Let’s get physical — and emotional
Popular new workouts target the body, mind and soul
NEW YORK — It would be easy to brush off fitness guru Taryn Toomey’s The Class as another hippie trend, but you’d miss stargazing at celeb devotees like Naomi Watts, Jennifer Aniston and supermodel Christy Turlington Burns.
Within minutes, the music swells, the mirrors in the 85-F (29-C), heated room begin to fog and sweaty ponytails come undone as participants perform five gruelling, uninterrupted minutes of squat jumps while Toomey unleashes occasional expletive-laced insights.
“We’re really using the physical body as a metaphor to deal with what’s out there,” said Toomey, a former fashion executive for Ralph Lauren and Dior, who opened a luxe studio in Tribeca in January.
Other spiritual workouts gaining popularity around the U.S. and making incursions into Canada (with locations in some cities), include the Intensati Method, Qoya and Equinox’s Headstrong. Yoga and tai chi have drawn from these principles for years, but a new crop of workouts includes more cardio and strength-training moves as many fitness buffs seek more than a sixpack.
Qoya founder Rochelle Schieck incorporates lots of free movement into her women-only workout that refers to “movement as medicine.” It’s the least physically challenging of the bunch and is good for beginners, but it has a powerful emotional take-away.
Each Qoya class has a theme. If the theme is freedom, participants are given a moment to reflect on what it feels like when they don’t feel free. Then they express those emotions through free-form dance. Part of the class includes a few minutes of shaking, which is designed to shake fear and discomfort out of the body to calm the nervous system.
“Women kept saying as I was just developing it, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for this,’ ” said Schieck, who has trained some 300 Qoya teachers.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is an associate professor of history at The New School who is researching feminism and group fitness. She started teaching the high-energy cardio and strength Intensati Method, which includes vocal affirmations. “When you’re sweating, your heart is pumping (and), there is science that shows you’re open or particularly susceptible to your mindset,” she said.
A class in Intensati, created by Patricia Moreno, includes squats, lunges, side roundhouse kicks and punches while chanting something like “I am strong.”
“I felt I finally had the words to express something I’d been feeling but didn’t have an outlet to,” said Petrzela.