Increase intimacy with your partner with tandem meditation! Not only does it reconnect you, by bringing your breathing into alignment and helping you get more in tune together, but it’s also a beautiful way to support each other in your own personal practices. Plus, meditation has been shown to increase libido. Below, learn techniques to enhance your relationship with meditation.

By Lisa Lewtan -

I had been meditating for a few years before my husband finally agreed to try join me for a session. I casually implied that it might be fun to experience Deepak Chopra and Oprah’s 21-day Meditation Challenge together.

Once I got past the shock of his acceptance, I was giddy with excitement. And so we began! I went out of town three days after we started, and was floored when he called me to make sure I wasn’t falling behind in the challenge. The rest is history.

Since then we have made our meditation together a top priority. Here are five tips to help you and your partner find a meditation practice to call your own:

1. Pick the right time.

Right after school drop-off in the morning works best for us. Attaching this new habit to an already existing habit made it much easier to incorporate meditation into our daily lives. Although weekends and holidays can throw us off track, we always find our way back to our practice.

2. Find the perfect place.

Weather permitting, we head outside and face the trees. Otherwise, our sunroom is the perfect spot — full of natural sunlight and quite peaceful. Having our designated locations pre-decided, takes one more potentially derailing decision out of the way.

3. Compile a list of “enlightened guides.”

We really enjoy guided meditations and our favorites are the Deepak/Oprah Series and Jack Kornfield. There are also of plenty wonderful, guided meditation apps out there to choose from. I try to pick a topic that is pertinent to what is going on in our lives at the time, or just something that seems thought provoking and go from there.

4. Savor the recap of the experience.

Following each session, we take a few minutes to talk about our particular experiences. Often it is about how our minds wandered more than usual or how ironically, we both do this crazy thing where we look up and backwards with our closed eyes. It reminds us that this is a journey and though every day our experiences will feel different, this practice is highly beneficial to our health, happiness, and relationship.

5. Look into each other’s eyes for a few minutes.

I saved this for last because it is a newer discovery that has connected us in a way that goes above and beyond anything I could have ever imagined. In the beginning of each guided meditation, we stare into each other’s eyes for a few minutes. The first time we giggled, the second time I cried, and by the third time we were hooked. Trust me, the benefits of this connectedness go way beyond the experience of meditation itself!

Originally posted on MindBodyGreen.com.

-Art by LovePeaceandHarmony.com