Episode 69. The “M” Word (Part 2): Calm the Mind, Heal the Marriage
How We Stopped Overreacting and Started Listening
We all know meditation is good for you.
It lowers stress.
Helps you sleep.
Makes you less reactive when your kids ask the same question for the fifth time.
But here’s what doesn’t get talked about enough:
Meditation can also radically improve your marriage.
Yes, really.
In our own marriage and in couples we have worked with, we’ve seen time and time again how meditation—just a few intentional minutes a day—can lower tension, diffuse overreactivity, improve communication, and bring couples back to each other when things feel stuck or tense.
And no, you don’t need to sit on a cushion in perfect silence for an hour.
You just need to be willing to pause.
So, What’s the Science?
There’s more than good vibes behind this.
A massive meta-analysis by Goldberg et al. (2017) looked at over 142 clinical trials involving more than 12,000 people. The results?
💥Meditation significantly reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety—sometimes as much as medication, especially when combined with therapy.
💥 It helped people manage chronic pain.
💥 It even showed promise in helping people recover from addiction.
In other words, meditation doesn’t just help your mind. It helps your marriage, especially if one or both of you are carrying emotional or physical pain.
How Meditation Helps Your Relationship
Beyond the individual benefits, research by Dr. Shauna Shapiro has shown that meditation can do wonders for couples specifically. Here’s what it supports:
More Empathy
Meditation trains your brain to slow down and notice. That awareness spills over into your relationship—you’re more attuned, more present, and less likely to judge or jump to conclusions.
Less Reactivity
We’ve all had those moments where we say something we regret because we’re triggered. Meditation helps you catch that moment and choose a better response.
Better Communication
When you’re calm and centered, you listen differently. You speak differently. Meditation helps build the foundation for the kinds of conversations that bring you closer instead of push you apart.
How to Get Started (Without Feeling Weird About It)
You don’t need to be a meditation pro to benefit. Here's how to begin:
Start tiny
Begin with just 2 minutes a day. Yes, just two. The key is consistency.
Do it together
You can sit quietly next to each other or try back-to-back breathing. Just being present in silence can create emotional safety.
Use an app
We recommend Calm or Insight Timer. If you’re new, try Jeff Warren’s 30-day mindfulness intro on Calm—it’s approachable and even kind of fun.
Talk about it
Check in afterward. What did you notice? What felt awkward? What surprised you? Sharing those experiences builds connection too.
Common Roadblocks (And Why You Shouldn’t Let Them Stop You)
Let’s be honest: meditation isn’t easy at first. You’ll get distracted. You’ll fidget. You might think, “This isn’t working.”
That’s normal. The goal isn’t to have zero thoughts. It’s to notice when your mind wanders—and bring it back with compassion. That habit alone can make you a more grounded, less reactive partner.
The Real Payoff
Meditation won’t magically solve all your relationship problems. But it will give you the tools to:
Stay calm when things get tense
Listen more deeply
Communicate more clearly
And respond with love instead of reactivity
In a world that trains us to be fast, loud, and reactive, meditation is the quiet, slow, intentional practice your relationship might be craving.
And it just might change everything.
🎧 Want to go deeper?
Listen to our Marriage IQ episode:
The “M Word”: Calm the Mind, Heal the Marriage
We’ll walk you through the research, our personal experiences with meditation, and the simple ways to start—no perfect posture required.
📥 Need a little help getting started? Download our free Mindful Marriage Practices PDF
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Welcome to Marriage iQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse.[00:00:08 - 00:00:10]
I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings.[00:00:10 - 00:00:12]
And I'm Dr. Scott Hastings.[00:00:13 - 00:00:31]
We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose. To transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed with a little fun.[00:00:34 - 00:00:46]
Welcome back to Marriage iq. We are so excited to have you back for part two of our episode on meditation and mindfulness in marriage.[00:00:46 - 00:00:47]
Yep.[00:00:47 - 00:00:52]
So we are excited that you're back joining us today.[00:00:52 - 00:00:58]
If you haven't listened to part one, you might want to listen to that before you jump into this episode.[00:00:58 - 00:02:01]
Start with part one and then we'll see you back here. And welcome in. The water's warm. Now, certainly we can't go through an episode without doing some kind of medical research, because that's what I do and that's what I love. I love all of it, actually. But I love putting this together in a way that is really helpful to you, our loyal audience. You know, in regards to medical research and meditation, there's a lot out there. There is a. There's a lot of data. American Heart association has made a statement that regular and routine meditation moderately reduces blood pressure, it slows the cognitive effects of aging, it improves sleep and helps lower the perception of pain. Wow. Where do I sun up? I want to do this thing. Guess what? Hardly anybody does.[00:02:01 - 00:02:07]
Well, we can't say hardly anybody because we got on Insight timer today. And how many people had used Insight Time?[00:02:07 - 00:02:12]
Well, there are, I think 528, 000 today. Today. But here. Okay, but.[00:02:12 - 00:02:14]
But there are a lot of people who do.[00:02:14 - 00:02:18]
Yeah, but there's 300 million in the US and 7 billion in the world. Okay, so.[00:02:18 - 00:02:20]
Good point. And that could be used worldwide.[00:02:20 - 00:02:36]
Yeah. So. And this is also true. I'm going back to my practice. I know. I. I've been trying to do this for years with my patients. They largely do not do this. Some do.[00:02:36 - 00:02:37]
And I.[00:02:37 - 00:02:42]
And I really try to make them feel super awesome. Like you are awesome.[00:02:42 - 00:02:44]
If you ask them to take a pill, do they take the pill?[00:02:44 - 00:02:45]
They'll take the pill.[00:02:46 - 00:02:47]
They want the quick way.[00:02:48 - 00:02:54]
Hardly anyone does this. I don't know what to do. Too boring. Next. Okay.[00:02:54 - 00:03:02]
Can't keep your loss, folks. Well, it's like going to the gym one time and saying, this is too hard. I can't do it.[00:03:02 - 00:03:18]
It's like Joshua Bell. Moving on. Yep, moving on. Three and a half million dollar violin. The world's best, greatest violinist. Forty dollars Busking. Think about it.[00:03:18 - 00:03:19]
Tragic.[00:03:19 - 00:03:47]
Meditation is the same thing. All right, let's talk about physical health. High blood pressure. A study by Conversano in 2021. This is a meta analysis of six studies and it showed that patients with high blood pressure, they enrolled in an eight week mindfulness based intervention. It reduced the systolic blood pressure by about three to four points, the diastolic by about two points.[00:03:48 - 00:03:49]
Okay, what does that mean?[00:03:49 - 00:04:08]
Well, it's not a great reduction, but it's there and it's clinically significant. So what we're saying is you add this onto whatever else you're doing, the low salt diets, the, you know, blood pressure medications, eating healthy, and it'll be more effective. It makes it more effective.[00:04:08 - 00:04:09]
Okay.[00:04:09 - 00:04:32]
Chronic pain. A systematic review by Hilton in 2016 was 38 randomized controlled trials over 3500 people on chronic pain that revealed that mindfulness meditation showed a small but significant decrease in pain levels versus those who did not meditate regularly.[00:04:32 - 00:04:35]
I think if I could get a little less pain, that would be helpful.[00:04:35 - 00:05:30]
I think also we're seeing a trend here. These are people in both of these studies that we talked about. The regularity of meditation is important. Regularly, daily. Let's talk about mortality, longevity. The American Heart association states that overall meditation suggests a possible benefit on cardiovascular risk. And another study by Krita Nawang. I'm sure I slaughtered his name or hers. Or her. Yeah, I know. I think it was a hymn. 2020, the American Journal of Cardiology. That meditation was independently associated with a lower prevalence of high cholesterol, diabetes, stroke and coronary artery disease compared with those who did not meditate.[00:05:30 - 00:05:35]
Now here's a point on that. Aren't most of those associated with stress?[00:05:38 - 00:05:39]
Yeah. Yes.[00:05:39 - 00:05:44]
So that's probably why is they're learning to deal with stress in a positive.[00:05:45 - 00:05:45]
I get your point.[00:05:45 - 00:05:46]
Slowing down.[00:05:46 - 00:05:48]
But not everyone with stress gets diabetes though.[00:05:48 - 00:05:55]
No, that's true. But I would guess a large percentage of them could diminish their stress through meditation.[00:05:56 - 00:06:00]
Yes, totally agreed. Moving to mental health. This is where the.[00:06:00 - 00:06:00]
This is big.[00:06:01 - 00:06:26]
Yeah. This is where the bulk of the studies are. Psychological distress. A systematic review by Galante in 2023. There's 2,400 participants in 15 trials showed a small but significant improvement in psychological well being between one and six months after starting a mindfulness meditation based program versus those who didn't.[00:06:26 - 00:06:27]
Can I just say something?[00:06:27 - 00:06:28]
Yeah.[00:06:28 - 00:06:35]
If you're constantly saying that the findings are small, I would discount that.[00:06:36 - 00:07:12]
Okay, well, they are there, but they're significant. That's the thing they're finding. It's the thing about meditation is it's not like taking a drug where boom, you notice the effect immediately. This is a long term thing. And one of the few things that I'm kind of gleaning from these studies is that it has to be done regularly, daily, routinely, and those effects don't really start showing up until at least a month or longer after you start.[00:07:12 - 00:07:12]
Right.[00:07:13 - 00:07:23]
So you. Yes. We're not saying here. That's a good point, Heidi, that this is going to magically fix your diabetes.[00:07:23 - 00:07:23]
Right.[00:07:24 - 00:07:27]
It's not going to magically fix your heart disease.[00:07:27 - 00:07:59]
I don't know. I think it might more significantly impact psychological well being. I have clients who may be dealing with massive nervous system issues over a partner's betrayal of some kind. And if they can slow down and breathe and just help their nervous system become more grounded, it in a huge way impacts their mental health.[00:07:59 - 00:08:34]
And really, we're not telling you to meditate to avoid disease or to fix your disease. Yeah, this is very important. We meditate to learn how to become more mindful and live a more scintillating life with a lot more meaning. And we happen to get the benefit of better health. That's the angle we're taking here. Okay, but you're right, it's small, it's significant. There is a huge study, a meta analysis that's a study of studies.[00:08:35 - 00:08:37]
Can I just say what significance means?[00:08:38 - 00:09:16]
That means the result was higher than what you would expect if you had done nothing. Right. So it's a statistical number that they use to show that whatever you were studying, whether it's a drug or a practice, affected those people doing it. So that's what significance is. Okay, so getting back to this meta analysis by Goldberg. In 2017, over 142 randomized clinical trials with over 12,000 participants.[00:09:16 - 00:09:17]
That's a huge one.[00:09:17 - 00:09:34]
In Clinical Psychology Review boldly proclaimed the robustness of mindfulness meditation on these outcomes, including depression, pain, smoking and addictive disorders.[00:09:36 - 00:09:45]
Actually, I have heard of it being used quite a bit for addictions because. Because addictions are based on being impulsive, right?[00:09:45 - 00:09:45]
Yep.[00:09:46 - 00:09:47]
And just slowing that down.[00:09:48 - 00:09:49]
Slowing down that. Yep.[00:09:49 - 00:09:51]
The decision making, the power of the pause.[00:09:51 - 00:10:19]
Power of the pause is slowing it down. Results support the notion that mindfulness based interventions hold promise as evidence based treatments. In other words, folks, learning how to meditate regularly in this study anyway actually leads to outcomes similar to taking an antidepressant like Prozac or Zoloft when the meditation was added to the medication.[00:10:19 - 00:10:22]
So they're doing medication and meditation therapy.[00:10:22 - 00:10:34]
The results were even more astounding. Or therapy. Usual care that would include anti anxiety medications with or without therapy.[00:10:34 - 00:10:34]
Okay.[00:10:35 - 00:11:11]
And again, I'm not saying do meditation just by itself. If you have a really serious anxiety, depression disorder. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying it. It's good going to help so much when you're able to do both of these. So you're probably thinking now, geez, where do I sign up for this? Right. Well, you got to commit to it. So how does meditation, all these things that we're learning, I mean, in the medical side of things, bringing it back to marriage.[00:11:12 - 00:11:12]
Right.[00:11:12 - 00:11:16]
Which being healthy is very helpful for marriage.[00:11:16 - 00:11:20]
Yeah. Episode. I don't remember what episode, though.[00:11:20 - 00:11:21]
Yeah. The best medicine.[00:11:21 - 00:12:03]
Yeah. So meditation, as we talked about, is not just about stress relief. There's a lot of research that shows that it's also powerful as a relationship tool. Again, back to Dr. Shapiro's research. Meditation rewires the brain for awareness, for empathy, for resilience. It trains us to be present with our partner without judgment, to be kinder to ourself and our spouse. It builds the foundation for emotional connection and better communication. When we practice that loving kindness or compassion type of meditation, it leads to healing and growth, not just being more calm.[00:12:04 - 00:12:06]
Meditation is sexy.[00:12:07 - 00:12:23]
And to just circle back and to circle back to her core message in her research. And actually she has a really great TEDx talk. I think we'll throw a link to that on our descriptions.[00:12:23 - 00:12:24]
Great idea.[00:12:24 - 00:12:38]
What we practice grows stronger in marriage. Meditation helps us practice being present, being patient, being loving. And those things can really change everything about the relationship.[00:12:39 - 00:15:35]
All right, Dr. Hastings, you have convinced me to start meditating or Drs. Hastings, you've convinced me to start meditating to become more mindful. How do I do it? Well, let me say. Let me start by saying you are never too old to start meditating. Right. Start with just two minutes a day and start working up over time. It took me probably five or six years to get up to 20 minutes, and now I do 20, sometimes 25 minutes a day. Meditation is not sleeping. You're not meditating when you sleep. This is two very different consciousness states. It's not praying. Some people say, well, I pray. Not the same. When you pray, you're channeling something, a thought or desire or a prayer up to God or to whoever you believe in. Meditation is not doing that. It is being aware of your surroundings. It's really Being aware of and focusing on that breathing, that will then help you become aware of your surroundings. So it is a very intentional act. As we talked about earlier. You want to sit up straight, you close your eyes, you clear your mind of everything. Focus, as I said earlier, on your breathing. So again, we're going to take a big breath in and hold it and out it. Meditation allows us to regularly practice self compassion and forgiveness because we want our minds to be clear. Right. But we also realize we're human and we're going to have thoughts that come into our head. And so instead of being angry with ourselves or flogging ourselves for letting these thoughts come in, I'm supposed to keep my mind clear. I let thoughts come in? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We just, we, we acknowledge the thought that came in and then we just. As Heidi talked about before with that bus, you get off that bus and you watch that bus and drive on.[00:15:35 - 00:15:37]
Down the road or clouds or whatever it is.[00:15:38 - 00:16:19]
Yeah, for me, for some reason, I don't know, I, I don't understand, but for me it is a bus and it's in the 1950s. It's a 1950s bus in the middle of rural Tennessee, place I've never been. And that's where I imagine that bus when I have these thoughts come in my head. That 1950s bus. I'm getting off my luggage and I'm watching it drive off down the dusty road. So another thing with meditation is to do it every day. Do you brush your teeth every day? Do you shower every day? Well, some people don't.[00:16:19 - 00:16:26]
But I mean, the social consequences of not doing those is a lot greater than the social consequences of not meditating.[00:16:26 - 00:16:29]
So I don't know, I think down the road it might be.[00:16:29 - 00:16:30]
Yeah, you're right.[00:16:31 - 00:17:10]
My point here folks is don't skip it. Even on the days that you don't feel like doing it. Even on the days when it doesn't feel right, just show up. Now there are some guided meditations that we kind of got started with and we want to share them with you. Sometimes we'll do a guided meditation. Sometimes not. Usually I don't use one in the morning, but sometimes I do. And the I tell all of my patients about the Calm app because there is a 30 day mindfulness introduction to mindfulness by Jeff Warren.[00:17:10 - 00:17:12]
Fantastic. For beginners.[00:17:12 - 00:17:18]
30 days. It's 10 minutes a day. He does a great job. There's also another, the Insight timer.[00:17:19 - 00:17:50]
I probably use that one a little bit more and it has a lot of free content. But then you can also have a subscription that lets you access more content. But some of my favorite meditations on there are by Thomas McConkey and Sarah Blondin. And Sarah Blondin, I think is particularly fantastic for women who might be going through some hard things. She's just very deep. And I love both of them. I do both of theirs quite often.[00:17:51 - 00:18:35]
Well, you find one that works for you, that works with your style and. And do it. So let's bring this all back here, Heidi, and talk about on marriage iq. We really want to give people homework so they can practice practical parts of of their living. What can you do this week as an individual? As a couple, you can intentionally set some time for yourself, usually in the morning to meditate. Just try it out for a couple of minutes. Set a timer on your phone, please remember, it's not sleeping. It's not lying in bed saying, I'm going to meditate in bed. Nope.[00:18:36 - 00:18:41]
I do that on occasion when I can't sleep, hoping it'll help me fall asleep.[00:18:43 - 00:19:17]
It is not praying. You are in a relaxed state, but you're also in an alert state. Make it into a daily habit. Get together with your spouse and see how they did this week. See what went well and what needed some help. You can help each other. The scintillating life together that you desperately want depends on it. All right, let's bring this back to our four cornerstones, my love.[00:19:17 - 00:19:21]
Great. Let's hear what you have to. What insight you have.[00:19:21 - 00:19:57]
Well, all four of our cornerstones get hit every time. But specifically today, we talked a lot about being intentional. Yeah, the act of meditation is very intentional. It's proactive, easy. It is not reactive insight. It's that slowing down. Remember? The pushing, the pause. It allows us to peer behind that emotional curtain in our mind and it allows us to recognize where we need to change in our relationship.[00:19:57 - 00:20:15]
Sometimes when we're meditating, it opens our mind up to receive ideas to receive. Some people might call it insight or revelation or whatever. Just ideas that come to your mind that change your trajectory in a certain area.[00:20:15 - 00:20:42]
That is a great point, my love. Several fantastic ideas I've had. Now, I know you're thinking. Well, you're not supposed to be thinking of anything. I get that, but you do. But what happens is it starts to crystallize these really, really great thoughts. And all that chatter, that mental chatter, kind of starts to dissipate.[00:20:43 - 00:20:43]
That's cool.[00:20:44 - 00:20:54]
So anyway, we've been at it now for over a decade and I'm on it this is this is me. Yeah, it's part of my identity.[00:20:55 - 00:21:03]
I'll say for intimacy, when we can be less reactive in our relationship, that's going to really impact our ability to be intimate with each other.[00:21:03 - 00:21:05]
I would 100 agree.[00:21:05 - 00:21:12]
Can't forget that little cornerstone there. Well, everybody, that's a wrap for this Marriage IQ episode.[00:21:13 - 00:21:20]
And remember, an intelligent spouse knows a scintillating marriage starts with changing themselves.[00:21:20 - 00:21:26]
Do you want more? Follow Marriage IQ on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.[00:21:27 - 00:21:55]
Grab your free ebook and sign up for exclusive tips@marriageiq.com and please, please, please take just a moment to rate, subscribe and follow Marriage IQ wherever you listen or watch. That is so important for us. If you have any questions, questions or problems with what we're talking about with our content, email us@hellorriageiq.com and we'll answer you.[00:21:55 - 00:22:02]
And I would also love it if they would give us some suggestions for some things they would like to hear us address on here.[00:22:02 - 00:22:03]
Indeed.[00:22:03 - 00:22:20]
And we also would love it if you would invite your friends and family to join the Marriage IQ community. So everybody, we'll see you next time on Marriage iQ.
