Yoga for Marriage

I'll be honest.

There are a lot of marriages crashing down around me. I am grateful that mine is not one of them, but all the craziness does make me aware of how hard everyone involved needs to work to keep a marriage happy and healthy.

A friend was talking to me the other day about some of her problems with her marriage. After she told me the story she said, "So, I think I need to go to counseling."

"Amen," I thought. "It is about time someone came up with that plan on their own instead of me trying to make them go."

"I think that is a good idea," I said to her. "I believe in therapy. Therapy and Yoga."

She kind of laughed at the yoga part, but I was dead serious. I believe that yoga can have an amazingly healing influence on our relationships.

It is mostly because Yoga is about personal awareness and acceptance, and a lot of relationship problems involve a lack of awareness and acceptance on both ends.

So, I believe in yoga for marriage.

Remember the word "yoga" comes from the word "yoked," which means balanced. The goal of yoga is to create balance in your life by practicing the art of keeping your mind, body and spirit balanced. This is why a yoga session is called a yoga "practice." The session or class is just a practice for when you really need to be balanced -- which is during your everyday life.

So, I think yoga can save marriages. (It can probably also stop bad ones from forming in the first place.)

When I do yoga, I am constantly striving to be aware of my own limitations. These limitations are not just in my body when I can't do a headstand or whatever. They are mostly in my thinking. Every now and then (ok, a lot of the time) I will find myself thinking negatively about someone else during a yoga class. "Look at that girl who walks in late and then does every pose all perfect in her skimpy little gym outfit....I bet she is not even listening to her body. She can't possibly be as enlightened as me."

Without fail, if I try a little harder to get into a yogic spirit, something will happen in class that opens my eyes. Maybe she falls out of tree pose before me or maybe I learn how to do a new pose by watching her form or listening to her breath. Either way my thoughts and feeling and maybe even my abilities are changed. And I walk away more aware of my own strength and weaknesses and how they might be affecting my life. Weak things become strong things.

A friend had this problem: "He wants me to change fundamental things about myself, and I think that is ridiculous."

Another friend said," There are lots of things I don't like about him, but I just assume I should learn to live with them. But then I am really mean to him because he bugs me."

Just about everyone I know has run across this problem OR its opposite, "He just won't stop spending money!"

Yoga, my friends.

Balance. Awareness. New perspectives. He needs to see you, and you need to see him. Yoga can help.

My ideas about marriage and my relationship with Tim have changed a lot over our six years as a married couple. A lot of those changes in my thinking have come from better understanding what he wants in our relationship and being willing to give up some of my previous expectations when I realize they just do not jive with his.

I might have been that wife who does everything with her husband. Takes him to the store. Asks him his advice on everything. Holds hands in public. Does not make decisions alone ... but when it comes down to it, Tim doesn't like shopping and he needs his own space. Instead of fighting it, I just refocus on enjoying the things I enjoy and appreciating my space.

There are poses I would love to be able to do in yoga. Some are never going to happen, and so I stop wasting my emotional energy on them. Other will come with patience and time. And I am reminding of these things every time I step on a mat.

I am not always very nice. Tim doesn't fight back very often. But occasionally when I accuse him of something (small, like being lazy or not wanting to spent time with me) he'll say something like, "How is that fair? You get to do whatever you want." I'm grateful for these moments because he is mostly right. I don't want him to come home and read the news online when he could be talking to me, but If I want to be doing something on the computer IT IS IMPORTANT SO LEAVE ME ALONE AND TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS UNTIL I AM DONE!

Yoga is about knowing when to push and when to pull. It is about being aware of your whole self in each moment and not assuming you or anyone else is the same as they were yesterday.

Balance. Change of perspectives. Awareness of limits, strengths, and weaknesses. Awareness and acceptance of others' limits, strength and weakness. Love, peace, energy. Rejuvenation.

I believe in Yoga.

And therapy.

And Zoloft ... when it comes to that. :)