Celebrities Who Meditate (2026): Who Is On Record, Who Is Paid, and What the Research Found

Lists of meditating celebrities are the easiest page on the internet to write. Take ten famous names, add "swears by," publish.

Two things are missing from all of them. The first is a date and a source. The second is bigger: a large share of these quotes were given to the David Lynch Foundation — a charity that promotes and teaches Transcendental Meditation — usually on its own radio show, or from the stage of its own fundraiser. That is not a scandal. It is a disclosure, and we make it every time below.

Who is on record, and what the tie is

Ray Dalio — the clearest primary source of the lot.

Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates and wrote Principles. In it, under the life principle "Meditate," he writes: "I practice Transcendental Meditation and believe that it has enhanced my open-mindedness, higher-level perspective, equanimity, and creativity." And: "It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight." Both sentences are published on his own site, principles.com.

He has also said, on his own X account in February 2018, that "Transcendental Meditation has probably been the single most important reason for whatever success I've had." That post also recommends a named TM teacher, and Dalio has personally reimbursed half the course fee for Bridgewater employees who have been there six months — so this is a man publicly promoting a specific technique and a specific teacher, and putting his own money behind it.

Notice what that sentence does not say. It is a claim about his open-mindedness and creativity, in his own judgement — not a health claim.

Jerry Seinfeld — the longest run, given mostly to the Foundation.

Seinfeld has said he learned TM in 1972 as a student and has practised since — more than forty years by the time he discussed it publicly. He describes the mid-day session during the Seinfeld production years as the thing that got him through the schedule.

The disclosure matters here more than anywhere. His most detailed remarks were given to Bob Roth on "Success Without Stress" — a SiriusXM series hosted by the executive director of the David Lynch Foundation. Seinfeld also performed a stand-up set at the Foundation's "Change Begins Within" benefit at Carnegie Hall in November 2015. He is not a neutral observer answering a question; he is a fundraiser for the organisation, interviewed by its director.

Hugh Jackman — same practice, same disclosure.

Jackman learned TM in his twenties, by his account to help his acting. On Roth's same show, in remarks published July 2014: "I meditated before I hosted the Oscars, I meditate before I go on stage, I meditate in the morning and lunchtime when I'm on a film set." His image is a glass of water: cloudy when you first pour it, and after he meditates "all that sinks to the bottom and the water is clear." We could not find those quotes in any independent outlet — they live on the TM organisation's own website, so we cite them as what they are.

Katy Perry — on record, and a Foundation performer.

Perry told Audacy, in an interview published August 2024, that "my biggest life hack is transcendental meditation," that it has "changed my life," and that a twenty-minute session leaves her feeling like she had a two-hour nap. That one is the most useful quote on this page, because Audacy is a music outlet rather than a TM organisation. But Perry also performed at the Foundation's November 2015 Carnegie Hall benefit. Both facts belong here.

Novak Djokovic — the one who is not a TM story.

Djokovic has described a roughly fifteen-minute daily mindfulness practice, which he sets alongside physical training in his own book, Serve to Win (2013). We could not reach the book's text directly, so treat the exact duration as reported rather than quoted. No foundation, no fundraiser, no teacher being recommended — a book he wrote. We covered his practice in full in the Djokovic meditation method.

He is also the reason the next section exists. What he practises is not what the others practise.

Who we dropped, and why

Oprah Winfrey. She almost certainly belongs on this list. She has spoken about bringing meditation teachers into Harpo Studios and paying for courses for her staff, and the quotes are widely repeated — "more important than the work you are doing." But every route we could actually open led to a TM-organisation blog or a content farm summarising a 2011 Dr. Oz Show segment. We could not read or hear the original, and a source you cannot read is not a source. She is reported, not verified here rather than quoted as fact. Oprah is on every list like this; nobody on those lists watched the tape either.

"Meditation" is not one thing — and this breaks the science

Dalio, Seinfeld, Jackman and Perry practise Transcendental Meditation: a mantra technique, taught for a fee by a specific organisation, twenty minutes twice a day. Djokovic practises mindfulness: attention training, watch the breath, notice you left, come back. Others in this genre mean breathwork, a third thing again.

These are not interchangeable, and they do not share an evidence base. The large clinical literature is overwhelmingly about mindfulness programmes, usually eight-week structured courses. Quoting a TM practitioner and then citing mindfulness trials is the standard move in this category, and it is not sound. It is worse than a gap: the big review below looked at mantra programmes separately — the family TM belongs to — and found insufficient evidence that they improved any of the outcomes it examined. So what follows is mindfulness research, and for four of the five people on this page it is not the evidence base for what they actually do.

What the research actually found

The benchmark is Goyal et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 47 randomised trials, 3,515 participants. Read it precisely, because this is where the category oversells.

Moderate evidence for three things: anxiety, depression and pain. Effect sizes around 0.3 — anxiety 0.38 at eight weeks, depression 0.30, pain 0.33. Real, modest, roughly the size of many first-line treatments in primary care.

Only LOW evidence for "stress." This is the sentence that should end most meditation marketing. The single thing meditation is most often sold for is what this review supports least strongly, alongside mental-health-related quality of life. We do not state that meditation reduces stress as established fact, because the benchmark meta-analysis does not support that claim at that strength.

Low or insufficient evidence for the rest. Positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep and weight all came back low or insufficient. If a page tells you meditation improves your sleep or your focus, that is not what the 47 trials found.

And it did not beat active comparisons. The authors state there was no evidence that meditation programmes were better than any active treatment — drugs, exercise, or other behavioural therapies. It earns a place among the options; it does not sit above them. Their own conclusion is deliberately modest: "small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress." That is the whole finding.

Why it might still be worth your ten minutes

The mechanism is unglamorous, and it is the same one behind journaling: repetition in a stable context. Lally et al. (2010) enrolled 96 volunteers and found a median of about 66 days to automaticity over the 39 whose curves the model fitted, self-reported, range 18 to 254 days. A fixed slot — same chair, same time — is exactly that context. People who meditate "when they need it" mostly do not. People with a slot mostly do. And the skill rehearsed is specific: noticing your attention has gone and bringing it back.

How to run it yourself, starting tonight

• Ten minutes, same time daily. Ten you repeat beats twenty you abandon. The trials ran eight weeks; give it that before judging.
• Attach it to something fixed — after coffee, after brushing your teeth. That is the stable context Lally's data describes.
• Follow the breath; when you notice you have left, come back. Every return is one rep. A session with fifty returns is a good session.
• You do not need to pay anyone. TM is taught commercially for a substantial fee. The mindfulness practice with the clinical evidence behind it needs a chair and a timer.
• Judge it by days kept, not by how calm you feel. Calm is a side effect, not the score.

The mistakes that kill this habit

Expecting the marketed effect. If you start out expecting stress to vanish, you will quit in nine days — that outcome has the weakest evidence in the whole review.

Quitting after a week. Eight weeks is the trial length. Seven days tells you nothing.

Treating a wandering mind as failure. That is the exercise. A mind that never wandered would leave nothing to train.

Assuming one technique's evidence covers another. The clinical base is mindfulness. Buying a mantra course on the strength of mindfulness trials is a category error, and it is the error this whole genre runs on.

Using it instead of treatment. The effects are modest and beat no active treatment. If anxiety or depression is severe, this sits alongside care, not in place of it.

Where HealthBrew fits

Everyone above kept a practice for years, and years is the hard part — not the technique.

HealthBrew's nightly close is sixty seconds: how the day went, a line or two, and it lands green, yellow or red. Mark the sessions you kept and after a few weeks you can see what your good days have in common. Your first 30 daily closes are on us, no credit card.

One last honest note. We picked these people because they became famous, which is a biased way to pick anyone. Dalio was a gifted investor and Seinfeld a generational comedian; meditation did not do that. Millions meditate daily and are known to nobody. The practice is simply the part you can copy.

Educational content, not medical advice. Sources: Ray Dalio, Principles ("Meditate," at principles.com) and @raydalio on X, February 2018; Hugh Jackman to Bob Roth on Success Without Stress, published by the TM organisation July 2014; Katy Perry to Audacy, August 2024; Novak Djokovic, Serve to Win (2013). Seinfeld, Jackman and Perry all have documented fundraising or promotional ties to the David Lynch Foundation, which teaches Transcendental Meditation; Dalio has publicly promoted a named TM teacher and paid for staff courses. Oprah Winfrey's widely-quoted Harpo Studios remarks are reported here as unverified — we could not reach the original 2011 broadcast. Meditation is not a treatment for any condition; if anxiety or depression is severe, speak to a clinician.