Studio Yoga is great physical exercise to increase your strength and flexibility, but often lacks any significant spiritual or metaphysical depths. If you enjoy studio yoga, please continue that practice. Relationship Yoga will only enhance any other yoga practice you pair with it. Though, if you have been diagnosed with MCAS, POTS, EDS or remain undiagnosed, mainstream postural yoga can cause injury to your joints and connective tissue through over-extension, MACS activation inflammation, and/or inducing POTS episodes—particularly with “hot yoga.” Relationship Yoga features on-the-mat postural yoga designed for people with chronic/complex illness in mind. It also features a depth of off-the-mat yogic practices and teachings that take you deep into tantric philosophy and energy mastery you won’t find in most any studio yoga format.

Throughout the teachings of Relationship Yoga, you will see/hear a pair of terms used: vertical and horizontal development. The easiest way to understand these is the following:

• Vertical development regards the nature of Being. When we perceive an aspect of the infinite Absolute Truth, we are perceiving without heavy ego bias and thus see life from a different perspective. Vertical ascension is the elevating of states and stages of consciousness. When this is perceived again and again, whatever isn’t True at that level of consciousness simply falls away or loses its grip over our perspective, over time. This requires dedicated transcendence work—such as meditation, contemplation, brainwave entrainment, and other yogic practices. “The way doesn’t require cultivation—just don’t pollute it.” — Huangbo Xiyun

• Horizontal development is the egoic and embodiment dimension. What is perceived from the elevated perspective of higher states of consciousness has to be integrated into our lived egoic-level-of-consciousness. This requires great inscendent work—practicing with the truth of our felt-sense experience, beliefs, thoughts, etc. This is the activity of cultivating new perspectives and habits—training our egos with new perspectives and behaviors. Most CBT, DBT, contemporary thought leaders, and somatic specialists operate within the horizontal plane of development. "You can't build a healthy relationship on unhealed pain. Self-love is the key" — Jamie Bronstein

Relationship Yoga is a system which uniquely and intelligently integrates your needs at both the horizontal and vertical dimensions. However, more attention is given to the vertical dimension because it is the most lacking in mainstream thought-leadership. Most psychology-based relationship coaching advice is from the egoic, horizontal growth perspective. Neither are complete nor holistically balanced without accounting for the other. Transcendence requires inscendence if Truth is going to become lived truth.

The process of healing with Relationship Yoga is two-fold:

• We correct the physiology first as it is the foundation in which we build the skyscraper of ascended consciousness upon. We do physical, postural practice, breathwork, and one-on-one coaching with Cory or another chronic/complex illness-informed practitioner to correct physiological imbalances. This is all “horizontal” or cultivative behavioral change.

• When the physiology is more safely balanced, we add deeper energetic and metaphysical dimensions of healing. When we activate the healing of metaphysical Love, our whole perspective on life changes. With this new perspective, we can heal our relationships as well as our bodies. Afterall, it really it isn’t a cure until it penetrates all the way into the layer of existential well-being—purpose, hope, and equanimity.

“Healing” within the context of Relationship Yoga also includes discovering and overturning all the egoically-driven patterns that are maladaptively causing you suffering. Suffering and stress are at the core of illness and the more we can free ourselves from these negative patterns the more our life is in balance. All of life is a cosmic interplay of elements-in-balance and health is a measurement of how well we are performing that balancing act. The ill body, the ill ego is the path; the Soul’s growth curriculum—not something to be bypassed or hand-waved away as a mere illusion. Relationship Yoga offers a unique perspective and teaching regarding egoic patterns which you will find effective in ways that other spiritual paths have failed.