9 Highly Successful CEOs and Celebrities Who Practice Meditation

Meditation is the practice of deepening one’s awareness or focusing one’s mind for a period of time to support mental and emotional balance and well-being. And it may help reduce stress, boost immunity, increase concentration, and improve sleep quality — all of which are beneficial to highly successful people.

“I taught Katy Perry, Tom Hanks, Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, and Lena Dunham how to use Transcendental Meditation (TM) because of its ability to increase clarity, focus, and resilience,” says Bob Roth, chief executive officer of the David Lynch Foundation. “Transcendental Meditation helps successful people remain at a high level of functioning and think innovatively.”

In the workplace, Roth recommends Transcendental Meditation, a form of meditation that uses a mantra to settle the thoughts in the mind and direct your attention to a restful state, because of the effect it has on brain functioning.

“Of all types of meditation, Transcendental Meditation has the most research showing that it strengthens the connections of the executive or prefrontal cortex of the brain, calms the amygdala reactivity center, which lead to overreacting and hysteria, and activates the imagination and default mode network,” he says, in his opinion.

It’s important to note, there are a variety of ways to meditate that come from a spectrum of secular to religious leanings that are used with various intentions and for desired outcomes.

Here are 9 highly influential CEOs and celebrities who practice these various forms of meditation to help them be successful in the workplace: