7 Ways Couples Yoga Will Transform Your Relationship

You’re a spiritual person. And your partner is, too.

To nurture and enhance both of your spirits, you should give couples yoga a try. “While a personal yoga practice comes first,” Yoga Journal notes, “practicing with your partner can add a new dimension to your relationship and to your sex life.” It forges connections through movement, play, and touch. After all, “yoga” means union in Sanskrit.

Here are just 7 benefits of couples yoga (there are many more).

1. Couples yoga enhances physical and emotional support in relationships

Both partners are required to be fully engaged and present during a routine. They must rely on one another for getting into poses, and for maintaining balance and focus. This can aid in strengthening the connection between you and your partner.

2. Couples yoga creates shared moments

Couples yoga is about giving and receiving. Conscious intention is all that matters. You learn to place deeper trust in your partner. And you experience the buoyancy that comes from letting someone receive your weight.

3. Couples yoga forces you to let go

Couples yoga is all about learning to have fun and letting go of heavier emotions. It promotes a childlike approach to life, and it teaches you how to live fully in the moment. “Acknowledge the emotion or experience you are working through and allow yourself to let go,” Yoga Today advises.

4. Couples yoga lets you practice intimacy

All relationships have their rough patches — what better way to get over them than by having fun and creating a sense of unity? By cultivating a couples yoga practice you learn not to take yourself or your partner too seriously. Your yoga studio will become safe space where you can forget all your problems for a few hours.

5. In trusting others, you also learn to trust yourself more

Couples yoga gives you an opportunity to grow in that trust. It reveals the beauty of being interdependent and interconnected. It requires us to be vulnerable. This trust and vulnerability helps us to establish deeper connections with our partners. We can accomplish a lot more, with much more joy and ease, when we support and trust one another.

6. Couples yoga promotes a keener sense of your body in space

Touch is an essential part of any romantic relationship. As Elephant Journal notes, couples yoga offers your partner and you “an opportunity to deepen your kinesthetic awareness — your consciousness of the placement and movement of your body in space.” Being touched by another person is also very healing, and it can increase awareness of ourselves and the other person. Couples yoga provides this opportunity. The intimate touch involved in couples yoga enables us to open ourselves to greater depths of our body and minds.

7. Couples yoga increases relational balance

All relational patterns have a particular tendency. Sometimes we can be too overly sensitive and yielding to others. This can disrupt healthy boundaries of self. Other times, we can be too guarded. And this hinders us from making authentic connections with other people. With couples yoga, there is no giver or receiver in a pose. Both partners must be fully engaged in their own experiences. And they must support one another in order to create a perfect sense of balance.

Say Namaste to deeper intimacy

In a nutshell, practicing partner yoga can help bring your relationship into balance while building companionship, trust, compassion, intimacy, and so much more. And there’s research behind it. “A 2000 study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reveals couples who try challenging physical acts together report greater satisfaction with their relationships,” Newsweek reports. Although doing yoga together with your partner can be tough at times, through it you gain mutual respect for the holistic health and wellness of both yourself and others. You deepen your bond in a lasting way.