By Paige Leigh Reist|Posted: March 01, 2019
How do we create and maintain happy, loving, fulfilled, and stable relationships? This is one of the most pervasive questions that we have as human beings, one that we ask countless times throughout our lives, and one whose answer is always just a little bit elusive. Some believe that it’s about passion, or respect, or focusing always on your partner--but what if the answer was to be found in something even simpler?
Recently, Art of Living instructors and happily married couple Tasha Sophia Gepner-Dales and Elan Gepner-Dales sat down for a Facebook live session exploring the primary thing that they attribute to maintaining a fulfilling, supportive, and happy marriage: maintaining and nurturing your energy levels. Here’s what they had to say:
How your energy affects your relationships
“It has so much to do with the level of our energy. We experience this throughout our lives. When you have low energy one day, you’re going through your day and everything’s challenging, everything becomes so easily overwhelming. And in a relationship, that’s magnified. We come home from our day carrying everything we had in our day, and we just want to relax. And now here you come into this space, and sometimes it’s beautiful and relaxing, and sometimes that other person has something they need from you, or they’re reflecting back some frustration, whatever it is. So how do we keep that energy really high? That state of mind clear, open, aware, joyous, positive, so that we can be available to that other person, available to learn what is coming from them for us to ain from and to be a support for them? This is the magic question.”
Three core practices to maintain your energy
“What we’ve found, for us as individuals as a unit, we’ve had three core practices or disciplines that have kept that energy high and helped us again and again come back to a positive state of mind. Those three: the first one is healthy, fresh, organic plant-based food. The second is good sleep. Quality sleep. Going to bed early. And then the third one has been meditation for us. And specifically, a very special form of meditation: SKY, or Sudarshan Kriya meditation.”
Committing to yourself first
“[A] relationship is often challenging, but it is a commitment that we take, and when we go out of questioning every moment, is this right? Is this the right person? And spend more time on reflection on how am I showing up and am I really filling myself/ Am I taking a commitment to my own self-care and showing up from that space, then it becomes the richest space of growth and learning and joy and delight. And that is true actually across all of our relationships and our entire life-how we’re relating with ourselves and others. So think a little bit: how do you treat yourself? What is your relationship with yourself? How are you showing up with compassion, patience, forgiveness, for yourself and give a little time and commitment to work on those pieces and make sure you’re giving yourself all the love that you would want to give someone else. Really, because it’s how we treat ourselves that ends up how we treat others.”
Check out the video below for the full conversation, and learn how the practice of Sudarshan Kriya has transformed and maintained Tasha and Elan’s relationship. Tasha also shares some juicy wisdom from Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living Foundation!
Paige Leigh Reist is a writer, editor, blogger, and creative writing instructor.
