Literature review: What meditation do people actually practice?

Research question: Is there published work that systematically measures which guided-meditation and breathwork techniques people actually consume, and their relative volume and engagement, especially on YouTube and Spotify?

Search note. This was a targeted, multi-strand literature search through 31 July 2026 using combinations of meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, guided meditation, content analysis, catalogue, app, YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, podcast, prevalence, NHIS, app logs, adherence, formal practice, informal practice, and portability. Publisher pages, PubMed/PMC, DOI records, and institutional repositories were used to verify citations and findings. “No study found” below means none was identified through these searches, not a proof of nonexistence.

Executive verdict

The gap is real, but it must be stated narrowly. There is substantial adjacent work, and one direct YouTube predecessor:

• Buie and Blythe (2013) analyzed the 100 most-viewed YouTube meditation videos and their comments, but focused on offered features, spiritual/secular framing, and reported experiences—not a reproducible technique taxonomy with technique-level shares of views, hours, uploads, and engagement.
• Matko, Ott, and Sedlmeier (2021) surveyed 635 experienced meditators about experience with 50 techniques and therefore comes closest to “what meditators do,” but it is practitioner self-report rather than observed media consumption.
• NHIS studies estimate population use of three very broad, overlapping categories (mantra, mindfulness, spiritual meditation), not specific techniques or consumption volumes.
• Insight Timer and Calm log studies analyze session dose, timing, retention, or broad practice orientation. The Insight Timer study includes practice-type metadata and 289,630 sessions, but does not publish a market-share-style distribution of consumption by a comprehensive technique classification.
• App-store reviews characterize app quality, functions, and sometimes exercise content, but do not inventory complete Calm, Headspace, or Insight Timer catalogues weighted by actual plays.
• No peer-reviewed Spotify catalogue-and-engagement analysis of guided meditation/breathwork was found. No comparable meditation-specific TikTok or podcast consumption analysis was found.

A defensible gap statement is therefore:

No identified study has systematically classified guided meditation and breathwork at the item level across YouTube and Spotify and estimated the relative supply and revealed consumption of techniques using uploads/tracks, views or streams/listeners, duration-weighted volume, and engagement.

Avoid the broader claim that nobody has analyzed meditation on YouTube or nobody has studied which techniques are practiced; both would be false.

1. Content analyses of meditation/mindfulness apps

What exists

1. Early feature inventories. Plaza et al. (2013) reviewed the literature and features of mindfulness mobile applications. It established app feature analysis as a field but was not a complete content census of major commercial catalogues.
2. Systematic app-store quality reviews. Mani et al. (2015) searched “mindfulness” in the Apple App Store and found 700 apps; only 23 were judged to provide genuine mindfulness training and education, with most being timers, reminders, or guided-meditation utilities. They rated eligible apps with the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS), with Headspace highest among those reviewed.
3. European app exercise coding. Schultchen et al. (2021) used a webcrawler, two raters, and MARS to evaluate 14 mindfulness apps. Across 191 coded exercises, common standardized methods included relaxation (153, 80%), breathing (118, 62%), mindfulness (117, 61%), body exercises (59, 31%), acceptance (28, 15%), and resource management (4, 2%). This is important precedent for coding exercise content, although it measured availability, not usage.
4. Meditation-app reviews. Muhiyaddin et al. (2022a) systematically searched Google Play and Apple’s App Store and rated meditation apps using MARS; Headspace received the highest mean rating (4/5). Their companion scoping review (2022b) summarized app features represented in empirical studies.
5. Intervention reviews. Reviews of app-based mindfulness trials show that studied interventions are mostly audio-guided practices fostering present-moment awareness, but these reviews sample evaluated interventions rather than public catalogues or revealed consumption.

What does not appear to exist

• No verified peer-reviewed complete catalogue analysis of Calm, Headspace, or Insight Timer that assigns every meditation to a fine-grained technique taxonomy and reports catalogue proportions.
• No app catalogue study found that weights techniques by actual plays, completed minutes, repeat use, ratings, or retention.
• Existing app reviews mainly evaluate quality, privacy, functionality, evidence base, and presence of exercise categories. They do not answer which techniques users actually consume in what proportions.

Conclusion for area 1: Strong methodological adjacency, but no direct substitute for a technique-by-consumption study.

2. Meditation on YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, and podcasts

YouTube: what exists

• Direct predecessor: Buie and Blythe (2013), Meditations on YouTube, analyzed the 100 most-viewed meditation videos and user comments. The videos covered faith traditions, New Age spirituality, and secular meditation; comment themes included mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual experiences. This is a genuine meditation-video content analysis and must be cited.
• Outcome/intervention research: Wang et al. (2024) tested YouTube meditation videos as an intervention for mindfulness and occupational health during COVID-19. It addresses effects, not platform-wide content or popularity.
• Other video streaming: Taylor et al. (2021) surveyed 119 subscribers to Spectiv, a meditation-oriented video streaming service, examining use, mindfulness, and well-being. It is not a catalogue or technique-share analysis.

Spotify, TikTok, and podcasts: what exists

• Searches found broad mental-health TikTok content analyses and podcast-intervention reviews that mention meditation among coping strategies or intervention types. These do not classify meditation content by technique or quantify its consumption.
• Bibliometric reviews map the scholarly literature on meditation/mindfulness; they do not map consumer media catalogues.

What was not found

• No peer-reviewed analysis of Spotify guided-meditation/breathwork tracks or podcasts by technique, supply, listening volume, or engagement.
• No meditation-specific TikTok catalogue/engagement analysis.
• No cross-platform YouTube–Spotify meditation comparison.
• No study updating Buie and Blythe with a comprehensive technique taxonomy, duration-weighted exposure, normalized engagement, and multiple search/query frames.

Conclusion for area 2: YouTube meditation has been studied, so “first YouTube meditation analysis” is untenable. The narrower technique-volume-engagement and cross-platform gap remains open.

3. Population prevalence of meditation types (NHIS)

What exists

The 2012 NHIS Adult Complementary and Alternative Medicine supplement (n = 34,525 adults) was the first NHIS wave to ask separately about:

• Mantra meditation, including Transcendental Meditation, Relaxation Response, and Clinically Standardized Meditation;
• Mindfulness meditation, including Vipassana, Zen, MBSR, and MBCT;
• Spiritual meditation, including Centering Prayer and contemplative meditation.

Two verified analyses report closely aligned results:

• Cramer et al. (2016): lifetime use was 2.6% mantra (5.8 million), 2.5% mindfulness (5.7 million), and 3.7% spiritual meditation (8.3 million). Past-12-month use was 1.6%, 1.9%, and 3.0%, respectively. Any of the three in the past year was 4.1% (about 9.3 million). Categories overlapped substantially: 31.9% of users reported two and 17.9% all three.
• Burke et al. (2017): past-12-month prevalence was 1.6% mantra (about 3.6 million), 1.9% mindfulness (4.3 million), and 3.1% spiritual meditation (7.0 million). The slight 3.0/3.1 discrepancy reflects reporting/rounding or analytic specification. The article also compares exclusive users of each category.

The broader NHIS measure changed across waves. Clarke et al. (2018) reported that past-year adult meditation use rose from 4.1% in 2012 to 14.2% in 2017, but the 2017 headline estimate does not provide comparably detailed technique shares.

A newer US population-based survey by Lam et al. (2023) found, within its full sample, mindfulness meditation was reported by 34.8%, spiritual meditation by 26.2%, and mantra meditation by 14.5%; its central question was persistence, not national technique prevalence, and categories could overlap.

What does not exist in NHIS

• Fine-grained distinctions such as breath awareness, body scan, visualization, loving-kindness, yoga nidra, box breathing, alternate-nostril breathing, cyclic hyperventilation, affirmations, or sleep meditation.
• Behavioral volume (number of sessions/minutes) by technique.
• Media source and actual item-level consumption.

Conclusion for area 3: NHIS provides the best national benchmark but its three broad, overlapping bins are too coarse for the proposed question.

4. Digital phenotyping and app-log studies

What exists

1. Insight Timer (strongest direct behavioral precedent). Cearns and Clark (2023) analyzed 10,409 users in 103 countries, 289,630 meditation sessions, 3.33 million minutes, and 1,392 unique practice-type combinations over 14 months. Metadata included such types as breathing meditation, body scan, compassion, contemplation, guided imagery, loving-kindness, mindfulness, affirmations, relaxation, and Vipassana; analyses focused on dose, consistency, internal (interoceptive) versus external (exteroceptive) objects of focus, mood, equanimity, resilience, and reaching a 150th session. Consistency and morning/daytime routines predicted adherence. A 1:1 balance of exteroceptive and interoceptive practice in the first 30 sessions predicted reaching session 150 (OR 1.73), while no individual practice type significantly predicted adherence. This demonstrates that technique-tagged behavioral logs can be analyzed, but the published goal was not estimating technique market shares.
2. Calm usage surveys. Huberty et al. (2019) surveyed 12,151 paying Calm subscribers (12.08% response); meditations and Sleep Stories were the most popular components, and sleep/mental-health concerns were common reasons for use. It relies on self-report and feature-level categories.
3. Calm longitudinal logs. Fowers et al. (2022) used session-level data from 2,600 randomly sampled new annual subscribers to predict later disengagement. Berardi et al. (2023) studied time-of-day preference and temporal consistency as predictors of sustained use. Stecher et al. (2021) randomized Calm users to habit “anchor” strategies and found greater persistence among participants who adhered to anchoring. These illuminate adherence, not technique consumption.
4. Headspace real-world outcomes. Large observational studies use Headspace engagement data and stress outcomes, but do not publish a comprehensive distribution of techniques consumed.

What does not appear to exist

• Public, platform-wide log analyses reporting each technique’s share of sessions, completed minutes, users, repeat sessions, and retention for Insight Timer, Calm, or Headspace.
• Direct comparison of app behavioral logs with open-platform consumption on YouTube or Spotify.

Conclusion for area 4: Large-scale behavioral evidence exists and narrows the novelty claim. The novelty is not “first use of meditation logs”; it is comprehensive technique-level popularity/proportion analysis on consumer media platforms.

5. Papers on which techniques are most practiced, searched, or consumed

What exists

• Matko, Ott, and Sedlmeier (2021) is the closest paper on techniques practiced. Starting from 309 practices, they derived 50 basic techniques and surveyed 635 experienced meditators from diverse traditions about experience with each. The three highest-rated techniques were body scan, observing the abdomen while breathing, and observing thoughts. Body scan had 277 respondents reporting “a lot” of experience; the two body-centered breath/body techniques appeared in the top ten of 11 of 12 traditions. This is rich practitioner-experience data, but the convenience sample overrepresented Buddhist and Hindu practitioners and measured accumulated experience, not current frequency or media consumption.
• NHIS studies compare mantra, mindfulness, and spiritual meditation, but only at coarse category level.
• Lam et al. (2023) reports types and persistence in a population-based US sample; perceived effectiveness and other user factors predicted persistence. It does not quantify session volume by specific technique.
• Ribeiro et al. (2018) tracked novice practitioners after an intervention and specifically examined chosen practices, duration, frequency, stress, and quality of life—useful evidence that practice choice can be studied longitudinally, but within a small intervention context.
• Google Trends studies found changing public interest in “mindfulness,” but no verified study was found that systematically compares fine-grained meditation techniques as search terms and validates search interest against actual practice.

What does not appear to exist

No identified paper gives a general-population or platform-level denominator and reports a comprehensive table such as “x% breath awareness, y% body scan, z% visualization” weighted by actual sessions, minutes, views, or listening. Existing studies use broad survey categories, selective intervention menus, cumulative self-reported experience, or platform logs aimed at adherence/outcomes.

Conclusion for area 5: There are important partial answers, especially Matko et al. (2021), but not the proposed revealed-consumption answer.

6. YouTube health-content-analysis methodology precedent

What exists and can be borrowed

• Gabarron et al. (2013) reviewed measures used to assess patient-health videos on YouTube, documenting the diversity of quality measures.
• Madathil et al. (2015) systematically reviewed 19 peer-reviewed YouTube health-information studies and established common practices: explicit search terms and date, inclusion/exclusion criteria, source coding, content coding, and recording views/likes/comments.
• Drozd et al. (2018) reviewed 37 medical YouTube evaluation studies. It found heterogeneous but repeatable procedures built around defined searches, exclusions, and standardized video evaluation.
• Osman et al. (2022) reviewed the reliability of YouTube health information and reinforced that popularity and quality are different constructs.

Methodological implications for the proposed paper

1. Freeze and report search date/time, locale, language, logged-in state, query strings, sort method, and API/search endpoint because rankings and counts change.
2. Preserve video IDs and deduplicate across query strata.
3. Distinguish supply (video count and total available duration) from demand/consumption proxies (views, views/day, likes/view, comments/view, and view-minutes if estimated).
4. Pre-register a technique codebook; double-code a stratified subset and report Cohen’s kappa or Krippendorff’s alpha.
5. Code uploader type and commercial/credential claims, but do not equate views with clinical quality.
6. Use age-normalized metrics because cumulative views mechanically favor older uploads; report raw and normalized results.
7. Treat search-result sampling as a platform-mediated sample, not the universe of YouTube.
8. Spotify has materially different observability: public track-level stream counts may be unavailable or incomplete. Label monthly listeners, chart rank, follower counts, or third-party estimates accurately rather than calling them streams.

Conclusion for area 6: A mature methodological literature exists and strongly supports the feasibility of this design, while requiring careful claims about sampling and engagement.

7. Matko and Sedlmeier (2019): verified citation and seven-cluster system

Verified citation

Karin Matko and Peter Sedlmeier (2019), “What Is Meditation? Proposing an Empirically Derived Classification System,” Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 2276. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02276.

What the study did

• An initial bottom-up collection contained 309 practices, assembled through literature/manual review and expert input.
• Preparatory work reduced these to 50 basic techniques and then the 20 most popular techniques.
• 100 experienced meditators rated pairwise/similarity relations among the 20 techniques.
• Multidimensional scaling produced two orthogonal dimensions: activation and amount of body orientation.
• Seven clusters emerged:
  1. Mindful observation — e.g., observing thoughts, open observation;
  2. Body-centered meditation — e.g., body scan, breath at the abdomen, observing bodily sensations;
  3. Visual concentration — visual objects or visualizations;
  4. Contemplation — reflective/analytical contemplation, including paradoxical questions;
  5. Affect-centered meditation — loving-kindness, compassion, emotion-centered practices;
  6. Mantra meditation — repetition/chanting of syllables, words, or phrases;
  7. Meditation with movement — walking or other deliberate meditative movement.

The taxonomy challenges a simple focused-attention/open-monitoring dichotomy and offers a defensible high-level coding scaffold. However, for YouTube/Spotify it needs extensions for breath-control techniques, sleep/relaxation hybrids, affirmations/hypnosis, guidance format, intended outcome, posture/movement, and mixed-technique items. The 2021 follow-up supplies fuller technique descriptions and popularity ratings.

8. Portability, formal versus informal practice, and adherence

Established literature

• Formal practice generally means setting aside dedicated time for meditation (sitting meditation, body scan, mindful movement; guided or unguided).
• Informal practice means bringing mindful awareness into ordinary activities or moments—eating, washing dishes, driving, walking, or brief pauses—without a separately bounded meditation session.
• Carmody and Baer (2008) studied 174 MBSR participants. Greater formal home practice was associated with increases in mindfulness and well-being and decreases in symptoms/stress; later syntheses characterize informal-practice associations as weak or inconsistent.
• Parsons et al. (2017) reviewed MBSR/MBCT home practice; across 28 studies (N = 898 for outcome association), self-reported practice had a small positive relationship with outcomes (r = .26, 95% CI .19–.34), but reporting and measurement were heterogeneous and centered on formal practice.
• Birtwell et al. (2019) surveyed 218 current/former practitioners. Informal practice related to well-being and psychological flexibility; qualitative findings identified practical difficulties and supports for maintaining practice. They explicitly describe informal practice as the generalization of mindfulness skills into daily life.
• Hassed et al. (2021) validated the 12-item Mindfulness Adherence Questionnaire (MAQ), distinguishing formal/informal and quantity/quality. Quality was more strongly associated with trait mindfulness than quantity. The MAQ measures enacted adherence, not the inherent portability of a technique.
• Shankland et al. (2021) experimentally evaluated an informal-practice program and found mental-health/well-being benefits, positioning informal practices as an accessible first step toward formal practice.
• Barceló-Soler et al. (2023) systematically reviewed home meditation adherence in chronic pain. Informal practices were more common in two of the three studies that compared them; measurement and causal evidence remained limited.
• Mantzios and Giannou (2019) reviewed short practices and proposed an “effortless mindful lifestyle,” closely neighboring the idea of low-friction practice integration.
• Digital adherence studies emphasize habit anchoring, temporal consistency, convenience, session length, and routines, but they do not rate techniques for portability.

Direct answers to the three portability questions

(a) Has anyone rated or classified techniques by portability?

No verified peer-reviewed scale or taxonomy was found that rates individual meditation techniques on an explicit portability dimension. Existing taxonomies code attentional object, activation/body orientation, posture/movement, context, or formal/informal status. App reviews sometimes discuss accessibility or availability, but not a technique-level portability score.

(b) Has portability been tested as a mechanism of sustained practice/adherence?

Not directly under that construct. Nearby mechanisms have been tested:

• formal versus informal practice;
• brief versus longer practice;
• embedding mindfulness in daily routines;
• fixed or personalized habit anchors;
• temporal consistency and time-of-day convenience;
• app accessibility and guided delivery.

These show that low-friction integration and stable cues can support adherence, but no identified study measures a technique’s portability first and then tests whether that score predicts longitudinal continuation. Therefore the proposed mechanism is empirically open.

(c) Is another term used for this idea?

Yes, partially overlapping terms include:

• informal mindfulness practice;
• everyday mindfulness or mindful moments;
• daily-life practice / generalization to everyday life;
• home practice (broader and not necessarily portable);
• brief or short mindfulness practices / micro-practices;
• practice integration, habit anchoring, or piggybacking on an existing routine;
• ecological or real-world practice (usually describes study setting, not an inherent technique property).

Portability construct verdict

Portability is best presented as a novel, technique-level extension of—not a replacement for—the formal/informal literature. Informal practice is a mode of enactment: mindfulness during ordinary life. Portability is a proposed affordance: how readily a technique can be initiated and completed across contexts. A formal three-minute breathing exercise may be highly portable while remaining a bounded formal session; mindful dishwashing is informal but depends on a particular activity. The constructs therefore overlap but are not identical.

A defensible operational definition is:

Technique portability: the degree to which a meditation or breathwork technique can be practiced across everyday contexts with low requirements for time, place, posture, privacy, equipment, audio guidance, preparatory ritual, and recovery time.

Recommended dimensions are minimum viable duration, posture flexibility, eyes-open feasibility, hands-free feasibility, audibility/visibility to others, privacy requirement, equipment/guidance dependence, cognitive complexity, physiological intensity, and safety/context constraints. Treat portability as formative/multidimensional until psychometric work supports a single score. Test predictive validity prospectively against initiation, repeat use, streak persistence, and return after lapse while controlling for perceived effectiveness, difficulty, baseline motivation, and content availability.

Overall gap assessment

The paper should position itself as integrating four literatures that have remained separate: meditation taxonomy, population practice surveys, digital behavioral traces, and platform content/engagement analysis.

References (verified unless flagged)

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Wang, Y.-C., Chung, Y.-S., Lin, C.-K., & Chen, P.-J. (2024). Using YouTube meditation videos to boost mindfulness and occupational health during the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Stress Management, 31(2), 105–120. https://doi.org/10.1037/str0000309

Citation not fully verified / excluded from evidentiary claims

• Ribeiro, L. (2020), “Adherence and Evidence of Effectiveness of Informal Mindfulness Practices: A Systematic Review.” A manuscript uploaded to ResearchGate was located and appears to be authored by Letícia Ribeiro, but no journal, DOI, institutional thesis record, or stable formal publication metadata could be verified. It should not be cited as a peer-reviewed systematic review without further documentation. Its broad conclusion—poor and inconsistent measurement of informal-practice adherence—is independently supported by the verified literature above.