Meditation And Mindfulness
Anna Gannon was 7½ months pregnant when she lost a job she loved as a full-time yoga teacher. She had struggled with depression off and on for most of her life, and Anna was worried that her precarious emotional state would have an impact on her baby.
That’s when Anna got an email from a friend who was supporting a project called Expectful. He encouraged her to try the Beta version of the meditation app for expecting and new moms, and she agreed to give it a shot.
Anna committed to 30 days of using the guided meditations, and not only did the practice help her connect with her baby, it also taught her that worry didn’t have to run the show. Anna learned that she is NOT her thoughts. And her third trimester became the BEST trimester of her pregnancy.
Today, Anna joins me to explain how using the Expectful app changed her experience of pregnancy and how meditation helped her navigate 9 months of postpartum depression. She shares the fundamentals of the app, describing how the guided meditations work and the benefits of training the mind to be more present. I ask Anna how she came to join the team at Expectful, and she discusses what work looked like in the early days of concurrently being a new mom AND new employee. Listen in for Anna’s insight on how parenting disrupts the illusion of control and learn how to let go—and allow life to flourish!
The Startup Pregnant Podcast Episode #071
Some quotes from the episode
- “A woman who meditates when she’s pregnant is 50% more likely to carry to term.”
- “I intuitively knew that my emotional state could have an effect on my baby.”
- “Although I had lost my job, now I had three months to just be with my baby. Sure, there were worries in my head, but they didn’t have to run the show. Meditation really showed that to me and continues to show that to me. I don’t have to get stuck in my mind, I can actually just lean into what’s happening right now.”
- “Meditation turned my third trimester into the best trimester of my entire pregnancy—and that’s after losing something that I loved.”
- “You turn on the app, you sit down, you close your eyes—and the voice takes you through a journey.”
- “When you build this present-moment awareness through listening, you start to become more present even when you’re not meditating.”
- “We are not our thoughts.”
- “No matter how you do the [meditation] practice, you’re already doing it right, and that allowing is what can really transform people’s lives because they’re not constantly trying to control what’s happening. Instead, they’re allowing what’s happening to be.”
- “Meditation … did not cure my postpartum depression, but what it did was keep me on the edge. It reminded me, every single day, you are not that. That thought—you are not that.”
- “[As a new mom], I had a real mentality that was like, ‘I need to show that I can do this.’ I wish I’d allowed myself to let other people help me.”
- “I can really accomplish a lot in a very short amount of time, and I feel so much like a Superwoman when it comes to that aspect of parenthood.”
- “It’s learning to be okay with what pops up, and parenthood teaches you that because every single second isn’t really up to you.”
- “When you try to control, you hold back what naturally wants to blossom.”
LEARN MORE ABOUT ANNA GANNON
Anna Gannon is the Co-founder and Community Lead at Expectful, a meditation app for women preparing to conceive, pregnant women and new moms. The Expectful team is passionate about making meditation as common as prenatal vitamins and creating health and wellbeing through the power of the mind-body-baby connection. Anna is also a Yoga Teacher and Meditation Guide, and her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, Mindbodygreen and The Expectful Blog.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
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