How Yoga Will Help Your Marriage and Sex Life
by Stephanie Cain, BRIDES
Photo: Getty Images
Any new wife has heard that the transition to ordinary married life can take a toll on the spiciness of bedroom life. But we have one solution that will keep the bum tight and the sexual intimacy engaged: partner yoga.
Your average yoga teacher will tell you that the ancient practice will decrease stress, tone your muscles, and better your mood. What they probably won’t tell you is that it’ll improve your sex life, both physically and emotionally. Research shows that yogis report enhanced desire and overall sexual gratification.
But partner yoga, also called acro yoga, has the added benefit that it forces a couple to communicate in a new way. “It is the yoga of trust,” explained acro yoga instructor Daniel Scott. “Where ‘normal’ yoga focuses on the individual, acro yoga creates partnership by requiring people to communicate with compassion and truth — verbally, physically and energetically.”
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Check out these five ways partner yoga helps you get it on.
1. Builds trust
Partner yoga involves contorting and balancing two bodies together, creating a sense of vulnerability. To achieve the postures, you need to completely trust that your partner will hold you up or catch you if you fall. It’s easier said than done, of course. The trick is to learn to relax in each posture, a calming exercise that can be practiced on and off the mat.
2. Shapes muscle in all the right places
Yoga’s muscle-building reputation benefits more than a tight bum. The acrobatic elements of partner yoga increases core strength and flexibility, both useful for changing up the regular romp. Additionally, the engagement of your pelvic floor muscles in various poses works like Kegels — it conditions your “sexual muscles” and increases blood flow to the region.
3. Forces teamwork
Partner yoga challenges couples to communicate and collaborate in tough situations: elaborate contortions and demanding balances. By learning to think on your feet (or hands) and find solutions and harmony with a sense of calmness, couples practice a necessary skill for making it through a marriage.
4. Reduces stress
The number one reason why women can’t get in the mood is stress, and a top reason people seek yoga is stress reduction. Put the two together! The concentration on the breath and elegant movement through postures in a yoga class has been proven to decrease stress hormones. How that links to sex is that sex hormones increase as stress hormones lower, allowing you to feel more free to hop in bed.
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5. Turns on the sex hormones
The breathing techniques of yoga, called pranayama, cause the body to release the same chemicals in the brain that sex does, leaving a yogi after a long practice with that same blissful feeling as an orgasm from erotic activity. The quick inhales and exhales of Kapalabhati breathing shuts down the cortex of the brain, responsible for higher thinking, and allows your limbic system, part of the primitive brain, to release sex hormones.
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