14 famous people who meditate

Here is the list of celebrities who are known to meditate to stay peaceful and calm!

Oprah Winfrey

Year started: 2011

Oprah has been practicing meditation everyday since she invited meditation teachers to Harpo Studios in 2011 to lead the entire company together in meditation at the beginning and end of the work day.

“That way of being ‘still’ with ourselves—coming back to the center and recognizing that something is more important than you—it’s more important than the work you are doing, brings a kind of energy, an intention that we have never had before,” she has said.

The results were incredible. Her co-workers no longer had migraines, slept better, and developed happier relationships with their friends and family, says Oprah.

Hugh Jackman

Year started: 1995

The Wolverine actor commits himself to hardcore training and dieting in preparation for filming the action-packed X Men movies. Jackman’s secret to enduring the intense fitness regime: meditation.

In an interview with Oprah, Jackman has said, “In meditation, I can let go of everything. I’m not Hugh Jackman. I’m not dad. I’m not a husband. I’m just dipping into that powerful source that creates everything. I take a little bath in it.” Jackman also attributes meditation to help him calm his obsessive compulsive behavior.03

Paul McCartney

Year started: 1967

The charismatic lead singer of the most popular British band in history has been meditating for more than 40 years! He met the founder of Transcendental Meditation, Marishi Mahesh Yogi, at a talk at the London Hilton in the August of 1967.

“I was personally not in a good place. I think I was just overdoing it in the 60’s, so I was just not very centered. And I was looking for something,” McCartney has said. He’s described meditation as a rewarding “system of relaxation.”

The Beatles traveled to Rishikesh, India to learn from the great guru and spent their free time writing songs—many of which ended up in “The White Album.”04

Tina Turner

Year started: 1960s

A devout Baptist throughout her childhood, Tina Turner turned to singing mantras and prayers in the 1960s, as a way of dealing with sad and lonely feelings as a young singer.

It wasn’t until 1976, when struggling with the decision to leave her abusive husband, Ike Turner, that the superstar concentrated wholeheartedly on Buddhism and meditation.

In an interview in the German magazine Bilanz, Tina Turner said, “For me, Buddhism is less a religion and more a scientific life-support or philosophy. I felt that where body and subconscious were joined, both are strengthened at the same time. My success is my proof.”05

Angelina Jolie

Year started: 2002

Actress, director, author, philanthropist, and humanitarian—when does she have the time to meditate? This mother of six finds meditation not through yoga or sitting in a silent room chanting om’s, but when playing with her children.

“I find meditation in sitting on the floor with the kids coloring for an hour, or going on the trampoline,” Jolie told Stylist magazine. “You do what you love, that makes you happy, and that gives you your meditation.” Everybody has their own meditation style.06

Richard Gere

Year started: 1970’s

It’s almost hard to imagine the Pretty Woman stud as a committed student of Zen Buddhism and close friend of the Dalai Lama. But Gere is one of meditation’s most ardent supporters, and says he depends on Buddhism to wind down from the financial pressures, deadlines, and overall stress of producing movies.

Gere practices meditation on a daily basis to jumpstart the flow of positive energy. “It helps me set my motivation for the day,” Gere has said.07

Eva Mendes

Year started: 1998

While most of us would not find graveyards the least bit pleasant, you can find this hot celeb sneaking away to burial grounds for meditation. “I love graveyards and old churches, I find them peaceful and quiet,” Mendes has said.

She started meditating at graveyards as a 24-year-old when she first traveled to Père Lachaise, a world-renowned cemetery in Paris. “I’m actually huge into meditation, transcendental meditation, and that really helps create not only a sense of balance, but all the other stuff—this is going to sound cliche—but, serenity and kind of a calm state of mind.”08

Sheryl Crow

Year started: 1994

After a highly publicized break-up with fiance Lance Armstrong and subsequent battle with breast cancer, Sheryl Crow turned to meditation.

“I started meditating because I felt like I needed stop my life from running me,” Crow has said. “So meditation for me helped slow my day down.” She continues to devote 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night to meditation.09

Shirley MacLaine

Year started: Early 1980’s

Looking back, award-winning actress Shirley MacLaine described herself as an overachieving young professional that had too much on her mind. Through Transcendental Meditation, this Hollywood icon found clarity in her hectic life.

MacLaine reflects, “I learned to be quiet. I learned to be still inside. And then I [asked myself], ‘What shall I do about this?’ Then boom—the answer would come.”10

Sting

Year started: 1990

Even rockstar Sting is a fan of meditation. He practices yoga and meditation with his wife, Trudie Styler.

“Like music, yoga is a journey—one that is long enough so you keep developing, and keep learning. I don’t see an end to it,” Sting has said. To bolster his physical and mental health touring, the 61-year-old approaches yoga as a style of meditation.11

Halle Berry

Year started: 2003

Halle Berry used meditation to make peace with her abusive father after he passed away, since she wasn’t able to forgive him for all the heartache he caused her sister and mother.

“I realize you can have relationships with people even when they’re gone and my relationship with my father has gotten much better now that he’s not here,” Berry has said.

“I’ve been doing a series of meditations since the day he died, when I go to this gazebo—I imagine it in my mind—and there he is sitting there, and he says to me all the things that he should have said to me in his life.”12

Leonard Cohen

Year started: 1970’s

Who knew the voice of the 1984 hit “Hallelujah” would become a Buddhist monk 10 years later? In 1994, Leonard Cohen secluded himself in a Zen retreat outside of Los Angeles for five years.

After years of experimenting with drugs, drinking, and women, Cohen still couldn’t find the answer in life he was looking for. Meditation helped Cohen find enlightenment. “When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. It happened to me by imperceptible degrees and I could not really believe it,” the songwriter has said.13

Russell Brand

Year started: 2009

You might be surprised to know this British comedian is a deeply devoted student of Transcendental Meditation. He is so advanced that he now leads meditation exercises in a West Hollywood yoga studio.

“I’m quite an erratic thinker, quite an adrenalized person,” Brand has explained. “But after meditation, I feel this beautiful serenity and selfless connection. My tendency towards selfishness—I felt that exposed as a superficial and pointless perspective to have.”14

David Lynch

Year started: 1973

If you’ve seen any of director David Lynch’s shadowy, noire style films, like Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive, you may think his mind is also filled with seductive twists and violent turns. But under the surface, Lynch is all Zen, having practiced and preached Transcendental Meditation for the past 40 years.

In a 2013 New York Times article, Lynch said, “Things like traumatic stress and anxiety and tension and sorrow and depression and hate and bitter, selfish anger and fear start to lift away. And that’s a huge sense of freedom when that heavy weight of negativity begins to lift. So it’s like gold flowing in from within and garbage going out. The things in life that used to almost kill you, stress you, depress you, make you sad, make you afraid — they have less and less power. …You’re starting to glow with this from within.”