3 Ways Mindfulness Will Improve Your Relationship
Mindfulness can improve your relationships in many ways by changing how you connect and interact with others. Here are some of the reasons that mindfulness matters in a relationship:
1. Mindfulness helps you to understand your partner's needs.
How many times have you been having a conversation with your partner and you're not really hearing a thing that they're saying? Or you're busy trying to guess what they're thinking and feeling while they're talking without actually giving them a chance to explain themselves? You may get distracted while they're expressing their needs and not even hear what they're saying. These things have become normal for all of us but practicing mindfulness allows us to recognize these behaviors when they're happening so that we can focus on our partner.
This means that we can be present so that we have a better idea of what they need from us. It allows us to notice if we start checking our e-mail in the middle of the conversation so that we can stop and put our phone away. It helps us to hear what our partner is expressing to us so we can acknowledge what they're saying and how they feel without trying to guess what we can do for them. For example, instead of trying to give them solutions for the frustration they experienced at work that day maybe you can empathize with them about how hard their day actually was so that they know you're hearing them. After all, sometimes your partner wants your presence and doesn't actually want you to try to problem solve for them but you won't pick up on that if you aren't mindful.
2. Mindfulness can decrease stress in relationships.
Relationships can be stressful and it is sometimes because we aren't really living in the present moment. We often bring up issues from the past over and over again and we react to current situations based on something that has happened in the past. Did your partner forget to pick up milk on the way home from work? Do you react by reminding them about all the times they've forgotten to take out the garbage, not helped out with the cleaning, or did something else that really pissed you off instead of recognizing that they had a busy day and it slipped their mind? Being mindful of the current moment and the present situation decreases a lot of unnecessary stress on your relationship.
3. Mindfulness allows you to appreciate the good moments more often in your relationship.
By paying attention to what you are doing with your partner, you will be able to enjoy the good moments in your life more because you're going to be able to experience them more fully. This means that when you're doing something with your partner, you're going to actually be present during it. You're going to be more aware of how you are feeling and you're going to be able to experience those feelings and sensations in your body as well.
You're no longer going to be drifting off into space thinking about the chores you should have done or the fight you had last week. When you catch yourself doing that (because let's be real -- this takes time to learn!) you're going to be able to re-focus on what you're doing that moment whether you are enjoying your favorite TV show together, cooking a nice dinner, or even laughing together on a drive somewhere.
Now that you've read about why mindfulness matters, here are some quick tips to get you started in using it in your relationships. Pause before you speak, bring yourself back to the present when you get distracted, and most importantly --- go easy on yourself as you start this new practice!! You will start seeing small changes but it takes time to create new habits so be patient when it doesn't happen overnight (although we wish it would)!
Nicole Liloia, LCSW is a therapist and coach who helps women step out of stress and overwhelm so that they can achieve success on their own terms and design a lifestyle and business that is full of freedom and flexibility. By stepping out of their comfort zones, her clients are able to create a life that they are passionate about. She is the creator the Live More E-Course and can be found at www.nicoleliloia.com.
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10-Minute Yoga Sequence for Meditation
Instructions: For a 10-minute practice, do 4 rounds of the following sequence (a round is the sequence practiced on both the right and left sides). In round 1, hold each pose for 30 seconds, or 5-6 breaths. In rounds 2 and 3, hold each pose for 10-12 seconds, or 2 breaths. And in round 4, hold each pose for 5-6 seconds, or 1 breath.
Warm up in Mountain Pose
Start in Samasthiti (Equal Standing) or Tadasana (Mountain Pose), pressing your feet into the floor. Place your hands in Anjali Mudra at the center of your chest. As you inhale, lift your arms overhead; as you exhale, bring them back to Anjali Mudra. Repeat for 1-2 minutes..
High Lunge
From Tadasana, on an inhalation, gracefully step your left foot back about 2 to 3 feet behind you, placing it on the floor with care. Be mindful during the transition. Exhale as you bend your right knee so that it is directly above your right ankle, with your right thigh as parallel to the floor as possible. Keep both legs equally active, pushing both feet into the floor to find balance.
Warrior Pose II
Virabhadrasana II
Carefully plant your left foot flat on your mat, turning the toes out slightly to create a close-to-60-degree angle. Line up your front heel with your back arch. Do not lean forward or arch your back. Maintain spinal awareness, keeping your shoulders above your hips, lower ribs pulled in, and your core engaged. Actively extend your arms and feel your legs ground down.
Reverse Warrior
Keep the lower half of your body exactly the same as you extend your right arm up and back. Place your left arm along your left leg but don't apply any weight. Feel your back muscles engage as you transition from Warrior Pose II to Reverse Warrior. Keep your sternum lifted so that your spine stays long. Take full and rhythmic breaths. Inhale to come back to Warrior II.
Humble Warrior, variation
Interlace your fingers behind your back. Contract your leg muscles, then slowly exhale to lower your chest and right shoulder carefully to the inside of your right knee. Maintain equal weight in both feet. Feel your chest and shoulders open while you reach your arms over your head. Breathe fully and deeply. Inhale to lift the chest, exhale to release the hands, and come back to Tadasana. Complete the sequence in Savasana.
Don't stop now! Practice the 20 minute sequence for meditation.
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Feel Better with 3 Modifcations for Downward-Facing Dog
Ahh, Downward-Facing Dog—so peaceful, so restorative, so blissful. And such a long journey to get to that point. Even though it may be a "resting" pose for me now, for a long time, it required just as much work and effort as any other strength-building posture. My shoulders would tremble, my back would round, and my hamstrings were so tight I thought they might snap if I held it for too long. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention my wrists. Holy cow, I remember thinking they would never feel comfortable!
Thank goodness I was wrong. Even the most experienced yogis had similar beginnings, and I always remind my students that in yoga, progress is inevitable. But until then, it's always nice to have some options. Am I right?
Modification 1: Knees Bent
This version is a classic for a reason. This is my go-to adjustment when your heels won't touch the mat (which, by the way, is not incorrect!) or when your hamstrings and calves are on the tight side. Bending the knees can help you keep the integrity of the pose without sacrificing proper alignment.
Modification 2: Heels Supported
When your heels are more than a couple inches from the mat and the calves and achilles are so tight that you can't hold Downward-Facing Dog without your legs shaking, bringing the mat closer to you can help. Placing a rolled-up towel or mat under your heels frees up the whole body. Instead of muscling through the shakes, it can seek its fullest expression of the pose. Keep the legs active in this modification. It is easy to completely relax the quadriceps, lock out the knees, round the back, and dump your weight forward in to the shoulders and wrists, which will only cause pain in the upper body. Keeping a slight bend in the knees makes it easier to tilt the pelvis up and back, so you can lengthen the hamstrings and take the pressure out of the wrists. Don't let this trick take all the effort out of your pose. You can do it!
Modification 3: One Forearm Down
If your wrists bother you, try this Dolphin-Dog hybrid. This anatomically sound option allows you to stay with the flow of a class while giving your wrists a bit of a break—one at a time. This modification plays nicely with others, too. You can still keep a towel rolled under your heels and/or bend your knees if that's what feels good for you. In other words, you don't have to choose resting your wrists over accommodating tight hamstrings. Modifications that build on each other are my favorites!
About Erin Motz
"Listen, I'm not your traditional yogi: I'm the carnivorous, red wine, and French cheese-loving type and I teach vinyasa flow. My aim is to keep my classes fun and accessible, both in the studio and online. You won't hear much Sanskrit, I totally forgive you if you don't know your asana from your elbow, and I firmly believe that yoga is for everyone, from the kale-loving vegan to the prize-winning deer hunter. I may be a Bad Yogi, but if I'm being totally honest, teaching yoga has been one of my greatest pleasures; I practice to feed my teaching, but I teach to feed my life."
—Erin Motz
Want to modify other yoga poses? Start with adjusting your chaturanga.
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Distracted, Bloody Fool!
It's almost as if James Bond was trying to warn us about distracted driving way back in 1957, when From Russia with Love was first published in hardcover.
"You bloody fool," Bond exclaimed. "Why the hell can't you take more care?"
Mr. Bond's admonition holds special resonance on this April Fools' Day, which also marks the kick-off of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. Today alone, an estimated 9 people will be killed, and over 1,000 injured, in distracted driving crashes throughout the U.S.
Texting while driving, and other forms of distracted driving, are responsible for over 1,000,000 crashes, 400,000 injuries, and 3,000 fatalities in the U.S. each year. And the numbers have barely moved over the past several years.
In public opinion surveys, large majorities say that distracted driving is a serious problem. But, behind the wheel, millions of us continue to take foolish risks. We take their eyes off the road to look up a phone number or place a call. Or, some of us up the ante, taking both hands off the wheel and using our knees to steer, while we tap out a text message on a digital device that we've hidden on our lap to avoid detection by police.
News reports are replete with stories of distracted drivers striking school children in crosswalks, pedestrians on sidewalks, troopers at road stops, bikers, road crews in work zones, and families in oncoming cars.
The problem of distracted driving will only intensify with the rapid proliferation of highly sophisticated in-car infotainment systems offering a vast array of new distractions.
Meanwhile, extensive research at Virginia Tech and elsewhere has found that when drivers take their eyes off the road for longer than 2 seconds to interact with a digital device, the risk of causing a crash or near-crash spikes 3-fold, reaching the risk level of a drinking driver with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit of 0.08.
But studies have shown that, on average, it takes a whopping 4.6 seconds -- not 2 seconds -- to type and send a text message. When traveling at 55 miles per hour, 4.6 seconds is equivalent to driving the full length of a football field while blindfolded. Everyone else is placed at risk as a "blindfolded" driver barrels down the road on a three-ton machine.
So here's a question: How tough are we as a society prepared to be to shift the perceived ratio of pain and gain in order to get "blindfolded" drivers -- including ourselves -- off the road?
So far, the answer has been, not very tough at all. Unlike a DUI offense, the message that current laws send to distracted drivers is more like "Hey, please don't!" In some states, the fine for texting while driving is the same as for an expired parking meter. In some other states, there is no fine at all.
Here are some other questions:
Should distracted driving infractions that occur in school zones, in work zones, and at police road-stops, be singled out for sharply enhanced penalties and reportable points -- to save lives, to send a message, to facilitate concentrated enforcement efforts, and to disrupt the learned behavior of distracted drivers?
Should looking away from the forward direction of the vehicle for a duration of greater than two seconds -- creating a risk of bodily harm comparable to that of a DUI offense -- be enshrined in state laws as a per se distracted-driving infraction? And, would that help with enforcement?
Some have pointed out, correctly, that there's nothing new about distracted driving, and it's always taken many forms -- eating food, talking to passengers, dealing with children, reaching for an object, reading billboards, or accompanying a song on the radio. The challenge today is that the use of new technologies is sharply increasing the degree of danger, above and far beyond the longstanding, baseline level of risk. The policy question is, where are we going to draw the line?
In a head-to-head race against time, the laborious pace at which public policy evolves is no match for the Usain Bolt-like speed of technological change: For example, would a ban on handheld devices be applicable to the new Apple Watch? To remain relevant, our public policies on distracted driving may need to sidestep the specific technologies and focus instead on such measures as eyes-on-the-road. Over time, new technology will solve the distracted driving problem that technology created. Eye-tracking devices mounted on the dash or rearview mirror will monitor the driver's mental state for signs of distraction, and will sound an alarm. Eventually -- 10 to 20 years from now -- self-driving cars will enable us to text to our heart's content. But, until technology provides the ultimate fix, the carnage on our roads will continue, and may even grow worse before it gets better. But it doesn't have to.
Back in the 1980s, driving-after-drinking was a widely accepted practice that was highly resistant to change. It took a combination of aggressive advocacy efforts by groups like MADD, solid research, enactment of tough state laws, well-publicized enforcement of those laws, and high-profile media campaigns aimed at changing social norms, to slowly-but-surely turn the tide. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved -- and a comparable success can assuredly be achieved against distracted driving.
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6 Tips for Exercising When You Don't Have Time
Trust me -- I get it! As a full-time working mom with four small children, I'm plagued with not enough hours in the day. So here are six simple tips to keep you consistently working out.
1. Schedule it.
Busy people must schedule their workouts. I mean it. Open up your google calendar, iCal or your appointment book and schedule it into your day (just as you would a dentist appointment). This ensures you DO have the time each day.
If your schedule is always jam packed, you can't start the day thinking you're going to fit exercise in somewhere.
2. Keep your scheduled appointment.
Now that your exercise is scheduled, keep your appointment! Don't change it, reschedule it, or skip it. You'd never skip an important work meeting then tell your boss, "I didn't feel like showing up today." Your health and well-being is just as important (if not more!) than any other appointment. Honor yourself.
3. Exercise first thing in the morning.
Most of us don't have business meetings and doctors' appointments at 5:30 a.m. This is prime time to get your workouts done since you'll never have conflicting appointments. I realize morning workouts sound brutal to most people, but after two weeks you get used to it. I promise!
4. Mix up your workouts.
Day one, do a HIIT workout. Day two, lift heavy weights. Day three, increase joint mobility with yoga. Boredom is one of the biggest reasons why people don't stick with an exercise program. Don't wake up and run every day. You've got to mix it up.
5. Make it fun.
The more fun you have while exercising, the more likely you are to do it. On weekends go for a long bike ride or hike with your family. Or, do your normal exercise routine with your family. On the weekends I workout with my girls. Their energy is contagious and we laugh the whole time (which burns more calories!). I also do yoga once a week with my husband. We look forward to this mini-date.
6. Join a fitness accountability group.
Let's face it. It's easy to give up on yourself, because nobody knows if you skipped your workout (or ate an entire cake!). By joining a support group, you're forced to stay accountable, because others are looking for you to check in that day. It's like having your own team of cheerleaders. You feed off their energy which propels you forward.
There you have it -- six simple tips to keep workouts consistent. The better the consistency, the better the results!
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Do You Kiss Yourself in the Mirror
This practice, while adorable in childhood, would be called narcissistic, vain and self-absorbed if done by an adult. I for one would probably burst out in a fit of nervous laughter if told to kiss my reflection. I'm not sure if I can even say the words, "I love myself," without feeling a little bit awkward. Even smiling proudly at what looks back at me is tough.
I'm sure I'm not alone. Young children don't yet have those feelings of shame and self doubt. Though sadly I'm hearing of kids having body image and other self-esteem issues at earlier ages than ever before. Is it not long before my son succumbs to those negative feelings? Will my own words and actions unintentionally lead him to feel badly about himself? Will I know what to say if he asks me why he is not as tall as so-and-so, or as smart, or as popular?
I know that before I can ask my son to love himself, I have to love myself first. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like that is no easy task. I look in the mirror and see flaws, I read about others accomplishments and feel inadequate, I question my life and feel unsatisfied.
Becoming a parent has forced me to challenge all of those things. When you need to be there for your child, there is little room for self doubt. There is barely enough time to think about anything. Still, there are those moments when negativity creeps in and fills your head with shame and self-loathing.
We teach our children to love themselves. We praise their accomplishments and tell them how wonderful they are. We hope they never feel a moment of shame and unworthiness. We do all this for our children, and maybe we should do more of this for ourselves.
In the story of Narcissus, Narcissus drowns after becoming infatuated with his reflection in the water. This story is held up as the ultimate cautionary tale of the danger of loving oneself too much. I think it's time for a new interpretation. I think we could all use the chance to completely drown ourselves in love. Are you ready to take the plunge?
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