The promise of yoga is to unite your finite self with the Infinite Self. There’s no better way to enhance that journey than to practice yoga with your partner or yoga for couples. Sexuality and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the ancient yogis understood that a worshipful attitude towards your partner created a neuro-chemical change in the brain that allowed for the experience of ecstasy and bliss in couples meditation and couples yoga.
Meditation is a very private, internal experience that a person has with his or her inner Self. It is an important technique in the quest for a sacred sexual relationship. Meditation improves self-esteem and heals individual wounds, allowing the development of self-awareness that can lead to a heart-centered opening in the love relationship with one’s self or one’s partner. Meditation also connects one to one’s soul and balances the female and male energies in the body. Certain meditations can enhance the feeling of ecstasy experienced during sex. Other meditations have been known to end arguments, get rid of grudges and clear the clouds between couples. Couples Yoga uses a variety of sacred yogic meditations for couples as a way to augment the experience of oneness. These couples’ meditations are an especially beautiful practice that can elevate your relationship to a higher level.
1. Can couples yoga foster romance?
If you begin a couples yoga class with an existing partner, talk with each other before going to the first class about what you want from this. Try not to let your expectations get overblown in terms of how the class can remedy any specific relationship challenges you’re having. Go in with an open mind and heart — not with a sense that this is going to fix something, but a willingness to learn and grow together by sharing and connecting through yoga. It can be sensual though, if practiced with loving intention and can secretly set the mood. If the low lighting and candles — two things that most yoga masters recommend to help de-stress while doing yoga — don’t help set the tone, doing yoga together allows you to perform partner-assisted poses. These types of postures require a partner to help the other person get a full stretch or just get into position. Having to focus on your partner’s body, plus all that extra touching, lets you be playful as you exercise together
2. What is the purpose of specific moves?
The first part of the class is a time to ground, center, learn to synchronize energy and breath and become sensitive to your partner’s rythms as well as start to gently warm up the body. The second part of the class is a time to build up more heat in the body with some balancing poses that challenge somewhat as well. As partners are able to get into more difficult poses, this builds self-esteem, confidence, emotional mastery, focus and this can heighten the bond as well. Some of the poses are aesthetically wondrous when you are juxtaposing bodies or mirroring. Some poses are childlike and playful and bring you back to a place of wonder and innocence. The last part of the class is both restorative with poses that you melt into in order to rebalance the central nervous system or there is guided Thai massage where intention, rather than technique is emphasized. The last pose is “Corpse” pose where student are able to integrate and process all the deep work and the body can reset itself from a place of renewal and rejuvenation.
3. How does yoga for couples allow one to experience another?
It makes you more attractive. This may not seem important, but the truth is, the more thoughtful and focused on your partner you are, the more endearing you will seem to her or him. . That’s because anytime a person expresses genuine interest in someone else and committed to just being physically and emotionally present — you will feel a sense of safety and support on a purely kinesthetic level. When you experience a profound truth through the experience of the body, it becomes ingrained in your mind and heart as well. Without realizing it, simply committing time to doing yoga with your partner becomes an opportunity to strengthen your level of intimacy — something that always adds strength and solidity to any partnership. It can reveal interpersonal dynamics about the couples that lead to inner growth and intimacy. Learning how to become really attune to your inner world while simultaneously being totally present to your partner is not a gift we often receive.
4. What are we meant to experience?
As each participant learns to let go and trust, the partners begins to explore spiritual levels of the practice together. They build on the energy of each other and create a better understanding of their connection as well as the practice of yoga. It removes distractions that keep humans from focusing on each other.