When it comes to thinking of your mental and physical wellbeing, meditation is known to be one of the methods to improve your mental health.
Usually, meditation practices are recommended if you’re overwhelmed, feeling anxious, depressed, or to regulate your anxiety and emotions. This tool is known to be a great way to bring in some self-care, especially if you’re having a stressful or a busy day.
Meditation is about training your mind to achieve awareness and reduce stress, increase concentration and improve sleep quality – which has in fact been very beneficial to many successful celebrities.
Here are five influential celebrities who practice meditation and have found comfort through it.
Katy Perry
Perry is someone who’s been practicing meditation for a while now. However, when Perry turned into a new mom, sleep has been a major challenge for her since welcoming her eight-month-old daughter Daisy Dove. The singer opened up about her challenges with the newborn and sleeping, in a conversation with actor Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness at the David Lynch Foundation’s Meditate America virtual benefit event in December.
She says she’s turned to transcendental meditation (TM) to help her find time to take a break during the day, and said that as a new mother, she takes 20 minutes of her time to meditate, giving her “the deepest rest.” She’s also mentioned how in the past, Transcendental Meditation has helped her through anxiety. She describes this method as a great workout, calling this practice the “cure for common stress.”
Watch the video below to see what else Katy Perry says about Transcendental Meditation.
Shawn Mendes
Canadian singer Shawn Mendes has been a huge advocate for mental health, especially when it comes to mindfulness and meditation. Back in January, the singer shared a community phone number on his Instagram stories with the caption “text me on the community app. Especially if you like coffee and meditation!!!” Now, both he and his girlfriend Camila Cabello, have teamed up with the app Calm, sharing their journey to mindfulness with the calm audio series. The series includes 13 sessions from Cabello, and 11 from Mendes, sharing their personal experiences overcoming fear, coping with anxiety, practicing gratitude, building self-love, staying mindful and Mendes also includes guided meditations on overcoming fear, compassion, and personal discipline.
In a recent press release for him joining the Calm team as an ambassador, Mendes says “meditation has really changed my life and has made me both a better performer and has helped me immensely off the stage as well.” “My goal is for anyone to feel empowered to embrace these tools, create their own mental wellness routines, and look out for others.”
Harry Styles
Shawn Mendes is not the only celebrity to have teamed up with Calm. In 2020, the British singer Harry Styles collaborated with the app reading a bedtime story called “Dream With Me.” The singer shares how important and special he finds meditation practices, and because of that he’s collaborated with the app saying “sleep and mediation are a huge part of my routine, whether I’m at home, in the studio, or out on the road.” In a statement about this collaboration, he continued by saying “Rest and recovery is important as doing the work. Finding a balance has been endlessly beneficial to both my physical and mental health. It’s changed my life.”
Oprah Winfrey
For years Oprah’s been an advocate of spreading messages of wellness, health, and mind-body balances with her talk shows, her television channel, Oprah Winfrey Network, and the O: The Oprah Magazine. She curated meditation and wellness content for her readers, and has teamed up with spiritual gurus like Deepak Chopra for meditation podcasts, retreats and Oprah’s explained in one of her articles about how meditation has changed her life for the better saying “Meditation is about getting still enough to know the difference between the voice and you.”
You can watch Oprah and Deepak Chopra’s free 21-day meditation experience below.
Jessica Alba
Similar to Katy Perry, Jessica Alba has opened up about how she uses meditation to cope with anxiety and stress. She told Byrdie in an interview “I like to listen to meditations” “I did transcendental meditation but I find it’s kind of tough to meditate on your own – for me – so I like headspace. And you can do five-minute meditations, 10-minute meditations…and you can go to whatever it is you’re dealing with. It’s pretty dope.”
Transcendental meditation involves a 15 to 20-minutes mantra, allowing you to be in a state of restful alertness. According to Vogue, there are around six million practitioners, but has been a pop-culture staple for decades, having its initial rise in the late ’60s. Other celebrities who have learned this technique include Jennifer Anniston, Kate Hudson, Miranda Kerr, and Gwenyth Paltrow.
Here’s a fun TikTok video Alba shared on Instagram of her having some self-care time.
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Click here to learn more about the different types of meditations.
