12 Easy Couple Yoga Poses: A Step-By-Step Guide To Cultivate Trust

There seems to be more to couples yoga than an impressive snap for social media. In fact, there’s quite a bit more. Exercise can help couples develop a deep bond with one another. Yoga can serve as an activity that helps bring you and your partner closer. You both can achieve your goals with extra support and accountability. Participating in an activity together helps to increase satisfaction and bring one another closer.

Yoga Benefits For You And Your Partner

There is a plethora of evidence supporting couples that workout together have added benefit. Couples report to have a more intimate relationship and can withstand tougher obstacles. This is because of their ability to be more adaptive to their partner’s needs. There are also advantages to our performance and consistency. But also to how we connect emotionally to our partner.  In more ways than one, staying active alongside our partner brings happiness and a closer bond.

Yoga, specifically, requests us to look inwardly through an honest reflection. When welcoming your partner into this space, you’re able to listen to each other’s needs. This is on an emotional and spiritual level, or regarding poses, a physical level too.

Increases Happiness

Working out with one another can increase the enjoyment you and your partner have with the relationship. We gain satisfaction by participating in an activity with a common goal and objective. This type of participation also increases physiological arousal among one another and increases our happiness in the relationship.

You can see these benefits in other sports activities such as jogging or an activity class like kickboxing or dance. However, yoga asks you to rely on each other’s communication and support to achieve the posture. That’s why it’s the perfect workout to bond with your partner.

Improves Efficiency/Accountability

There is a theory that when someone is watching during our activity, we are more present in how we approach the task. We want to improve our efficiency at performance with the maneuver.  We are also bringing more energy into each movement and having more accountability.

By having your partner present during yoga, you are also strengthening the relationship. Yoga asks for us to release tension and to rid our bodies of negative energy. In this way, we lower our defense walls to be more vulnerable. We engage in the present moment with our partner and to complete the task at hand.

Achieves Goal(s)

Having someone help be a team player and offer added support to your goals always benefits us to get where we need to be much sooner. We’re comforted knowing that someone is there on our fitness journey and can support them. For couples who practice yoga, you may even experience support on other levels, such as spiritual or emotional. This support is because of the many yoga practice layers incorporated to achieve a deeper bond with our loved ones.

Participating in yoga with one another can also help couples to achieve a common goal. Because you and your partner are focusing on a specific pose, you both will work together. Listening to one another to achieve the pose. To maneuver into these positions, you both will have to listen to verbal and non-verbal cues.

Emotional Bond

With support in exercise, especially in yoga postures, you’re becoming in-tuned with one another through body language as well as traditional verbal communication. You’re learning each other’s strengths and limitations. While becoming aware of behaviors unspoken. This is intuitively recognizing your partner’s feelings.

Practicing yoga also makes us more sensitive to the world around us. We learn to shut our mouths and open our minds to becoming more aware of our actions and behaviors. We’re capable of reading the room and others with much more ease. Performing yoga poses with your partner means that you will be more open and honest in your conversations. You will also become more comfortable with being open and honest with yourself.

Yoga Poses For Couples

Yoga works as a beautiful option for couples to introduce in their workout routines. It challenges various aspects of their relationships and connects the mind and body. In learning how this works within ourselves, we learn to recognize others’ behaviors and traits. This is an important component to developing meaningful relationships. If you’re just getting started or you’ve been a long-time yogi, consider the below poses to do with your partner.

Easy Yoga Poses

If you’ve never tried yoga poses, let alone trying poses that incorporate more than just your own body. These poses are a good starting base to get you and your partner started. They’re straightforward and can be quickly introduced into regular workout routines.

1.Adho Mukha Sukhasana Anuvittasana –  Forward Fold Pose

• Sitting across from each other and interconnecting hands.
• Begin to raise the legs with feet together and bring the legs in-between the interconnected arms.
• If you’re experiencing any issues with keeping your legs straight, you can slightly bend the legs.
• Hold the pose for 5-10 deep breaths.

2.Viparita Virbhadrasana – Partner Warrior 1 Pose

• Stand across from your partner and move into the warrior one pose.
• Move into the pose of the same size. For the warrior pose, take a deep lunge forward and bend the knee, keeping the right leg straight behind.
• Adjust the body and extend arms overhead, meeting the palms of your hands together.
• Activate the abdominal muscles and shift the body weight to keep it evenly distributed.
• Hold for up to five breaths and switch to the alternative side.

3.Dvi Vrksasana – Twin Trees Pose

• Stand next to your partner, where the hips are touching.
• Wrap your arms around each other’s waist.
• Move the outside leg up and place the outside foot onto the alternative legs thigh.
• Move your palm right above the chest, in prayer position, and press your palms together with your partners.
• Feel the movement while balancing with each other and finding each other as your support.

4.Utkata Konasana – Goddess Pose/Temple Pose

• Face your partner with feet shoulder-width apart.
• Raise the arms above the head, and gently fall forward, meeting the palms of your hands with your partners.
• Once your hands meet, continue to bend at the hips and sink lower into the position, gradually bringing the forearms to meet with one another.
• Resting weight against one another, hold this pose for a moment and then move forward, bringing the body back up and then gradually returning the arms down towards the sides.

5.Utkatasana – Chair Pose

Partner Utkatasana – Chair Pose

• Stand with your back facing your partner.
• Slowly move the feet out and interlock the hands. Rely on each other for support and move gradually into a chair pose.
• Hold this pose for a few moments and then return to a standing position.

Intermediate Yoga Poses

These yoga poses are useful if you’ve started with the beginner yoga poses and you’re ready to take on some more poses with more difficulty. These poses are also perfect for those who may have past experiences with yoga. In either case, these following yoga poses to enable you to have a deeper stretch and opportunity to bond with your partner.

6.Paripurna Navasana – Buddy Boat Pose

• Sit across from your partner and reach out for each other’s hands with legs distance apart.
• Place the soles of your feet together and press your weight onto each other for support. Gradually raise the dogs and sit on the bones of the pelvis to be in a v position.
• Engage the core while holding the position for a few breaths.

7.Vimana Dviguna Phalakasana – Double Plank Pose

• Have one of you lay flat on your stomach. At the same time, have a partner lay flat on top of you, with their head facing the legs and hands on the ground.
• The individual on the bottom raises himself or herself into a plank position. When secure, the individual on the top will secure the hands on the one—getting themselves into a plank position with their feet in the upper back.
• Keep abdominal muscles tight and hold the pose for how long it’s comfortable or anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute, below ankles.

8.Vimana Dviguna Phalakasana – Square Pose 

• Have one individual sit with legs outstretched in front of them and arms raised over their head. Have your partner grasp their hands around the base partners’ ankles and have the base partner grab the top partner’s ankles. Lifting the legs upward and lifting the body to form a square.
• Slowly and gradually lift the body and carefully maintain your partner’s support for as long as it is comfortable.

9.Upavishta Konasana –  Extended Leg Pose 

• Stand across from your partner about a foot or two apart.
• Bring your right leg left up towards the hip of your partner on the left side.
• Have your partner and yourself grab onto each other’s ankle to keep the legs in place.
• To increase difficulty, grab the shoulders and bring the chest inwards. This motion will get a deeper stretch.
• Gradually come out of the position holding onto it for up to a minute.

Advanced Yoga Poses

These poses are for those who have a little experience under their belt! Individuals who are not gymnasts may find difficulty getting into these asana, but that is precisely the test of this moves-patience. Actively listen to your partner and engage their movements to ensure that each other has complete support.

10.Karnapidasana Urdhva Dhanurasana – Wheel Pose

•  The base individual will begin with their stomach onto the floor and raising themselves into a cobra position.
• The second individual lays on top, with their back lying on their legs and head towards their feet.
• The base partner grabs the ankles and lifts the individual above in an upward position while the upper individual grabs a hold of the base partner’s ankles.
•  Both you and your partner work yourselves into a backbend position using each other as support.

11.Salamba Dhanurasana Utkatasana – Supported Bow Pose

• Have the base partner lay flat on their back and bend their knees.
• Have the partner above sit on his feet; grabbing hold of the base individual’s ankles.
• The base partner brings their knees close to the ribs as the base partner brings the legs up towards the sky with the feet over the hips.
• When both feel secure, the top person can let go of the ankles of the base partner.
• Hold this pose for up to 5 breaths.
• To exit the pose, have the base partner bend the knees and shift the feet away from the torso so that the person holding up can securely step back onto the ground.

12.Vimanasana – Flying Double Plank/”Superman” Pose

• Have your partner position him or herself on the ground. Have their back flat against the yoga mat and press their feet onto your core.
• Interlock hands while having your partner lift themselves off the ground, with your feet supporting their body weight. As the base person straightens legs, the person in the air is finding their balance.
• Once they achieve this balance, they may let go of the hands and outstretch their arms to the side for the classic ‘superman’ pose.
• To exit this pose, reverse the moves until in the starting position.

When it comes to strengthening the bond with your partner, yoga is the perfect activity. It will help improve your senses and connection to the self. It will also help to recognize your partner’s needs. Couple’s yoga requests us to break down barriers to achieve an asana. These postures take teamwork from both parties. And need both people to be presently engaged to ensure each move’s safety and accuracy.

Yoga serves as the perfect activity that challenges couples on a variety of levels. It’s one that can add to a workout routine or as a means to test your communication with one another. Yoga is welcoming to challenges and has its roots in honesty for the self and those around us.