We can all be a bit judgmental from time to time. The good news is, learning mindful meditation can help us banish negative judgments and build a healthier marriage.
Being mindful is all about being present and aware of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations. This is why meditation is such a great avenue to explore mindfulness. It allows you and your spouse to go somewhere quiet, relax, and truly focus.
Cultivating mindfulness in your marriage is like taking a marriage course – it teaches you how to communicate, listen without judgment, and pay more attention to your partner. By practicing being mindful as a couple, you will also deepen your bond. Here are 6 tips for mindfully meditating with your spouse and how it will benefit your relationship.
1. Set the Proper Time Aside
Meditation works best when you have an appropriate amount of time to devote to it. This way you’re not thinking about heading off to work, making dinner, or letting other distractions get in the way of your mindful meditation.
The amount of time you will need will depend largely on you. Perhaps you are following an audio recording that requires you to have a specific length of time following along. The choice is ultimately yours.
You can spend as much or as little time as you like meditating but try and aim for at least 10 minutes of meditation daily. Find a time that works well for both you and your spouse and commit to spending time together every day practicing mindful meditation.
2. Go Somewhere Quiet
Practicing mindful meditation is about making observations with judgment, so it’s important to limit your sensory information to only the basics.
To get the most out of your meditation session, choose a quiet place to sit and relax. Turn off your television, smartphone, music, or anything else that will distract you from meditating.
3. Timetables and Marriage Courses
In order to truly bond over mindful meditation with your spouse, you’ll need to do it together. This means finding an appropriate time that works for both of you. This may mean waking up a little earlier to meditate before work or setting time aside at night to spend time together.
Marriage courses are all about learning how to communicate, problem-solve, and share your lives as a couple. Therefore, many couples find it helpful to do mindful meditation after getting home from therapy or taking an online marriage course because it gives them a few moments to process what they’ve learned before speaking about it.
4. Sit Comfortably
Don’t feel like you must hold an uncomfortable position in order to ‘challenge yourself’.
Most couples spend an average of 10 to 30 minutes meditating together, so it’s important to sit comfortably and find a position that helps you relax.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor or upright in a snuggly chair are both great options. Just make sure you’re not so comfortable that you start to doze off!
5. Close Your Eyes and Focus on Breathing
Start your meditation by closing your eyes and listening to your breathing. Focus on your lungs, the air you’re taking in, and your rhythm. After a few minutes of focusing on your breath, your inhaling and exhaling should have slowed down considerably. This means you are starting to find your inner calm. It tells your brain that you’re ready to relax and focus.
6. Open Your Eyes and Take It All In
Maintain eye contact with your spouse when you open your eyes. This has been shown to heighten your sense of intimacy, vulnerability, and self-awareness with your partner.
Being mindful is all about learning to address certain feelings you’re having and learning to let them go. So if you find it uncomfortable to hold eye-contact, acknowledge the feeling and let it pass. This is part of the learning process.
Mindful meditation will help you train your brain to detach from certain judgments and to stop judging things reactively. No more over-thinking! Instead, you are acknowledging your feelings, processing them, and letting them go.
Benefits of Mindful Meditation
When it comes to mindful meditation, practice makes perfect. Spend time regularly with your spouse practicing meditation and retraining your brains. If you do, you will soon experience these benefits:
Reduces Stress
There is no doubt that stress is the culprit of many unhappy relationships. Stress from work or other circumstances is often taken out on our spouses. This can send relationship satisfaction plummeting and can even negatively affect our libidos. Thankfully, mindful meditation can reduce the stress we feel.
A study about anxiety revealed that those who practiced mindful meditation for eight-weeks showed a reduction in anxiety and an increase in positive self-statements.
Clearer Mind
Humans have a tendency to be incredibly reactive. This can lead to saying things to a loving spouse that we would never dream of saying if we had given ourselves the opportunity to think about our reaction.
Practicing mindful meditation can help us to be less judgemental and more communicative of our partner. Not only does this improve communication levels in our marriage, but it also makes us much easier to talk to.
Healthy Sense of Self
We feel more accomplished when we have goals in mind. It’s why planners and daybooks have become so popular again. It’s a personal checklist for our day, qualities we want to cultivate, habits we want to break – all for our betterment!
When we mindfully meditate, we get a clearer grasp on our reactions and thought-process. Doing this positive form of self-discovery can help boost our sense of self.
Don’t let judgments ruin your chance at a happily ever after. Meditate with your spouse, learn mindfulness, and put the lessons learned from your marriage course to work. Doing so can help you have a happier marriage, deepen communication, reduce stress, and make you a more pleasant person to interact with.