Morning Meditation Will Transform How You Start Your Day.

Here's how many of our days start: your alarm blares, you roll over, and you check the news, social media, or your email (or perhaps all three). By the time you roll out of bed, you're in a state of alert and stress, rather than tranquility and ease.

This is why morning meditation can be so important—and so transformative to how you start your day.

Here are some of the biggest benefits of morning meditation:

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1. It Provides a Fresh Start
Meditation in the morning can center you and help you shake off anything that happened yesterday that you’re carrying into today. “I love meditating in the morning because I feel like I am waking up to a fresh and new slate,” Chelsea says. “It’s my chance to meet the day and try again.” She likens meditation to a “work in,” meaning that it builds your mental and emotional muscles. “Sometimes a ‘work in’ is just as important as a ‘workout,’” she says.

2. It Improves Your Mood
There’s solid research behind the power of meditation, and specifically, morning meditation. In general, meditation has been shown to improve stress and well-being, reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, boost life satisfaction and quality of life, and decrease burnout, according to a 2021 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. That can make a difference in your life at any time, but how wonderful would it feel to approach your day with a more even-keeled, less stressed mood?

3. It Makes It Easier to Establish a Meditation Habit
Meditation in the morning may be especially impactful because the timing makes it easier to stick with, suggests a 2023 study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. The research found that those who were creating a new meditation habit using an app were more likely to do it regularly and less likely to give it up entirely if they did it in the morning compared to late at night. The study points out that for many people—especially those who see themselves as early birds—the circadian rhythm is primed for establishing new habits after waking up. This is when levels of cortisol (a hormone produced by your adrenal glands) are at their highest, which has been found to have a role in habit formation. 

4. It Hones Your Attention and Focus
The cognitive boost you get from meditation can be especially useful when you’re just starting your day. You need the brainpower and resilience to get through everything on your to-do list, and meditation may help you get there. A 2021 Mindfulness meta-analysis suggests that meditation improves attention, executive control, inhibition, and performance on accuracy-based tasks.