Meditation has largely been associated with its religious connotation in the tourism literature. The present research steers away from that tradition to focus on meditative practices as a leisure activity. It addresses the literature void by conducting a survey study on meditation tourists who participated in a 7-day meditation excursion. Based on attention restoration theory and the two-factor theory of emotion, this research contributes to the literature by underscoring a theoretical synthesis of the transformative potential of meditation on tourists' psychological and emotional wellness. It moves beyond the religiously grounded meditation retreat to offer a more generalizable travel phenomenon for body–soul self-improvement. It opens a new avenue for meditation travel by attention restoration through an arousal–cognition perspective. This wellness-related tourism has great potential to gain further popularity for those who have suffered mental and physical stress from the pandemic and other life adversities.