Does Meditation Improve the Quality of Your Relationships?

As researchers study and investigate the nature of meditation and its wide range of benefits, they are finding that it does much more than improve the quality of well-being for a singular organism. In fact, the question has started arising as to whether or not meditation is an effective tool for improving the quality of relationships with others and creating more sensitive and compassionate connections between human beings.

In this discussion, we will examine how meditation will take your relationships with your family, friends and partners to levels that may have been unbeknownst to you, and how you can meditate with your loved ones to skyrocket your ability as a friend, a companion, and a lover.

Heightens Self-Awareness

In many respects, meditation is turning our attention inward and focusing on ourselves. As such, we gain more awareness of our internal environment and begin to notice things about ourselves that perhaps we didn’t notice before. Emotional wounds begin to surface, undigested traumas make themselves known, addictions become apparent and we discover a profound capacity to accept ourselves completely.

This heightened sense of self-awareness propels us into higher states of being and observation that allow for us to respond with more mindfulness and tact in our relationships. It also encourages us to act out of our highest nature rather than aligning with our pains and insecurities and projecting those onto our loved ones and partners.

Promotes Positivity

It goes without saying, that being around a person with a positive attitude and demeanor is much more pleasant than one who is miserable and stressed out all the time. When we are positive, our capacity for productivity, openness, vulnerability, creativity, and compassion is increased, making it a fertile state of being for any relationship.

Meditation ushers in feelings of self-acceptance that make us more willing to reside in a positive state of mind, and therefore makes it much easier to foster healthier relationships with our families, friends, and partners.

Enhances Feelings of Connection with Self and Others

Empathy, compassion, and kindness are key to cultivating healthy relationships with others. Being around someone who is always absorbed in their victim mindset and wallowing in their own misery can be a real bummer, and meditation is a great way to release said negativity and return to one’s natural state of compassion.

Engaging in mindfulness meditations will usher in feelings of gratitude and appreciation, which ultimately allow for greater feelings of kindness to shine through into our intimate relationships. In fact, I can think back to a recent relationship where my unprocessed pain, denial, and shame created distance between my partner and me.

Instead of addressing these things in a healthy manner, I suppressed them with drugs and alcohol and only allowed them to fester and grow into monstrous shadows of the natural pains from which they grew. If I had chosen to meditate and address these things in a more healthy manner, I would have been able to minimize the distance between my partner and I and foster a healthy environment where the deeper connection could be experienced.

Allows for Stress to be Relieved in a Healthy Way

As human beings in this physical realm, it is only natural that we get stressed. Whether it is about bills, relationships, work, or health problems, we all get stressed throughout the course of our daily lives. Yet, many of us lose ourselves to these bouts of angst and allow them to derail us from our paths of productivity, mindfulness, and positivity.

Meditation is a magnificent tool for relieving these stresses in a healthy way. Through shining the light of our awareness on the things that are stressing us out and weighing us down, we can allow them an outlet to be addressed and released without drastic repercussions.

In “Why Good People Do Bad Things” by Debbie Ford, she talks about how our stresses and unprocessed pains are like human lava. If we don’t create steam vents for this pressure to be released in healthy ways, it eventually erupts in deleterious ways that damage our reputations, health, and relationships. Meditation proves to be an extremely effective outlet for releasing this tension, thus allowing for more presence and clarity in our relationships.

Increases Mindfulness

Mindfulness, in short, is heightened attention and awareness in one’s life. In being more mindful, we have an increased capacity for gratitude, compassion, empathy, and vulnerability. Essentially, we become better equipped to act out of our higher nature and nurture our relationships from a clearer perspective apart from our pains and traumas. When we react out of our negative emotions and pains, we are being mindless in our interactions, and typically end up regretting our bouts of rage in retrospect later on.

When we meditate, we usher in our true nature of being mindful and allow ourselves to navigate our relationships with more love and less fear. For instance, if your boyfriend or girlfriend is hanging out with a friend of the opposite sex, it is only natural that you may experience feelings of insecurity, fear, and possibly even jealousy. If you align with these feelings, you may end up ridiculing your partner with inconsiderate comments, the silent treatment, or maybe even prying into their text messages to satiate your feelings of mistrust. However, these actions will only create more distance and foster more feelings of jealousy, mistrust, and insecurity between the two of you.

If we were to choose meditation instead of aligning with such negative feelings, we would feel more in control of ourselves, more confident in our actions and responses, and more able in our ability to communicate our feelings truthfully and clearly. Mindfulness is being aware of oneself and the environment of which we are a part of, and it can usher in new paradigms of freedom and connection in relationships of all calibers.

Dyadic Meditation

Meditation works wonders on a personal level, but what about when one meditates with their partner? This process, called Dyadic Meditation, has numerous benefits when it comes to increasing the quality of relationships. A study conducted by the Max Plank Institute in Germany proposes that this form of meditation actually fosters a greater sense of openness, vulnerability, and connection with others, in particular with peoples’ partners.

In engaging in meditation with your partner, you will see your capacity for open-communication with one another increase greatly, and you will even notice yourselves become closer than you may have thought possible.

Meditation for ages has remained a mysterious practice of ancient proportions. As we progress in our ability to investigate and research many different processes and practices, we are finding that the benefits of meditation reach far beyond our minuscule predispositions. So, if you and your partner are looking for ways to grow closer and improve the nature of your relationship apart from couples’ counseling, try meditating with and without each other to see your relationship blossom into new states that you didn’t know were possible.