Chelsea Handler Uses an App and a Grounding Mat for Daily Meditation

Chelsea Handler wasn't always into meditation, but now it's part of her daily routine. The actress recently revealed how she started to incorporate meditation into her life, along with some of her other self-care essentials in a recent interview with Bustle.

"I just could not meditate," Handler told the publication. "I would just sit there, and my therapist was doing it with me and he had some weird meditations that I wasn't into," she explained. Finally, she found a meditation app called Chopra, which has guided meditations that she actually enjoys doing. Handler also credits cannabis for helping her appreciate the practice. "It [cannabis] gave me the ability to stop the running thoughts in my head and focus on my breathing," she said.

Trying meditation may seem intimidating, but it has the potential to offer major benefits. It may help lower stress, increase self-awareness, and decrease anxiety and depression, as previously reported by Shape.

To give meditation a go, you can take a page from Handler's book and let an app guide you, or you can try a more traditional route. All you need to do to start is find a comfortable position to sit or lay down, set a timer for an amount of time that feels doable, and try focusing on your breath, previously reported Shape. Your mind might wander, and that's normal, but the goal is always to bring your focus back to your breath.

"I wake up, I meditate, then I do my Peloton abs class for 15 or 20 minutes, and then I go do my real workout with Ben Bruno," Handler told Bustle. "It’s a good way for me to just have an intention for the day, like, “Do not be a bitch today. You are one. Try not to be,” said the comedian.

Handler spends about 20 minutes meditating in the morning before getting out of bed with her feet on a grounding mat, she said. For the uninitiated, most grounding mats look like large mouse pads and work by plugging into the ground port of home outlets. They become conductive, replicating the effects of grounding (aka the practice of connecting directly with the earth by standing on the ground with bare feet, for instance).

"The earth is like a battery," Step Sinatra, writer, healer, and co-founder of grounded.com, previously told Shape. "High up in the ionosphere is where the earth is positively charged, and on the surface, the charge is negative," he explained. Because the human body is also like a battery, connecting with the earth helps you tap into the planet's natural rhythmic pulsations, according to Sinatra.

As far as whether or not grounding offers positive health effects, opinions vary. Some suggest it may lower heart rate and reduce anxiety and stress while others don't think the practice can cause a physiological change, as previously reported by Shape.

In addition to meditation, Handler also uses exercise to take care of her mental health, she said in the recent interview. For those who follow her Instagram account, this should come as no surprise, as she often shares clips from her workouts with Bruno. Hander typically does strength training with the trainer, showing off trap bar deadlifts and single-arm chest press exercises recently. (Up next: Chelsea Handler Made This Impressive Core Exercise Look Easy)