How Starting a Meditation Routine Can Help your Relationship
Meditation is something that many people agree can be helpful. Although many people agree it can be helpful……….for someone else. Outside of those who are dedicated to the practice, very few people are easily persuaded into or consistent with the practice. Sure, we say it’s a great idea and we should probably do it, but when It comes to actually doing it and making a habit out of it, it’s a different story. I’d like to make a case here for you to try it, because you may be pleasantly surprised with the benefits and positive effects resulting from it. It may indeed be something you consistently add to your day and get noticeable positive results. If you can commit to start and get into a routine with it, there is a good chance it will become a vital part of a healthy lifestyle.
Meditation helps us to better reduce and cope with stress. Meditation can help reduce anxiety, help you fall asleep more easily and feel more centered in your daily life. In addition to bringing many benefits to you individually, meditation can help your relationship in many ways. The practice fits perfectly into an effective concept of improving our relationship. What I mean by this is that when we talk about effective ways you can improve your relationship, it starts with working on yourself. The changes you create in yourself through meditation will similarly create positive change in the relationship, whether your partner makes changes or not. Meditation, when done consistently can help calm your parasympathetic nervous system and make you less reactive to situations. It also helps you know yourself better. Through meditation, you become more mindful of what your thoughts and feelings are and how to effectively separate the two. It helps you improve insight and intuition as well as identify your body’s reactions to many stimuli. Once you know how you react and see that you can create change within yourself simply through mindfulness and breathing, you begin to have more control of those processes. This leads to an ability to slow the process down.
Some of your reactive behaviors in relationship conflict can be better controlled because the entire interaction with your partner will begin to slow down, you will be conscious of what happens and able to utilize feelings as cues to respond in a different way. For example, some people yell every time they feel triggered coupled with a thought of ‘this is unfair’ and/or ‘I need to stand up for myself’. Their body reacts as if it is under attack and their brain tells them not only that they need to counter attack but that it is justified. With meditation, the person’s mind and body begin to realize that this ‘fight or flight’ response is unnecessary, ineffective and leads to more damage in the relationship. Now, it’s not so easy as just being aware of this to make change. This is because fight or flight responses come from the part of the brain that does not ‘take orders’ form the central cortex: the amygdala. Because there is no central control station, these reactions happen almost impulsively and we feel we have no way to change them. The good news is that with meditation, which aids in mindfully retraining of the frontal cortex and other parts of the brain, we now identify these feelings and thoughts earlier. This leads to an ability to use the feeling as a cue to do something else, such as ask for a time out or use a repair (I’m feeling overwhelmed , let’s take a break—for example). This will help with emotional resiliency
Meditation also helps us stay present. In practicing to filter out all other thoughts and focus on our breath, for example, we learn valuable skills of being truly present and focused to only one thing: whatever we decide. In communication, we can truly be present to what our partner is saying and not thinking about our response or emotionally blurting out interruptions. Staying present in our communication with our partner will result in your partner feeling validated and heard. This will improve their positivity and engagement with you, resulting in more positive and loving actions and words coming back to you.
There are many ways to begin meditating and there are many ways you can do it. You can read a book on meditation (Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield or Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat Zinn are good books for beginning) or you can find a teacher (Many therapists, yoga instructors are trained in this). There are also professionals who lead and teach meditation classes. If you want to start on your own self-practice, I would suggest looking at some meditations on YOUTUBE.com. start with a GUIDED MEDITATION because they will lead you through the steps (I think Michael Seeley’s meditations are good). Also, try some subliminal binaural beat meditations (Vortex Success and Thomas Hall are good). Start with whatever time you can give it. Sometimes people don’t begin because they think they don’t have enough time. Well, even if you start with 5 minutes a day, you can start a healthy routine with it. Over time you will find ways to increase the length of sessions because you will want to!
You can meditate where ever you want. I suggest a quiet place and certainly not when you are driving! Sometimes having a set place in your home where you meditate can be helpful toward becoming consistent with it. Purchasing a meditation chair or cushion is certainly not a necessity but it does seem to lead to a more consistent practice. I’ve provided links to a few good ones below.
This year, make meditation a reality in your life. Make it an integral part of your healthy lifestyle.
Deluxe 235
small 80
back rest 95
a little different 70
just starting out or on a budget, here is good one that runs about 30-no backrest