competition, even management etc. So I'm quite inspiring person actually.
I love that. I have so many questions and I will begin.
usually for you to be a motivating and motivational person and inspiring person.
It could be that you notice at some point yourself or someone you care about.
that was not so motivated, and then...
It motivated you to become motivational?
Do you have such an experience in your life?
How was the start of your journey?
the start of you acquiring this attitude of motivating and inspiring other people.
Actually, as you mentioned in the introduction, I am Ukrainian and I live in France for 15 years right now.
So, first my journey started with my motivation to come and study in France.
because I always was fascinated by French culture.
and it was quite interesting for me to integrate this culture.
So, basically, I did my studies in economics
and then I have been...
with a correspondence program for my university within a French university in Nice and
I got like master degree here
And then I decided to motivate myself to stay here
because I got...
so many friends here.
And I got started pole dancing here as well.
So I was really like inspired by this culture and then I met a lot of people.
who were around me, trying to achieve their goals.
I was just saying, why don't you do this or that?
And when they did some like advice, I just said to them.
they actually got those goals.
and they started their journey as well.
So I decided that it should be my vocation
to be a coach, to be a trainer and to inspire people.
Thank you, that's a wonderful vocation.
At the same time...
France is culturally very different from Ukraine.
Some people, even from Ukraine I spoke to,
they say it's very difficult to adapt to the culture.
You always feel a little bit different, a little bit of an outsider.
What was your experience and how did you adapt enough to choose to live there for 15 years
and more now?
First of all, I had a wonderful French teacher
and her daughter was living by the time already in Paris.
And she gave me a lot of tips about French culture, about French people.
and I got that journey living there in Kharkiv, my native city.
I decided to study.
uh, those culture.
and aptitudes, and we got...
like a cultural center named Alliance Francaise in Ukraine.
Now, I don't think it's open, but because of the sad events that we have there.
And they proposed like trips, like 3-4 week trips.
To Marseille in France. It's the south of France and I decided to join this this group
I was only 16 years old and we crossed all Europe.
Oh.
in the bus.
Once we arrived to Marseille, we got...
like
studying in the French group with the French people and they were sharing like their
lifestyles, aptitudes, their culture, their cuisine.
and that was amazing because we got a lot of things that we shared.
I don't think it's so different when you meet right people.
and they make you feel right in the culture, actually.
Thank you, I understand, and that's very fascinating.
story as well as a journey.
At the same time, you have an MBA in international business.
I interviewed some pole dancers even from America and from Italy and Spain and they
said there is some kind of stigma.
when it comes to professional people about pole dance.
How did you feel fascinated with it?
How do you reconcile it?
and
Were you in business but you felt, no, I should be living more an exciting life and that pole
dance attracted you? Or how was your journey as well as whether you experienced any stigma about it?
First of all, I was actually having some internship in marketing company in France
And then, actually, I got acquainted with the pole dance. I went to...
school here in Nice. It was a small school for pole dancing and
We need it every time to install and uninstall polls.
here and it was like
very small group and
It was not like optimum experience,
and I understood that I wanted to do more,
I wanted to do...
more of that and in a more professional way.
And I found another school that was located in Antibes.
which is very nice pole dance school in France.
And there I saw a really professional level of...
training.
And I decided to, like, stay there, come and train regularly, and then...
My friend from Nice told me that...
They were opening a studio and they asked me if I wanted to join like a teacher.
uh for for it so i was like i don't have like a diploma of teaching and nothing
But I had this motivation to start this new journey and I agreed for this new role.
And then a lot of other events started in competitions.
I decided to like educate myself and go to Lyon
to follow this expert
like education for trainers.
so that's actually
got me to there.
there where I'm now for training and then participating in various competitions was
my challenge as well. Thank you. And you're speaking about pole dance and many say that
the community is one of the very best in the world. They're very welcoming.
very kind, any stories or experiences you had with them.
that really can share the uniqueness of that community.
Indeed, I feel that in...
Whirlpool dancing is like that.
when you come to.
to see people.
world competitions like pole arts, pole sports.
and you make friends all over the world.
Like when you come to Switzerland,
there is somebody to host you.
When you come to Spain, to Portugal, there is also some people that are very kind, welcoming and if you have a problem...
They could help you as well and...
You will do the same for those people because they are different, they have different culture.
But still, they have this passion for pole dancing that unites people.
So, I saw that you interviewed some pole dancers and one of them was...
Tatiana Gordienko and she's like a very amazing pole dancer.
And yes, actually it's a good example that once coming to France she got employed in
the Poland Dance Paris.
And for me, it was like the same when I came to Switzerland and I got some...
contacts there. I just was, like, hosted by a...
by my four friends and we are still on track of our journey.
Even if we don't see each other for a long time, when we come back together, it's like a great story.
I love that. That sounds absolutely magnificent.
And you, as a...
mother of a very beautiful daughter.
What is your experience in pole dance as a dancer?
A way to be active after having a baby.
Do you recommend it as the best sport to do as a...
postpartum kind of sport? How is the experience? Does it change after having a baby or before
psychologically or in any way? Tell me more.
Yeah, I have a wonderful baby, her name is Alia, and she is only five months old.
And during all my pregnancy, I was active, like till the seventh month of pregnancy,
I was practicing pole dance.
with limited inversions, because...
I have followed the program of Pilates as well, like professional teacher for Pilates.
and for the core strengths and there was some kind of a anatomics there and I decided to go
it through before I get pregnant.
So I wanted to make sure that I'm training safely.
that I'm not injuring myself nor my baby,
so it could be a great experience for me.
So I did like pole till 7 months, then I practiced only soft yoga, like stretching, a lot of
stretching but not overstretching because when you get pregnant all your muscles are
like very flexible to get baby to pass through your body.
You have to be flexible like your flexors, you can overstretch and this is a little bit
danger for all athletes that continue stretching, they feel like oh I'm super flexible, I will
do that and then they have problems to come back to
their normal shape and like postpartum
Personally, I'm
followed always my doctors and I started my comeback to pole dancing two months after
having a baby.
and it felt like super hard.
as if I never did anything in my life.
So I tried to get inversions, et cetera, et cetera.
and I felt like I was taking 25 kilos or something like this
however I just took only 12 kilos during my pregnancy
and I lost 12 kilos like in two months time
So those were muscles that were not adapted anymore to this conditioning.
So I decided to go back to Pilates and re-educate myself slowly to reconstruct my core and get
back in shape.
So now I have a full proficiency after having done this program and I even did this program
because there are a lot of people like getting pregnant and they want to have babies and
they are professional sports.
and they don't know how to trade.
So basically, that's why I decided to make this fitness program as well.
Thank you. That's very useful knowledge, I'm sure, to many women and many...
mothers who are going through the same experience. And although you have been living in France for
15 years.
I'm curious to know.
How was your experience of?
February 24th when the...
full-scale invasion started and you heard that news. Did you believe it? Did you not
believe it? What were your emotions and how did you experience that?
Situations
Actually, I had my parents there.
during this invasion, I called my parents
and they were always catching a mic,
like always saying, oh, don't worry, we are doing something.
And then they just didn't tell me
that actually the city has been bombed and I was pregnant.
And you know, when you're pregnant,
your doctor say, you don't worry,
you don't need to worry, et cetera, et cetera.
So, but I was very, very worried
and I did my best to bring my parents here to Nice.
And I told them that I'm pregnant and I needed their support to be here for me,
even if they don't think about their lives, that all the material things are nothing,
that you need to think about your life. And a lot of my friends from my faculty...
stayed in Ukraine because their husband went to do the, like.
Uh...
So basically a lot of my friends stayed there.
and still there and I call them every time and I know that they're in a hard situation,
they cannot move because of their husband, so basically I'm very sorry for what is happening.
or my childhood went all in this city.
and in this country and I feel very sorry for people and I blame a lot like
Invaders and I support my friends. I try to send them
material like help and
anything I could to share with them so they could feel a little bit better there.
Thank you!
and even to know more because you're someone who made big changes in your life.
You are willing to do things that
are not the normal way that most people live, maybe changing a whole country.
choosing to do pole dance while you're studying business,
you're a business graduate, et cetera.
So.
What is your advice to women all over the world who might feel
may be judged by society if they follow their goals and dreams or
they worry about.
failure or anxiety or anything like that in order to inspire them and that's your
big power is inspiring and motivating to inspire them.
live their life better and fully be themselves, even if some people could hate that they do it.
Uh, yeah, first of all, um...
I think that the most important thing is to plan everything you want to do.
Because now being mother, my life is like on hours.
I need to check all the time.
Which time I come up which time I get this get that
So in my life, I always plan to do things.
If you don't know where you are going, you cannot set your GPS to say that I'm going there.
So it's the same in life if you want to achieve something if you want to become
athletes, a champion or...
master, like degree or manager or anything you want to become.
you need to write it down and then you just...
break down the paths that you need to follow.
For me it was like this as far as I when I had a project to come to France and all my friends were saying that it's
Insane that I will not speak French that
I won't be able to get this program done and I will never succeed.
Some of them just tried not to believe.
what I was doing and then I decided to prove everybody that I am capable of it and then
I just wrote my path.
and I follow it step by step.
I know maybe sometimes it hurts like boring, it's boring for you, for your...
uh... do you know uh... france or
parents they say that no you cannot do this because they don't know how and
Only you can can say that
Only you can just adjust your path
to what you are looking for.
So once I decided to go into pole dancing, I decided.
to do this and to do that and to train myself.
more and more to get
like first places in competition.
and then was a lockdown.
and you still get motivated or motivate your students to continue pole dancing.
even if it's hard.
Sometimes and it's always hard. There is something always something that is here to say that you can do it. You can do it
like your children, your husband, your friends, your parents, everybody is like against you,
but you are the only one to know what you want. So I think it's...
a good path to follow.
I agree 100 million percent.
And to finish this...
Usually people when they want to go live in France, even from Ukraine, they dream about
Paris and about the glamorous life.
they imagine would be in Paris.
Why did you choose knees?
What was different about it and how was it a better match for your personality?
Oh, it's really, really a story that I saw there.
the motion picture with...
French actor, quite famous.
Louis de Funès and he was driving on the
promenade des Anglais.
is like the main street of the city.
And once I saw this movie, I was like crazy in love with this place.
So I said, maybe I'm coming to the south of France.
So, first of all, I came to Marseille.
And then my objective was to move to Nice to find a job to get the things done.
So actually, all starts from a dream.
You see something.
There are things in your brain, do some pictures in your head.
and these pictures in your head,
they are pushing you to get there.
So, in my opinion, south of France is quite...
good for people who love fitness, sport,
any kind of it, because we have a lot of gyms, we have a lot of competitions.
Nice is one of the cities that is open for Ironman.
I think it's one of the biggest fitness competitions in the world.
I never did this, but it's not my sport, but I always admired athletes that were doing
Ironman, swimming.
cycling and running.
and I thought that maybe it should fit my personality.
I understand fully and completely
and thank you Camila, it's my.
Privilege and my honor to have
had you on this podcast to include you in this project.
I wish you success.
I wish you a lot of love and fun with your daughter and with the pole dance community.
and thank you again for participating.
Thank you very much Aziz. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me and
I was really happy to listen to all podcasts about those amazing women that inspire world
and thank you for having this project.
Thank you very much.
You are welcome.
