Gisele Bundchen credits meditation with helping to ease her "panic attacks".
The 38-year-old model has been suffering with her mental health for many years, and says she started meditating in her "early 20s" as a way to help deal with her anxiety, as she says the relaxing practice has given her "a new life".
She said: "I started meditating in my early 20s, after having severe panic attacks … that’s one of the very important tools that helped me … it actually gave me a new life. When you start being loving with yourself, being loving with others, filling your mind with affirmations and loving thoughts, you create more of that in your life, and that becomes more of your reality."
Now, the blonde beauty says meditation is part of her every day life, and she wakes up every morning at 5:30am to light a candle, sit in silence and meditate.
She added: "When you reach rock bottom, you have to figure out a way to get out of there. It gave me a new life, and an opportunity to become aware of a new world that I didn’t know existed, which was a world within myself.
"It’s really helpful if I just take a few moments to be quiet for 5, 10 minutes, and take a few deep breaths, and just go into that space. And then when I come out of it, I just feel revitalised and ready to tackle so much more."
Gisele has even tried to get her husband and NFL star Tom Brady – with whom she has son Benjamin, nine, and daughter Vivian, six – involved, but says he’s not as "diligent" with the practice as she is.
Speaking on an upcoming episode of the Thrive Global podcast, she said: "He has meditated, but I don’t think he’s as diligent as I am with meditation. For me, it came from something that has helped me heal from something that was so challenging in my life. Maybe because he hasn’t had the same need as me, maybe for him, it hasn’t become something so consistent."
Gisele Bundchen: Meditation eased my panic attacks
