The spiritual fitness revolution
Exercise, music and emotional release combine to make the hottest class in NY and LA. The aim is to find your peace through strength, says Brigid Moss
How a new US class promises to help you find peace through strength
Taryn Toomey has created probably the most un-british fitness class yet. Simply called The Class, students are expected to grunt, shout, scream, laugh and/or cry, as well as seriously sweat. “If you need to laugh, laugh. Weep, weep. We give people a space to feel, without judgment,” Toomey says. “This is not about ‘letting go’ – it’s about ‘feeling it’, so the feeling can be felt and processed.”
Toomey, a dewy-skinned, lithe-limbed, crystalwearing, 38-year-old beauty, has created the hottest-ever mind-body class. It’s not yet in the UK, but in LA, you might bump into Naomi Watts or Jennifer Aniston, and in New York, Christy Turlington Burns. This summer, Toomey launched her own studio in Manhattan’s Tribeca – all crystal lights and tourmaline-flecked floors – and a Lululemon collab, her signature pale palette making for a rail of simple chic in the brand’s London stores.
Toomey trained as a yoga teacher after quitting a career in fashion, latterly at Christian Dior. Then,
“after a few years teaching yoga, I simply needed more fire in my practice,” she says. “I needed to shake up and clear ‘stuck’ energy, emotion, thoughts and residue that had accumulated in me throughout my life. The Class slowly and organically developed from there.”
In The Class, you’ll sweat out the same move, say, a flowing burpee or her “heart-opening” arm-flapping move, for a whole song. Toomey calls music her co-teacher. “If one or two songs are quiet and emotional, the next song will be explosive. This strategy, paired with movement, breath and sound, creates surges of endorphins that help to clear and flush whatever emotions come up in the body.” It’s a spiritual and fitness revolution: using movement to release the emotional body. Let’s hope some UK teachers do the $3,000 training soon. The Class might sound un-british but it might be exactly what we need. Instagram: @taryntoomey @theclassbytt