Why are romantic partnerships often challenging at times? Even in a healthy and loving relationship, it’s not always easy. Being close to someone usually requires you to face aspects of yourself on a deep and personal level that can sometimes be uncomfortable.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, we decided to talk about three important keys to help you cultivate more depth and connection within your romantic partnership. All three of these are based on the principles and philosophy of Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong.
Relationships can have a powerful effect on your internal energy.
When you’re close to someone, your thoughts and emotions inevitably shift and transform. There can be many rich and fulfilling experiences and challenges at times. To navigate the beautiful dance of partnership, having a strong foundation within yourself is important.
Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong recognize that your relationships with others start with your relationship with yourself. To connect and create from a place of strength and love, you must first cultivate those qualities within yourself. It can be incredibly difficult to connect deeply and authentically without truly knowing who you are and loving yourself.
One way to strengthen your relationship with yourself is to spend time alone doing something you love.
Whether it’s art, music, exercise, or Qi Gong, it’s great to have a personal practice that helps you connect deeply with yourself. This allows you to truly orient yourself to your inner truths and stay in touch with personal dreams and values.
It’s also important to build self-esteem and confidence separate from your role as a partner. It’s best if your role as a husband, wife, or other form of partner, isn’t your entire identity. Remember you are a person with your own thoughts, feelings, desires, and needs.
Even if you have a strong connection with your partner, your internal energy system requires time and attention. And while hopefully your partnership nourishes you in many ways, there are things that no one else can give you. Therefore, always remember to continue cultivating your own inner strength and authenticity from the inside out. Doing so will help support you, your partner, and your relationship.
One of the foundational principles of Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong is balance. It’s important to have strength within yourself, but it’s also important to find flow and flexibility with your partner. In other words, within your relationship, you want to stay true to yourself while being fluid and willing to compromise at times.
In Qi Gong, the Water Element embodies the quality of flow and flexibility, which are essential in relationships. If you look at a rushing river, you’ll see how the water effortlessly adapts to its environment as it flows as one connected river to the sea.
Similarly, learning to do the same dance as Water in partnerships is important. There will inevitably be times when you and your partner don’t have the same perspective or preference. Instead of clashing over your differences, it’s important to have tolerance and peace in those areas. Sometimes, this means making some compromises or sacrifices. At other times, it might mean accepting that you see things differently and respecting other’s views.
What doesn’t work is trying to force your partner to see everything exactly like you do or to have the same preferences in every situation. That is not the way of the Water Element. In a healthy partnership, both individuals learn to truly accept their partner for who they are and find flow together regardless of their differences.
If you can harness this skill in your partnership, it will also help you find flow with the world around you.
Change is the only thing constant in life. The world changes, individuals grow, and relationships evolve. For sustained harmony and connection over time, it’s important that you and your partner are able to grow together.
Partners who embrace growth can support one another through big life transitions and changes. Whether it’s career developments, building a family, or becoming grandparents together, life is one big roller coaster of change and evolution. To truly grow together, it’s important to support one another at every step of the journey.
Sometimes, growth is easy to embrace. For example, embracing an exciting move to a new city or getting a pet that you both want might be easy. At other times, change is more difficult, but those times are often opportunities for immense growth.
If you reflect on these three principles, you may notice a theme. There is a strong Yin/Yang quality to healthy relationships. On the one hand, healthy relationships require both individuals to be strong and stay connected to their inner truth. On the other, both individuals must learn how to be fluid and flexible to find flow with one another and embrace growth.
Practicing Qi Gong offers many benefits for relationships, but one of the most powerful is its ability to profoundly strengthen your relationship with yourself—and your partner.
When you practice Qi Gong regularly, it helps you cultivate a strong and self-aware relationship with yourself. Not only does this help you enjoy life more fully, but it also helps build a great foundation for your romantic relationship.
Our two-week Qi Gong Trial is an excellent way to give Qi Gong a try and start building a consistent practice. When you sign up, you’ll get access to online Qi Gong classes taught by master teacher Lee Holden. Click on the banner below to discover how Qi Gong can help you feel your best individually and within your relationship.
