Ivital will offer companies a tool to prevent, detect and reduce stress among their employees. Through an online platform, employees receive personalized recommendations for exercises that strengthen body awareness and reduce stress in the body. At the same time, company management will be able to ‘take the temperature’ in the organization.

Ivital, founded by psychomotor therapists Lea Bech and Solveig Lawaetz, has received recognition from Innofounder, a government innovation fund that supports selected startups by investing in innovative entrepreneurs to turn their promising ideas into new solutions with the potential to create growth and employment. The Innofounder grant consists of a one-year salary for the two co-founders, DKK 100,000 to develop the platform and a mentoring program with tailored business development.

“It allows us to be 100% focused on the business,” Lea Bech tells Psychomotorik.

The platform must be fully developed before the product can be sold to companies, and so far, the cost of developing the platform has run into the low millions. Therefore, it is both a welcome pat on the back from the foundation, which believes in the idea, and a welcome financial respite.

“It’s costly in the beginning to build this platform, but it gives us some time,” says Lea Bech and goes on to say that the digitalization of stress prevention enables them to reach many more companies and thus have a profitable business on the other side.

A tool for both employee and manager

The platform serves as a tool for the individual employee, who is given a series of personalized exercises. Once a month, employees spend five to six minutes filling out a reflection form.

“The reflection covers both load and body awareness. Based on the data, you get some guidance. For example, if you are in alarming stress, you are recommended to book a conversation directly in the app,” says Solveig Lawaetz and continues: “You are recommended some ‘gaps’, as we call them. The more stressed you are, the more ‘gaps’ you are recommended. These are small physical brain breaks and physical exercises that train body awareness and your ability to prevent stress.”

At the same time, the platform is also a management tool. Top managers or department managers have access to data from the reflection forms in anonymized form, explains Solveig Lawaetz:

“This way, managers can get a temperature measurement of the entire organization or a department and get concrete guidance based on this data.”

Even though it’s a complex solution, it hasn’t been difficult to convince managers to try out the platform, says Lea Bech:

“It’s appealing to companies that we can both provide some kind of overview of stress levels among employees and give suggestions on where and when managers should take action.”

It works

And it works. A large Danish company has run a test run of ‘the spaces in between’, where employees were guided in two seven-minute psychomotor exercises for five days. The average stress level was reduced by 20% and the employees’ body awareness increased by 25%, says Lea Bech:

“Considering how costly it is to have employees on sick leave, and considering that when you’re stressed you generally make more mistakes and are less efficient at work, that’s a pretty good result based on 14 minutes a day for a week.”

Kvantitative data

The reflection forms measure the users’ own experience of both Self-Observed Pressure, i.e. the stress level the individual employee experiences, and their body awareness (Self-Observed Interoceptive Perception). It is from both of these parameters that the exercises, or ‘spaces’, are generated for the needs of the individual employee.

Within Self-Observed Interoceptive Perception, the platform measures the subcategories of body listening and sensing, attention regulation, emotional awareness, self-regulation, confidence and distraction. The categories are inspired by the internationally validated Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness questionnaire, which measures body awareness.

There are other platforms that also offer to work with stress reduction, but the unique thing about Ivital’s platform is the psychomotor approach, Lea Bech explains:

“We can see on competing platforms that they have a division between body and mind, where we go in and look at the whole.”

“The psychomotor element is also incorporated into how the exercise is presented,” Lea Bech continues. For example, how users are guided in doing the exercise themselves and which exercises they are recommended in relation to the challenges they have on the seven parameters of body awareness.

Can you make psychomotor practice digital?

At the same time, it is clear that working psychomotorically through an app and quantifying data in this way is a different way of working with our profession,” says Solveig Lawaetz:

“We are definitely treading some new paths in our profession here.”

Lea Bech agrees and adds:

“Measuring body awareness and then giving a specific exercise becomes very nerdy and technical. And that might not be the usual way of working for most psychomotor therapists.”

And that presents some challenges, and there are some psychomotor tools they can’t use because all the ‘spaces’ have to be done sitting down.

“Observations are also an important psychomotor tool that we can’t use because we can’t stand and look at them and adjust the exercises,” explains Solveig Lawaetz and continues: “And then of course there are some things we have to do that are more general in relation to relationship building.”

That’s why they pay extra attention to this during the introductory course, where they introduce the exercises and the app at the companies. In the longer term, they also hope to give companies the opportunity to use psychomotor therapists as an additional offer.

“We have a dream that in the future, when things are going really well, we will create jobs by hiring psychomotor therapists as consultants who are connected to the companies. For example, if a stress level has run away – preferably before it runs away – you can book psychomotor therapy on the platform as an extra feature,” says Lea Bech.

And Solveig Lawaetz adds that, in the long term, it could be exciting to see if AI can be used to meet users better and create good continuity for the individual. But that’s all in the future.

The future

And what does the future look like? Lea Bech says she hopes their business will reach a revenue level where they can go out and contribute to solving societal problems with stress, including among the unemployed and students.

“One in three students, and just over one in two of the unemployed, experience such high levels of stress every day that they are at risk of serious symptoms or illness, which in itself is a huge social problem. In addition, 33% of companies are short of labor.”

“The most important thing for me is that we have created something that makes a difference – that actually works in the companies, and then I really hope that Lea and I can make a living from it and that we can hire some psychomotor therapists,” says Solveig Lawaetz.

Over the next year, pilots will be run, the platform will be launched, and from there the focus is on building a customer base.

“The whole thing can still flop. It’s not like we can control that. We’re still there, where anything can happen,” concludes Solveig Lawaetz.

The coming months will be crucial to Ivital’s success. We wish the two cool entrepreneurs the best of luck and look forward to following them.