When most people make the decision to prioritize their health, they typically start by focusing on the “big two”: diet and exercise. While the choices you make in the kitchen or at the gym can certainly contribute towards transforming your physical health, these decisions can sometimes come at the expense of your mental health, which is just as important. That’s why setting aside time to nurture your mind is crucial—and one of the easiest and most effective ways to do so is by establishing a consistent meditation practice.
“Meditation can be an oasis for the mind, almost like taking a mini vacation,” says Peloton yoga and meditation instructor Ross Rayburn. “Once you’ve found a way to turn inward, even for a moment, it can be like re-fueling or re-sourcing what you’re missing. In fitness and wellness that might be a lack of enthusiasm or a lack of challenge or even a lack of desire. Going inside can be a magical source of inspiration that kick-starts or re-engages your fitness journey.”
Here, we’re breaking down all the different kinds of meditation, as well as those that you can find in the Peloton App, to help you discover the one that’s best for you.
Types of Meditation
Mindfulness Meditation
One of the most popular forms of meditation today, as well as one of the most researched for health and wellness benefits, is mindfulness meditation. This type of meditation practice, which can be done solo or as a guided practice with an instructor, and has no set practice time requirement, starts with sitting quietly and comfortably and breathing deeply. From there, when thoughts pass through your mind or your senses pick up on something in your environment, you merely acknowledge that the thought or feeling exists and then let it pass without engaging with it or judging it in any way.
A consistent mindfulness meditation practice has been found to be effective at improving symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, lowering high blood pressure, reducing chronic pain, improving sleep, and more.
Visualization Meditation
Visualization is a type of calming meditation meant to, well, promote calm and peace in your mind. In this type of meditation, you will sit quietly and visualize a scene or an image that makes you feel calm or peaceful, such as a beach at sunrise or sitting before a fire with a loved one. From there, you use all of your senses to imagine the scene, thinking about the feel of the sand beneath your feet or the sound of the firewood gently crackling. Mentally spending time in a scene that brings you peace can help you feel calmer and happier as you go about your day.
Loving-Kindness Meditation
A practice that comes from the Buddhist tradition, loving-kindness meditation is meant to help you cultivate compassion for yourself and for others. The idea is that, instead of viewing yourself as inadequate and the world around you as something of which to be wary and fearful, you learn to see both yourself and everyone else as beings worthy of love and kindness. This approach has been shown to enhance well-being, curb self-criticism, and improve resilience.
Loving-kindness meditation is typically practiced as a guided meditation with a teacher who leads you through different phrases and recitations to repeat in your head or out loud.
Mindful Movement Meditation
If you’ve ever found your mind moving towards a place of calm, peace, or self-awareness during a ride on your Peloton Bike, a yoga class, or a walk on the beach, you’ve done a moving meditation. Mindfulness movement meditation is the process of using movement to help you make the connection between your mind and your body. The idea here is that some people struggle to clear their mind of stress and to-dos if they are sitting still in a quiet room and gentle movements such as yoga, walking, tai chi, and qi gong function as a conduit to achieving a meditative state, requiring just enough focus to silence all the mental noise. Then once that quiet arrives and the body starts to flow, you are able to focus on your breathing and let your thoughts come and go just as you would during a traditional mindfulness meditation.
Mantra Meditation
This might be the form of meditation that pops into your head when you hear the word meditation. While you don’t have to be sitting cross-legged and your mantra doesn’t have to be “om”, mantra meditation is the practice of using a single word, phrase, or sound, repeated over and over again, to clear your mind of stress and clutter and promote deeper levels of calm and body awareness. If you find your mind wandering or snagging on to-dos and responsibilities during other forms of meditation, using a mantra gives you something to focus on that doesn’t allow space for those other thoughts. A mantra can be a sound, like om (a Sanskrit mantra meant to help you connect to the divine), or a word or phrase that inspires your practice, such as “move,” “act,” “listen,” “I choose to be happy,” “I am worthy of love”, and “I am strong and powerful.”
Since the repetition of the mantra is the only requirement, this is also one of the easiest forms of meditation to adopt and practice. And according to research, it can ease stress and anxiety, reduce hypertension, and improve immunity.
Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation, or TM, is a form of mantra meditation that was developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi over 50 years ago. What sets it apart is that the technique is taught over four one-on-one courses with a certified TM teacher, during which you are given a mantra that you will use. For your practice to be considered true transcendental meditation (and to get the study-proven perks below) and not simply mantra meditation, you must practice on your own for 20 minutes twice a day.
It is designed to promote calm and self-awareness and has been found to reduce stress and anxiety, enhance brain function, and even improve cardiovascular health.
Body Scan Meditation
Just as mantra meditation gives you a word or phrase to focus on, body scan meditation has you focus on your body. This practice, which is designed to reduce physical (and subsequently mental) tension and promote relaxation, is often used as a way to unwind and prepare for bed in the evening. To do a body scan meditation, you first sit or lie comfortably; you can even do it in bed. Then, starting at either the top of your head or your toes, you focus on one muscle group at a time, slowly tightening those muscles and then relaxing them before moving on to the next group. You keep going until you’ve worked through your entire body—or you’ve fallen asleep!
Peloton Meditation Class Types
Ready to get started with meditation? Peloton’s meditation classes, available through the Peloton App, draw from different types of meditation and are designed to target a variety of needs. You’ll find eight different types of classes to choose from. Here, discover a little bit about each.
Meditation Basics
If you’re just getting started with meditation, this is a great place to start. In Meditation Basics, you’ll find 5- and 10-minute meditations that will introduce you to all the formats available on the App.
Breath
Learning how to focus on your breathing and how to breathe deeply has far-reaching benefits, from reduced stress to better physical health. In Breath meditation classes, many of which are audio classes, you’ll practice breathing deeply as the central component of your practice.
Mindfulness
We touched on the perks of mindfulness meditation above; all the classes in this section are designed to help you feel present in your body and your mind. They include meditations meant to be done in the morning to help you set an intention for the day, body scan meditations that help you tune into how your body is feeling, and others that use visualization to help you achieve a calm and welcoming perspective.
Fitness Focus
If you’re using your Peloton Bike, Bike+, Tread, or Row to train for a race or competition, the meditation classes in the Fitness Focus section can be a great complement to your training. They will help put you in the right mindset to take your performance to the next level and smash your PRs.
Relax & Sleep
Ross thinks of these as “space-creating classes”; focused on sleep, calming, and relaxation, these meditations give you permission to spend a few minutes resting your mind and body. The go-go-go nature of modern life rarely gives people a chance to stop and recharge—these meditations create that space in your day, plus improve your ability to wind down quickly when it’s finally time to hit the hay.
Emotions
“These are integrating classes,” explains Ross. “They help shift perspective particularly related to emotions and how we integrate the fruits of meditation into our daily lives.” Each class is focused on a specific emotion or feeling, including patience, grief, kindness, gratitude, peace, acceptance, empathy, courage, energy, happiness, and healing, with the practice designed to help you cultivate the skills to integrate these emotions into your daily life in a conscious and constructive way.
Theme
This is where you’ll find the meditations themed to different holidays, seasons, artists and more.
Family & Pre/Postnatal
Designed for pregnant and postpartum people and parents, these meditation classes focus on the unique experiences of carrying and/or caring for children and the skills you can develop to help you on this challenging and rewarding journey.
How to Choose the Right Type of Meditation For You
Peloton releases new meditation classes on a daily basis, so there’s something for everyone. That said, there’s no reason to get overwhelmed. These tips can help you determine the best classes for you and figure out how to integrate a meditation practice into your daily or weekly fitness regimen.
Try a meditation moment. Ross recommends doing some “practice” meditation before jumping right into guided meditations, like on the Peloton App. “Practice pausing for a few breaths or a few moments before you do something in your daily routine like brushing your teeth,” he suggests. “Just the pausing can be a doorway to sensing the benefits of meditation.” In fact, you are likely already doing this and haven’t noticed that it’s meditation. “We all have an innate instinct to shift our attention away from its normal direction,” Ross says. “There are tons of ways to shift our attention and meditation is one of them. Once you start to realize your capacity to change your attention, doing it in meditation will be less of a challenge.”
Go with something universal. Instead of jumping right into an emotion-focused meditation, start with a format with a slightly more general focus. “The shorter, 5- and 10-minute breathing or body scan meditations are a great way to start,” says Ross. Sleep meditations are a good entry point as well, since who couldn’t use a little help falling asleep?
Wait for the urge or opportunity. As much as you may be tempted to schedule your meditation sessions, Ross suggests refraining at first. “Try it whenever you get the urge or opportunity,” he says. Since you only need a few minutes to meditate, having those first few sessions at a time when you feel relaxed, focused and open to it gives you the best chance of getting the perks and of coming back to the practice. “Once you get into a bit of a habit, then you can start to ritualize it, like always meditating after you shower in the morning and before coffee,” Ross adds. “The ritual can be an accelerant to a consistent practice.”
Get comfortable. “Comfort will increase your enjoyment and thus the likelihood that you’ll come back to meditation,” says Ross. Whether that means lying in bed, sitting on the couch, or strolling around the block, try to meditate in a position that makes you feel good—you’ll feel that much better once your practice is complete.
Give yourself grace. “There is no way to meditate incorrectly,” promises Ross. “And no matter how frequently or consistently you meditate, your practice will welcome you back with zero judgment.” If a class doesn’t leave you feeling refreshed and empowered, try a different one the next time. If you have a crazy day and you just can’t find the time and space to meditate, that’s okay. Your practice will be there for you when you need it. “The mind might judge before you go into meditation, saying you need to be doing it more,” notes Ross. “But your deeper self will say “I’m so happy you’re here” every time!”
Level up your inbox.
Subscribe for a weekly dose of fitness, plus the latest promos, launches, and events.