Partner Yoga – Doing It Together
Intimacy – Into Me You See
If your couch is starting to get a permanent imprint from you sitting there it may be time to mix things up with a buoyant and bonding couple yoga session. With all the date night activities out there, most of them involve the two of you watching some kind of performance, often in the dark where the two of you are not interacting and not focused on each other for most of the evening.
Other date night activities can often be in crowded noisy places such as bar or concert which makes it harder to hear and focus on each other. Even just going out to a restaurant you often get interrupted many times by the waiter asking for your order (I don’t know about you but it always irritates me when I am in the midst of an in-depth topic and the waiter just butts in asking if we want to get a drink instead of pausing a few moments to and giving us some space to conclude our sentence or conversation.
My hottie, hellenic, hubby and I started practicing partner yoga, our sessions would be mixed with poses that were strengthening, restorative, balancing, silly, and challenging. We would often just experiment with movement and shapes and create or modify traditional poses. We find that the practice, helps to balance out upsets and disagreements that we had earlier in the week. All those times that you wanted to whack your partner across the head with a frying pan, start to dissolve in a practice that is about supporting, nurturing and soothing and finding intimacy for each other.
Here are some of my Reviews of some of my favorite Couples Yoga DVDs and Books
Here are some tips on how to be a good yoga partner.
Hygiene – Before your practice, you should be clean and brush your teeth. How fun is it to grab someone’s arm that is sticky and sweaty or hold someone’s foot that smells like the ebola? Since you will be in close proximity to your partner, skip the tuna fish sandwich with extra onions right before your practice also.
Limitations – If one of you is much more athletic or flexible than the other then don’t expect your partner to be able to do some of the balancing poses or to be able to get their foot behind their head.
Distractions – Send the kids to grandma’s, turn off your Iphone (even if it vibrates every time you get a text that is going to take your focus off your partner)
Size – If there is a big different in height and weight you won’t be perfectly symmetrical in many of the poses and feet, arms and hands won’t always line up as you might want. For the weight-bearing poses, where you are putting your partner’s weight on top of yours ( such as a hand-stand on top of your partner’s downdog) For some of the other balancing poses where you are leaning back, the heavier partner should let the lighter partner lean back first to not throw them off balance.
Acceptance – Are you able to let go of the need to do the pose just like on the cover of Yoga Journal? Can you be accepting of your partner’s inability to do the full expression of the pose.
Synchronicity – Yoga is not just about stretching…otherwise it’s just calisthenics. Put more emphasis on coordinating the rise and fall of your breath with your partner, especially in the seated poses and you will feel more in sync with them.
Non-Verbal Communication – Some of the poses you will be back to back and if you have some discomfort and you need to readjust and don’t want to have to talk to loudly in the session, you can tap your fingers on them or squeeze their hand to let them know that something needs to be altered in the pose.
Intimacy Ideas for Couples – Practicing Yoga Together
What kinds of special activities do you do with your sweetie to stay soulfully connected? Post your answers on our Facebook page.