Yasmin: I've known Annie for quite a while; we have friends in common, and we've known each other longer than 8 years. 2 and a half years ago I had the idea of creating My Inner Health Club, – what I call the 1.0 version, as the concept initially was a bit different from what it is today – as after I gave birth to my daughter, I was really lacking in energy, I was exhausted and found out I had a lack of nutrients and I wanted to solve this problem. This is why I started to read books, went to libraries, listened to podcasts, and I found solutions out there, but after this experience, I was really depressed and I started to talk about it with my friends, and that's where I realised that everyone is suffering from different health or mental problems, and we're not talking about it... And back then I was doing nutrition consultancy and thought that this is not just about nutrition, it's a holistic approach, it's to do with exercising, your mental health – it's all connected to each other.
I had the idea of creating a bigger thing, and I knew Annie for a while, and she had a podcast, and during the pandemic, we didn't see each other for more than a year, so I asked her to go for a coffee with me and told her about my ideas and thoughts and it was so funny because she opened up an Excel sheet where she showed me that she was working on the same thing at the moment. From that day, in November 2020 we say we got married and had a child on that same day.

Ann-Kathrin: As Yasmin said, she was working on nutrition but I wasn't even aware of that and told me that we had to meet, even though we hadn't seen each other in so long. And I was like, if you say we really have to meet, we should! Before that, I worked in a different field, I founded another company that was more in the lifestyle and fashion areas, and at one point I thought that I wanted more out of life. I saw other people struggling around me, and saw myself in this environment where everything goes faster and faster – I was like: this can't be life! We have so much potential as human beings... I got so curious about it because I was also on the way to becoming a Kundalini yoga teacher and I was learning a lot about meditation and nutrition was a super important topic in my life... So I started this podcast, The Kyōō about everything that nourishes you, moves you mentally and physically, and I also saw the limits there... It was super important for 4 years to talk with experts but I kind of reached a limit because I was just talking and I knew that integrating things into your life was even more important to really build habits. By just listening to someone there is a lack of action to be followed.
So I was working on a concept: how can we make this a platform? How can we integrate more things? So I started working on some stuff. And then Yasmin approached me – I'm getting goosebumps! We were sitting together in this office and she talked to me about these things, so from then on, we started each and every day working on what would become My Inner Health Club.

Yasmin: In those first two years we did a lot of product development but a huge part of it was going into conversations with people asking them about their concerns, what they really need, what is missing... So we really put a lot of time and effort into getting to know the needs of our audience so that we didn't come up with a new meditation or yoga platform, we wanted to make an impact. We wanted to see what was lacking out there.
So we mainly tackle the most relevant lifestyle diseases on the platform. At the moment we have four of them: stress, low energy, weak immune system and digestive disorders. From our research, these were the most relevant. There are others that will come in the next few months, and they'll be launched on the website. So, for now, we really focus on that and we offer solutions, from anywhere and at any time to make it super accessible and easy to consume. We do so through a fifty fifty of awareness and knowledge. For example, a doctor explaining what is happening to your nervous system and why you're suffering from stress – and you also get the solutions, like saying: to be able to balance your nervous system you need these recipes, exercises, etc. This is the fundamental idea.
We also recognise that people who are like Annie and myself, who live in urban cities, really want a lot from life and they don't have time, and time is a really big thing – nobody has time. So we use little effective tools – within 1 minute, within 5 minutes... There is scientific research that with a little breath work you can already calm your nervous system! Our whole content is maximum of 15 minutes, but most of it is centred around 5 minutes. We provide these everyday exercises to improve your health. Annie, did I miss out on anything?
Ann-Kathrin: When we talk about who is going to speak on these subjects, we really focus on not being dogmatic which is why we don't work only with scientists or spiritual practitioners, but we really see the traditional knowledge that is out there and we make it work for everyday life. We look at simple things, from the effect of water in you or what nothingness and stillness play in between actions, which is what is called in Japanese ‘ma.’ We practise different types of wisdom and knowledge, be it science-backed or based on nature.
We try to educate and bring awareness to the topic of health. We want people to understand that it's the most important aspect of our lives and that there is so much magic within it once you understand what your mind and body are capable of.

Both: Yes.

Ann-Kathrin: There's so much magic within traditions. Traditions are things we know from the past, and you kind of create your individual path around traditions. We wanted to find a topic where there was a narrative behind it. Traditions become reliable to find your own steadiness in life, but it's not fixed, and we wanted to make it an open topic because you probably grew up in a family with a tradition and culture that you're not aligned with anymore, but there's still some magic around that and bring it to your everyday life. You make it work for you, you redefine it... In this modern life, some of the things that worked years ago don't work anymore and you learn new things which you integrate into your inner traditions, which is something I'll be able to give to my children in the future...
This is why we portrayed these characters, people who came across our way, role models who already found their inner traditions. For example, with Andrew Trotter and the houses he builds as an architect, the way he deals with the topics of stress, he minimises things and the way he works is a sort of tradition which helps him reduce complexities in the modern age. Or Bruno Sitto, he's super young and he took so much of his family culture, working towards meditation and sound, but he also made a new experience with this event. This is what we want to offer with My Inner Health Club, we want to give those tools, that knowledge and insight that is out there so that you can build your own inner traditions to find this stability and steadiness in your everyday life.
Yasmin: Yes, for example, what we want to show is that traditions are very individualised, with Annie and me, perhaps what she needs is a workout and I need to take a step back and calm down because this is how my body works. It's an individual topic, for me it's like: I don't need to work out every day, maybe I need to sit down on the couch and watch Netflix. You really have to understand what's the best thing for you to feel well.

Ann-Kathrin: Bruno and myself share a personal story. We met more than 6 years ago on a production. Bruno was sitting on one corner and I was sitting on another corner. We were both sitting down, reading books to ourselves. We were both completely overwhelmed by the stress around us. Then we started to talk and bonded about the book and we talked for hours and hours. Yasmin, do you want to talk about why Bruno from the beginning was such an important person to you?
Yasmin: Well, from the beginning we wanted to make the topic of health more accessible, and we want to bring it to a modern context and the circumstances we are facing. So we can't say that we can't make health digital, it's not true, it's a dogmatic approach... So when I met Bruno for the first time he was the modern interpretation of tradition, he's so connected and sees the world from another perspective, but he's talking the same language we all do. He's not a spiritual monk sitting in the middle of the forest – there's this rethinking of things. All the people we are collaborating with have a personal interpretation of health and well-being in this modern world. And people really follow him and listen to what he's seeing, he's going into this youth culture in Amsterdam where he's shifting things. This is why we wanted to collaborate with him. 

Ann-Kathrin: One hundred per cent, we want to go into collaborations with people who think like us. We really believe in health and those traditional practices. It's about curating the expertise that is out there and having a conversation with those experts. For us there is no competition, we have this collaborative approach to everything we do. It needs to become a movement, having the support of these amazing people is something we are beyond grateful for.

Ann-Kathrin: It should become this place where you go when you have any questions about health and well-being. You get the knowledge, the practice, probably we will have products in the future... We want to become this one-stop shop, to follow you around, in the positive sense. It could be that you wake up and My Inner Health Club is already asking you how you feel today, what you want for breakfast, if you want to meditate to speed up and have energy or if you want to learn about your speed behaviour... We are not working against technology, we believe that these digital devices can help us to become healthier and to apply this traditional knowledge.