Mindful Dating: 44 Dating Practices for Conscious and Spiritual Singles

Mindful dating offers us a powerful, intentional, and reliable path to dating and romantic relationships. It invites us into a depth of authenticity that, unfortunately, remains far too uncommon in the general dating population. Mindful dating can feel exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time because it invites us to truly open ourselves up – heart, mind, body, and spirit. It calls us to reveal our true nature much sooner than we might otherwise in dating. 

Whether we’re aware of it or not, mindful dating puts the soul at the center of every connection. In this potent possibility, mindful dating can feel risky and vulnerable – and therein lies its power. Because of its authenticity and vulnerability, dating with mindfulness sets the stage for the most soulful and sustainable long term relationships. It also ensures that we don’t spend too much time dating those who don’t truly align with our soul’s unique path. 

While conscious and mindful dating is “where it’s at” when it comes to finding and creating soul love relationships, it’s still uncommon for people to approach dating in this way. Here’s your opportunity to do dating differently. Here’s your chance to choose something uncommon… 

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What is mindful dating?

As we mentioned above, mindful dating starts with being conscious and intentional. It means we’re conscious and intentional about who we date and how we date. Also common in those who want to date mindfully is an internal commitment to personal or spiritual growth. Many in this category seek partners who shares the view that one of the purposes of a relationship is to grow and develop together, individually and as a couple. 

Those who date mindfully seek several consistent qualities in their dating. These include…

• Authenticity – a willingness to be oneself and share oneself fully, perfect and imperfect.
• Self awareness – a moment to moment knowing of your own needs, wants, and desires. 
• Intentional – a conscious reason for, and approach to, dating.
• Presence – an ability to be with what is happening and unfolding within you and between you. 
• Empathy – an ability to see, honor, and validate another’s feelings.
• Conscious communication – an ability and willingness to speak authentically and listen deeply, even when it’s hard.
• Emotional intelligence – an ability to recognize, name, and share what we’re feeling and allow another to do the same. 
• Embracing conscious conflict – knowing no two people will ever see eye to eye all the time, you’re willing to stay present and navigate through the disconnects. 
• Strong self relationship – valuing the relationship with you first and foremost. 
• A relationship to a higher power – feeling and acknowledging a presence greater than ourselves that holds and unites us. 
• Values personal and/or spiritual growth – a desire to learn, grow, and deepen together.

As we consider these qualities, we see that consciousness lies at the heart of mindfulness and hence mindful dating. Our desire for conscious connection with another demands that we have a conscious connection with ourselves. We simply can’t be truly mindful in life or love if we don’t know ourselves. This is why some who want think they want to date mindfully, actually don’t. 

This path of dating isn’t always easy and if you have the courage, if you’ll lean into the depths of your own heart and soul, you’ll find it to be an indescribably exquisite journey to love.

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How to date mindfully

Before we can understand how to date mindfully, we have to first understand the role the soul plays. When someone desires mindful dating their soul has actually decided to take the lead in love. Our souls – our completely unique and individual expression as a human being – want to experience the deepest love. Our soul wants to evolve. It wants to grow, open, and expand in ways that create not just an ecstatic relationship, but an ecstatic life. 

We must therefore also realize that our soul-centered approach in mindful dating means our romantic connections won’t always have a fairytale quality, at least not all the time. Through mindful dating soulmates find each other to love, and to evolve each other’s souls. That’s not always an easy, comfortable, or convenient process and, again, therein lies the power and potential of mindful dating, soul connection, and conscious relationships. 

If you’re ready to find a soulmate and the accompanying soul love, here you’ll find 44 practices to support you…

1. Be in a good relationship with you before you start dating.
2. Truly complete with your past relationships. Don’t carry past pain into your dating. 
3. Commit to authenticity. 
4. Know what you want and be willing to talk about it. (If what the two of you want doesn’t align, don’t date.)
5. Learn to recognize your needs as they arise. 
6. Express those needs.
7. Know your boundaries and hold them. In the beginning of a new connection, it’s easy to give in and be too accommodating. If you do, it will sabotage what you’re starting.
8. Be present – with you, your date, and the moment. Over and over again. 
9. Tell the truth.  
10. When you’re uncomfortable or awkward, name it.
11. Stay curious. 
12. Use I statements. Talk about yourself. This revealing creates intimacy.
13. Share how you feel – both what feels good and what doesn’t feel good. Emotions are language of intimacy.
14. Listen to how your date feels. Hearing and validating feelings deepens connection.  
15. Practice intimacy by letting your date see into you. In-2-me-U-C sets the stage in mindful dating.
16. Embrace your first (and all) disagreements as normal, no matter how soon they arise. 
17. Remember that triggers are normal. Hold yourself and each other through them.
18. Refrain from blame.
19. Take responsibility for your reactions.
20. Know your wounding and develop a capacity to name it when it’s triggered.
21. Talk about sex before you have it. And after you have it. In fact, talk about it regularly.
22. Talk about what the purpose of relationship is for you. 
23. Practice check-ins at the beginning of dates.
24. If you’re not feeling it, be honest. Don’t ghost.
25. Trust your date to be honest and take care of themselves. 
26. If you’re predominantly feminine be feminine. Don’t step in for the masculine. If you’re predominately masculine be masculine. Create space for the feminine to feel safe to express. 
27. Watch for and call out any tendencies to rescue or want to be rescued.
28. Be sure to play together. Those on the conscious and spiritual path can tend to get a bit too serious too often. 
29. Take it slowly. Your capacity to go deep can accelerate things a bit too quickly
30. Be aware of your attachment styles. Talk about them and share when they get triggered.
31. Commit to cleaning up mistakes, unconsciousness, and not keeping your word.
32. Consider meditating together.
33. Bless meals together. 
34. Go to spiritual or consciousness based events together.
35. Embrace fears – yours and theirs – and remember fear needs tenderness.
36. Don’t have hard conversations over text.
37. Ask each other lots of questions, answer authentically, and listen attentively. 
38. Don’t overshare, especially in the beginning. The tendency in mindful dating can be to “dump” all our patterns and wounds before the connection can hold that depth. 
39. Eye gaze.
40. Explore conscious touch that isn’t directly sexual. Can you pleasure each other’s hands? 
41. Practice keeping your heart open and when that’s hard, talk about it.
42. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. 
43. Practice compassion. Love, deep love, can feel scary. We all have hurts and fears. Be compassionate with your humanness and your date’s humanness. 
44. Follow the energy. The energy of your connection is always showing you what wants to happen next. Let the energy between you be your guide. (And, this is about much more than sexual energy.) 

Some of these practices will seem like an obvious part of mindful dating. Others may surprise and even stretch you. That’s good. Allow yourself plenty of time and grace as you deepen these conscious relating habits. 

More important than anything else, talk about what mindful dating and relationships mean to each of you. Start talking about each other’s mindfulness practices early on in your connection and let those practices develop and grow between you. 

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Transitioning into Conscious and Mindful Relationships

If you’ve committed to mindful dating, then it seems obvious you’ll want to continue that in a mindful and conscious relationship. That means that you want to be genuinely conscious about when and how you actually transition from dating to a relationship. You’ll want to clearly understand when does dating turn into a relationship so that you can navigate that special and important time with the same powerful consciousness you brought to your dating. 

Remember that in mindful dating you share a soul connection that deserves deep care and love. So before you choose to step into a committed relationship with someone, ask yourself, “At this point in our connection, do I want to be a part of this soul’s evolution? Even if they never change?” If you can truly answer yes to this question, you have set the stage for true unconditional love to develop in a genuine partnership. If the answer is no, that’s totally ok. Simply be aware of it and remain conscious of the most important stages of a relationship. 

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Mindful dating offers us a heart-open, authentic and even playful approach to finding a life partner. The mindful dating process, when followed, will help us find and know that we’ve found our mate. Although maybe not as obvious, mindful dating also helps make the innate ups and downs of dating much gentler. 

It’s worth mentioning in this discussion, because so many forget, not everyone we date is a soulmate. Not every date, or series of dates, is meant to turn into a relationship. Dating is truly a selection process. In that process sometimes we’ll want another date with someone who doesn’t want another date with us. Sometimes your date will want another date with you, even though you don’t want another date with them. That’s ok. Completely ok. That’s actually the purpose of dating.

As you see, any dating almost always includes rejection at some point. Fortunately, the authenticity of mindful dating coupled with its kindness, compassion, and intentionality actually helps to minimize the heartaches that will happen. When you date mindfully, including kindly letting someone know when they don’t feel like a fit for you, it supports a natural flow of ongoing connections, until you find your one. 

As mindful dating supports you to keep your heart open, it ensures that the door in your heart will be open when your soulmate knocks. 

Here’s to the real courage it takes to date and relate mindfully… 

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Since 2006, highly conscious men and women, with a commitment to extraordinary relationships, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate Soul Partnerships from their bedrooms to their boardrooms. Ecstatic Intimacy believes in coveted relationships, for all. 

You too, are invited…