Do you find yourself worrying about your relationships? Do you struggle with staying present in conversations at work and home? Do you feel like your friendships and relationships in general aren’t as deep and fulfilling as they could be? There are some simple things you can do to improve your relationships that don’t require much energy or cost any money. Try these three incredible tools to improve your relationships, and see what happens!
Why are Healthy Relationships Important?
Relationships are a complex dynamic between two or more people. They can be difficult to navigate without the right tools.
Whether you’re struggling in your romantic relationship, your parent-child relationships, or even with how you interact with your colleagues at work, sometimes relationships can cause deep pain and frustration. Luckily, there are proven methods that psychologists recommend to help you create new and healthier relationships in these areas of your life—and it all starts with yoga and mindfulness.
How do I Know if My Relationship is Healthy?
We all know that having healthy relationships is important. They help us feel supported and loved. They offer a sense of belonging in a world that can be isolating. But if you’re like me, your relationships are usually the first thing to take a backseat when life gets busy and stressful.
Four key components make up a healthy relationship: respect, trust, honesty and communication. Here’s how you can use yoga and mindfulness to improve these important parts of your relationship.
Thankfully, there are three key tools that you can use to improve your relationships: mindfulness, yoga, and gratitude.
How to Use Yoga, Mindfulness, and Gratitude to Improve Your Relationships
Yoga
Yoga is an ancient practice with the power to help release tension from both body and mind. It creates space for deep self-reflection on what it is we want out of life and what makes us happy and allows us time to integrate the lessons we learn through the connection of movement, mind, and breath on our mat into our lives.
A regular yoga practice gives us increased energy and vitality. This can help you to better deal with the stresses of everyday life, which may lead to less stress in your relationship. In addition, yoga has been shown to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, which can also strengthen your relationship by helping you stay calm and collected when challenging situations arise.
It improves mental health, reduces stress levels, and helps you to cope better with anxiety or anxious thoughts.
Finally, yoga is proven to improve your quality of sleep, which can make you feel more relaxed during the day and have fewer fights with your partner over disagreements that may have arisen while both parties were feeling tired and irritable.
The Practice:
Choose a style of yoga that works for you and carve out time for 2-3 consistent classes a week. Can’t make it to a studio? Find a teacher that you resonate with offering online yoga classes and practice at home. Check out Odyssey’s online yoga studio for yoga classes for all levels.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the practice of being present in each moment with kindness and curiosity. It helps us to stay grounded in our emotions rather than getting swept away by them. This practice is great for helping us tap into those parts of ourselves that we can forget about because we’re busy or distracted.
By living mindfully, you are focusing on what is happening right now instead of worrying about what might happen tomorrow or reminiscing about the past. When you do this, you will find yourself becoming more mindful of other people’s feelings and emotions.
What does that mean for my relationship?
Being mindful during conversations, particularly challenging ones, allows both parties to take a deep breath before responding to the situation so they can come up with an answer together instead of fighting each other.
Mindfulness meditation has been shown to reduce the amount of anger or frustration that we feel toward others by helping us to build empathy. Meditation also teaches us how to be more open-minded, making it easier to get along with people of different opinions. You don’t have to be super-religious to benefit from mindfulness and meditation techniques!
Being mindful in your relationships also means being aware to check in with your friends and loved ones so they know they aren’t alone. Practicing presence and engaging in active listening allows you to be supportive. It also removes any need to have the answer, give advice or come up with a solution.
The Practice:
Create a daily mindfulness practice, ideally at the beginning of your day. Find a comfortable place, soften your body and sit quietly for 5-15 minutes. Observe your breath and use your exhales to release whatever thought is passing through your mind in the moment. Focus on the point in the center of your eyebrows, your third eye, or over the tip of your nose. Take this practice into your day, coming back to your breath whenever you are engaging with someone in your life.
Gratitude
The third pillar, gratitude, encourages us to see life’s challenges as a gift and is directly linked to happiness. The key to using gratitude as a tool in your relationships is to practice gratitude regularly and train your mind to focus on what you have and what is good in your relationships even when they are challenging you.
The Practice:
Before or after your mindfulness practice, take five minutes to make a list of all the things you are grateful for in your relationships today. Once you have the list, during your day, take time to share your gratitude with the people around you and watch your relationships flourish.
In summary, yoga, mindfulness meditation, and gratitude are incredible tools that can help us prioritize and improve our relationships. They also help us to understand ourselves and grow personally. The result? A happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life.
