Have you ever considered using sound to heal body pain? More specifically, menstrual pain? Think about how simple it is for your favorite song to put you in a good mood or how different modalities, such as singing bowls and 528 hertz sound frequency, can significantly impact your energy levels. More and more, companies are tapping into ancient and natural ways of healing, which feels so refreshing.
We had the opportunity to chat with co-founder of Moonai, Helena Rodemann, who just so happens to be a total badass. Helena has dedicated her career to tackling problems women face, such as gender injustice and taboo subjects. Right on brand, Helena shared all about her new venture, Moonai, an app that is using science-backed sounds to alleviate period pain for women.
Period pain is a commonly shared experience by women, something that is often ignored by medical professionals, and written off as “normal.” Helena expressed, “if you go to the doctor with back pain, they will properly diagnose you, inquire and ask questions. But with period pain, it’s just assumed to be normal and something that we just have to put up with.”
Helena and her co-founder Laura-June Clarke, who has a background in music tech are on a mission to help people who menstruate feel better and live pain free. Through music, innovation, science, and education, they are creating conversations and resources for women to tap into. Research alone shows that talking about pain actually helps reduce it.
The Moonai app is designed by a team of neuroscientists and sound designers. Upon opening the app, users can choose the intensity of their pain and their main objective towards relief. The user is then given a personalized sound to play. The app captures data that documents the users personal, social, and psychological experiences. The user is then able to gain insights to their pain patterns and receive predictive recommendations.
A key mission of Moonai is to provide women with proper body literacy and pain education. This means honoring that every woman has autonomy over her body.
Helena shared, “we’ve been so disassociated from our own bodies, and we’ve just been taught to delegate that power to the medical professionals who don’t really know how to solve our problem.”
Body literacy helps women tap into their power and understand that we have the power to explore our pain and learn how to better prevent and manage it, we don’t need to accept the narrative that this pain is “normal.” Becoming intuitive with our bodies and advocating for ourselves is just the beginning to tackling these issues women commonly face.
Moonai has successfully raised a €100K pre-seed investment round from Think Bigger Capital, who was impressed by Moonai being the intersection of three booming industries: FemTech, MusicTech, and Digital Therapeutics.
Moonai is currently in their beta stage testing the app but soon plans to launch for no cost to all users. The opportunity for women to find new ways to alleviate their period pain in natural ways and further receive education that is often overlooked is exactly what we need more of in 2022.
We are so inspired by everything Moonai is doing and couldn’t pass up an opportunity to ask Helena for a piece of advice…Helena shared, “I think I would’ve told myself to believe my mentors and advisors who emphasized how important the team is. In my experience having the team to help, not only support you throughout the process, but also execute and build has been incredibly important. It might seem really obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me before.”
If you know someone that might benefit from using Moonai or simply might be interested, please spread the word. The more we open these conversations and lift one another up, the closer we can get to normalizing these topics and finding solutions for women. Be sure to let us know what you think about Moonai and your thoughts on using sound to heal @StarterNoise.
Moonai on Google Play, Moonai on Apple
Morgan is a student at the University of San Diego majoring in Business Administration and minoring in Entrepreneurship. Not afraid to run a 10k or test out a new product for review, Morgan is our go-to for all things spirituality, health, wellness, and the hottest spots to check out in Denver and San Diego. Also a podcast junkie, Morgan can always recommend a killer listen ranging from the newest data on MDMA research to ways we can begin understanding the microbiome.