Former engineer turned entrepreneur creates meditation app for women
Pandemic burnout is a real thing. For The Wellness Edit series, we’ll be sharing articles that help readers deal with stress, cope with burnout by creating awareness and hopefully, inspiring others.
Feeling like you need some time to yourself? Trying to find some downtime in the chaos of the modern woman’s life? Perhaps you need to find an easy way to meditate.
Silatha is a new meditation app designed specifically for women. Its founder, Veroniek Vermeulen, decided to create it after making a major life change nine years ago. Doing her own version of Live, Love, Pray, Ms Vermeulen took off to the Himalayas and discovered meditation.
Silatha is a portmanteau of Sanskrit words ‘sila’ meaning noble life, and ‘atha’, which means now
“I realised that all the status and money I was earning from my job wasn’t making me happy. Even though ‘I had it all’, I felt insecure, unfulfilled and lost. So I went on a quest to find the true meaning and purpose of my life."
“And I surprisingly found meditation, on a trip to 5,500 meters to go paragliding in the Himalayas. For the first time that I could remember, I felt so intensely happy from within. I knew there was more to it, and I went to meditation retreats, stayed at monasteries and learned the meditation techniques,” explains Ms Vermeulen, a former engineer based in the UK.
While immersed in her studying, she found it easy to focus but back in daily life, implementing meditation was more difficult.
“I did tons of research and created Anchor meditation. A way to anchor your intention to a physical object, which helps to build a meditation ritual,” says Ms Vermeulen. “Also, I couldn’t find an app that was really supporting the specific topics my female friends and I were suffering with, and this is what breathed life into Silatha.”
Meditation is the path on which we guide women, but the ultimate goal is female empowerment
Realising that creating the app and spreading the female-focused meditation idea would be more important than her day job, Ms Vermeulen quit her job. Instead, she set out on “a quest to inspire and support women to discover the confidence within themselves to create the life they desire”.
Silatha is a portmanteau of Sanskrit words ‘sila’ meaning noble life, and ‘atha’, which means now.
“We want to help women of all ages to lift blockages, dissolve self-sabotaging patterns, inspire to break through the social norms and taboos that can be holding them back from building the life they want. To inspire, connect and support them to discover confidence within themselves. Meditation is the path on which we guide women, but the ultimate goal is female empowerment,” says Ms Vermeulen.
Women experience any number of major life changes, from relationships, pregnancy and new motherhood, career issues and menopause, to name only a few. However, Ms Vermeulen says that these major issues are often not explicitly considered in generalised meditation courses.
According to Ms Vermeulen, “80% of women feel that they are ‘not good enough’, 88% feel pressure to be perfect, and women are twice as likely as men to develop depression”.
“Not to mention the many mental health taboos around pregnancy, menopause, being a new mum etc. Women suffer; they feel exhausted and overwhelmed. The Silatha meditation app [focuses] specifically on these emotions and the mental health taboos, to support women in all the challenges life may throw at them.”
Ms Vermeulen says the Silatha app is just like “a friend who is always next to her, to support her whenever, wherever she needs it most”.
You can download the Silatha app from the App Store and Google Play. For more information about the app, go to silatha.com.
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