Why I meditate while driving

It's one of those March mornings where dark rainclouds keep chasing the sun away. I'd rather not leave my remote work sanctum. But there's a quick errand to run in my car, and my mood brightens at one thought: that the drive will be just long enough for me to do a five-minute breath meditation via my Apple Watch.

That's right — strange as it may sound to some, I meditate while driving, and have done so for years. When I step behind the wheel solo, I don't call a friend or fire up a playlist or a podcast or an audiobook, even though there's invariably one of each I want to do at any given time. Nor do I listen to any kind of voice-guided meditation (which, as I wrote, is very much not for me.)

The breath-guiding I'm hooked on has nothing to do with my smartphone, which is easily the most dangerously distracting device in my car. It is utterly, blissfully sound-free. It's the haptic feedback from the smartwatch on my wrist — the slowly-fading tapping sensation that tells me to breathe in for five seconds, the silence indicating I breathe out for the same length of time — that invests my drive with a surprising sense of peace.

Turns out I'm not the first to discover the soothing power of haptic-based meditation while driving. A 2018 study conducted by Stanford medical school, called "in-car interventions for guided slow breathing," offered a first-of-its kind vibrating seat that helped participants to inhale and exhale by vibrating their whole body, not just their wrists.

All but five of the 24 participants in the study preferred these in-car vibrations to meditative voice guidance. Their Heart Rate Variability (HRV) increased, suggesting they were becoming less stressed. "Slow breathing practices could transform the automobile commute from a depleting, mindless activity into a calming, mindful experience," the Stanford medics concluded.

I'm not about to recommend this to anyone without more on-road study (the Stanford team used simulators in both city and highway modes). Even if this sounds like a fit for you, you should check with your doctor before risking light-headedness by trying a new breathing exercise in an unfamiliar situation. But having run this experiment on myself for years, I believe haptic meditation has made my driving less distracted, and way less road-ragey.

Once I was the guy who headed for the fast lane and got mad at red lights. Now I'm the guy who waves to let you into my lane, or let you cross — and who treats red lights as a golden opportunity to just, y'know, appreciate whatever is happening in the world outside my windshield.

Distracted while driving? Just breathe.

Now, if you're the kind of person who associates meditation with distraction — who thinks that floating away or zoning out is an optimal result — car meditation may sound horrifying. But as this series has been saying for years, mindfulness isn't about escaping to somewhere else. It's about tuning in non-judgmentally to the reality all around you in this very moment: a vital skill if you're going to be safe behind the wheel.

And with April being Distracted Driving Month, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out all those widely-used methods to take drivers elsewhere in their minds — music, podcasts, audiobooks, calls — come with evidence that they make us worse drivers.

"Music in every mood reduces reaction time," concluded a 2023 study of studies about driving with music. "Driving and listening to music compete for the driver’s limited cognitive capacity." Listening at a lower volume does seem to lower drivers' speed, but even that raises their heart rates.

There's more mixed data when it comes to voices in your car. One 2018 study done in driving simulators found that participants' reaction times on simple traffic tests were faster while listening to audiobooks, but slower in complex driving situations. A 2024 study found that drivers were "more prone to making errors" when listening to radio conversations — even more so than music.

As for being on the phone, even if it's hands-free, forget about it. We've long known that phone calls make us more distracted. A 2022 meta-analysis of 83 studies concluded that being on a call while driving "negatively affects driving performance, exposing drivers to dangerous traffic situations." If you, like me, have a friend who keeps missing their freeway exits when they're talking to you, know that this is about the least damaging negative result of the chat.

In short, what you're doing behind the wheel matters — and we're all doing something. Distracted driving leads to more than 3,000 deaths a year in the U.S. alone, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That last meta-analysis also found that in literally any secondary task executed while driving, "the driver's cognitive, manual, visual, and auditory resources are all involved," meaning less attention is paid to the road.

So, go ahead if you wish; transport yourself to other places in your mind while hurtling around in a giant hunk of metal. I'll be over here with the multiple driving anxiety coaches who recommend various breathing exercises to stay calm behind the wheel.

And thanks to the Apple Watch's Breathe feature, where you set the length of your breaths in advance, I don't even have to distract myself by counting the seconds of each breath. My mind is alert, my diaphragm calmly expands and contracts, my foot is ready to tap the brake at any time.

Your move, world beyond the windshield.

Chris Taylor is Mashable's senior editor. This column reflects the opinions of the writer.