Life can be stressful. Everything from hectic days at the office to looming assignment deadlines at college can create dark clouds of anxiety which are difficult to shift. If you’re single and actively seeking a partner, you could add your insecure love life to any list of worries. Focusing on that latter point, if you’ve found your dating experience has been negatively impacted by stress, perhaps you might benefit from sage advice about ways of countering this negativity. There’s a straightforward solution: meditation. Read on to discover how the meditative approach will work wonders for reducing anxiety and guarantee you’ll have a successful digital dating experience.
Why does stress affect online dating?
Let’s face it, being single and on the lookout for prospective partners can be a journey into the unknown! If you go down the route of hanging out in traditional socializing venues – clubs, bars, social clubs, and so on – you have no way of knowing anything about the background or motivations of the other singles you interact with. Plus, it can be expensive going to these places, week-in, week-out! Perhaps you might benefit from finding ways to flirt for free. All you’d have to do would be sign up for an online matching platform, one dedicated to providing a secure, hassle-free environment where singles of every shade and colour can mingle. Algorithms will even help steer you towards others on your wavelength. But the key to successful dating is approaching this from a chilled position. The best way to achieve this? Get into meditating!
Bringing meditation into your leisure time
So, what would be the most recommended ways of getting into meditation? For starters, this is a technique that can be easily mastered once you’ve learned the basics. It’s all about finding a private, secure space, adopting a comfortable pose, then surrendering yourself to this moment, emptying your mind of anxious thoughts. A good tip would be to check out beginner classes which can be found online. There’s lots of valuable advice on YouTube and other areas, but you’ll quickly discover that much of this is intuitive. The more you experiment with focusing on finding inner peace, the easier you’ll find it to succumb to relaxing sessions.
How does meditation work?
The million-dollar question. Before taking on board any of the techniques alluded to here, it would be useful to appreciate exactly how meditation benefits your body, whether you’re intending to start dating, or simply for your life in general. The key word is mindfulness. When you focus on relaxing musings and controlling your breathing, your brain will naturally respond to this situation. Neural connections in this incredibly versatile organ will effectively channel your positive thoughts. This part of your brain is referred to as ‘spatial reasoning,’ and these are the areas responsible for a lot of the hard work you do otherwise – self-awareness, paying attention, and cognitive function. When you meditate, you’ll be calming down your nervous system, strengthening areas you would otherwise take for granted when going through more mundane activities. You’ll eventually develop a mindset where you can tap into this ‘brain power’ to make the most of relaxation. One important thing to keep in mind is meditation itself isn’t some magic bullet that will eliminate all your stresses, certainly not in the early stages. But, as with everything in life, practice makes perfect. When you meditate, you shut out the negative thoughts or worries that can so often niggle at your subconscious, whether you’re actively aware of this process or not.
Recommended techniques
To conclude, find a quiet place and time, a location and window of opportunity where you know you’re not going to get pestered by external annoyances! When is there going to be nobody else at home bar you? Your mobile phone should also be left in another room – there’s nothing more counterproductive to a meditation session than your thoughts being interrupted by a cold caller or even just the constant burr of social media notifications! Once you’re ready to commence, adopt a posture you find comfortable. The so-called Lotus position is commonly used, but novices don’t always possess the correct degree of suppleness to achieve this. A good suggestion would be to undertake basic exercise before getting into meditation. A brisk walk will get your blood pumping and release feel-good hormones. Do some stretches. Once you feel you’re ready, find somewhere appropriate. Take deep breaths while running through a mantra. Mantras are the simple phrases you can go over as you sink into the meditative state. An online search will produce a never-ending supply of these, or you could always dream up some of your own. Once you’ve learned them off by heart, say them, chant them, or even hum or sing. Alternatively, think of this mantra while deep breathing. Now, you’re meditating!
MindOwl Founder – My own struggles in life have led me to this path of understanding the human condition. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy before completing a master’s degree in psychology at Regent’s University London. I then completed a postgraduate diploma in philosophical counselling before being trained in ACT (Acceptance and commitment therapy).
I’ve spent the last eight years studying the encounter of meditative practices with modern psychology.
