TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – A south Tampa mom is continuing to bring peace and mindfulness to women across the globe through meditation in her numerous podcasts on the Women’s Meditation Network.
Katie Krimitsos is not new to the world of podcasting. She previously hosted “Biz Women Rock,” beginning in the scene in February 2014. She used to work as a strategic coach for women who wanted to grow their businesses.
“That was a podcast I had that did interviews with very successful women entrepreneurs and it was one of the most powerful parts of the business that I had for quite some time,” Krimitsos explained.
In 2018 while on a business trip, she had the idea to start a women’s meditation podcast.
“I’ve always been a practitioner of meditation, have not particularly been certified in any particular school of meditation, but have always used meditation since I was 18-years-old,” she said.
Krimitsos told her husband, who is also in the podcast market, then sat on the idea, as it didn’t fit into her previous business model.
The couple found out they were pregnant with their second child in April of 2018. Krimitsos said she kept going back and forth on what she wanted to do with her business.
Krimitsos thought about her next move for a few months while scaling back a bit on the constant action of her first business. She said one day on a walk with her husband in May 2018, after venting her emotions and frustrations, he brought up her meditation podcast idea once again.
She knew that it could be her next step to servicewomen of the world.
“This felt like the exact opposite of what you do in business. You should not make your audience even broader, you should niche down, right?” she said. “This is my next evolution, I could really create meditations that go out to such a global mass.”
Krimitsos has always used writing as her creative outlet. She began writing “little poems of love” to women that she felt could speak to their subconscious in an intimate manner.
She said the first meditation she wrote was something she needed to hear herself.
“My first meditation I ever wrote was called ‘You Are Extraordinary: A Daily Reminder.’ And I was like, ‘oh my God, how much do I need to hear this?’ and I’m telling this to my girlfriends all the time, like we need to hear this!” Krimitsos said. “So what if I could encapsulate this beautiful poem within this thing called a meditation then I get to sort of go right into the consciousness, right into the souls, right into the heart of these women in a one-by-one basis, right?”
A few months into starting her meditation podcast, it was getting just as many downloads as her Biz Women Rock show. She knew she was on to something. After working for a year and a half on both businesses, while having a new baby, Krimitsos left Biz Women Rock in 2019 and went full-time into meditation podcasting with the Women’s Meditation Network.
Then, the coronavirus pandemic hit. Her husband nudged her to help others destress in such unprecedented times.
“He’s like, ‘hey, people are starting to stress out about this.’ And he was starting to stress out about it because he had a live event happening and it was like in the weeks prior to all this happening,” Krimitsos said. “So I sat down and I was like, ‘I’m going to write a meditation for him.’ And so I wrote, “Coronavirus Anxiety Meditation.’”
The meditation helped him so much, she decided to put it on her podcast. As shutdowns across the country began, Krimitsos said she saw her download numbers go up.
“Because people were needing, like looking for, ‘like, oh my gosh, I need to calm down, I’m ridiculously stressed,’” she said.
Krimitsos said she started responding to what people were asking for by looking at her download numbers and what she was feeling personally.
“I basically went from putting out one meditation a week, to like, ‘how many can I get out? Can I get out three? Can I get out five?’ And I’ve still got this baby, now we’ve got kids at home all the time, how many can I get out?” she said.
Her most popular content initially at the height of the pandemic was related to sleep. Krimitsos launched “Sleep Meditation for Women” in August 2020. Six months later, she began “Morning Meditations,” then a podcast for sleep sounds, then water and nature sounds in January.
Her meditation podcasts are meant for women to began looking inward and trusting their own voice, to ultimately “start designing their own lives.”
“Just come inside, just be able to be in this moment so that you can honor those emotions and also be able to be here in this moment so you can kind of move through your day and ask yourself, ‘what can I do? If I can’t be over there, taking away that pain, what can I do here right now?’” she said.
She believes meditation is the “practice of pause.” With that pause, people can choose to act out of love and kindness in their everyday lives. People can choose to dissolve “gross” feelings, remember their thoughts in the moment are valid, but still be mindful to act from a better place.
“If somebody says something to me that just triggers me and pisses me off, with practicing meditation and practicing mindfulness, and just these moments of recognizing that the thoughts that immediately come up of like, ‘oh girl! Nuh-uh, don’t you dare!’, wanting to yell and telling them where they need to be, put them in their place,” she said. “I can just pause. I can let it be what it is. I can have some empathy.”
Krimitsos believes meditation has ripple effects. Her podcasts in the network are helping people learn that pause.
“You start talking about four million downloads a month, and growing, of more and more people who are feeling and practicing that pause, practicing that space and or getting a good night’s rest where they can actually be functional and do that in the morning, that starts making a really big impact and that’s why I get so excited about this,” she said.
Krimitsos said podcasts of ambient sounds and ASMR, morning affirmations and sleep stories will be launched on the Women’s Meditation Network soon.
You can find all of Krimitsos’ podcasts and meditations online or on your favorite podcast platform.
