Taryn Toomey: Running With Wolves
Taryn Toomey didn’t invent a workout - she channelled a ritual. In this deeply personal account, she traces the wild, nonlinear path to founding The Class - a method born from movement, music and the untamed feminine force of spiritual reclamation.
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‘I didn’t set out to create a method. There was no grand plan. No market gap analysis. Just a slow burn – two years of marination inside my apartment building, I couldn’t even think what to name it because it wasn’t for me to decide what it is to you – so I named it: The Class.
People often ask me, “What was the catalyst?” There wasn’t one. Perhaps there was only the ache of something missing, an invisible bruise. I didn’t know I needed something until I began to move in a certain way. That was it. It was doing the thing I needed. No business plan.
Growing up, my home was, well, let’s call it… unconventional. If someone tried to diagnose it now, they’d probably toss out a buffet of mental health terms. My mom was practising NichirenBuddhism – chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo like a warrior, east to west, morning to night. Meanwhile, I recall my dad reaching into her altar, grabbed her gohonzon, and flung it off the back deck. At seven years old, I remember thinking , “Oh no this is not good”.
Even then, I could sense when someone was spiritually disregulated. It wasn’t about the practice – it was the energy behind it. I could see the furrowed lines in my mom’s forehead when she chanted, the clenched desperation in her face. Something about it scared me. As a child, I didn’t have the language. I just knew something felt… off.
She was trying to regulate, of course. Still is. My mom has always had this open channel – psychic, intuitive. But my sense is she never figured out how to ground or use it in a way that didn’t scare her – and of course she had her own history. And when you’re that open and that scared? It gets messy.
So, I learned early that if you’re going to open yourself to spirit, it’s wise to have the container to hold it and use it in the aligned way. Otherwise, you become a live wire with nowhere to land.
For me, movement was always the conduit. I was all fire and fidget and spunk and couldn’t sit still if my life depended on it. These days they’d probably call it ADHD. But back then, I just knew if I didn’t channel that fire, it would turn inward and burn the house down. I would see it come up in school – and remember the desire to massage my friends hands in order to settle myself. Which of course, I would get in trouble for. I was trying. So I used my own hands.
I ran sprints up a tiny hill outside my house when things got gnarly. A two-minute dash to sanity. Up. Down. Better. I think That’s how it started. When I read back to journals when I was little and it was the same thing – “dear god” – making notes of the size the moon, my heart was a combo of broken and then open, felt broken again. But I always said, “I will wake and try again. Try to love myself.”
“We don’t need more fixing. We need more feeling. Sensation is the doorway. The body doesn’t lie. It’s not going to lie to you. It will shake, shiver, talk to you – until you listen.”
“We don’t need more fixing. We need more feeling. Sensation is the doorway. The body doesn’t lie. It’s not going to lie to you. It will shake, shiver, talk to you – until you listen.”
At 17, I went to get a job at a local gym, and found my way into a job teaching step aerobics. I was asking for the front desk but really wanted to teach – and when I approached the topic with no certification, they said NO. But this huge trainer , Saul, saw something in me , and told the head of the program, Holly, to work with me. And in tandem, he took me under his wing. He taught me about the body. Holly taught me how to teach rhythm. And I learned: music, movement, rhythm – these things weren’t separate. They were Tools. Technologies.
Eventually, I landed in New York. Corporate job. Ralph Lauren. I was the girl watching the clock to make the 6:30 p.m. yoga class at Kula in Tribeca. If I didn’t leave at 5:57, I’d miss the window. Yoga became my lifeline.
And then came Peru.
I sat in my first ceremony with Ayahuasca in my 20s, and that’s when the medicine work began. I’ll never forget the woman reading my coca leaves before that ceremony. She looked at me and said, “There’s a little girl who wants to come in. Her name is Scarlet.” I wasn’t even thinking about children. But I knew. The leaf knew. She told me, “You have to get healthy first .” and I could feel the self loathing come up. I knew what she was referring to. Not just body-healthy. Heart-healthy. Soul-healthy.
I was unwell. Not on the outside – I always have a lot of fire and get it done. But inside? I disliked myself. I didn’t want to be here. That’s not wellness. That’s the shadow, hiding behind your green juice.
In that first ceremony, something massive showed itself to me in the form of a colour and shape – and ten years later, it unfolded as shown. Time, I realized, isn’t linear. Not in those realms. The messages don’t come with timestamps. You only understand them in hindsight.
It was in that first ceremony that the seed of The Class was planted. The boundaries were clear: stick to your mat. Don’t touch anyone and don’t talk to anyone. Let the energy move. Hold your space inside your body for you to process and allow others to. Hold the centre and let it come up. That’s what we do in The Class. If you see someone sweating, crying, purging – they don’t need to be rescued. Or be fixed. Hold space. Let them feel it.
Because when you reach over with a “You okay?”, you break the transmission . You pull them out of their process and back into performative normality. That moment is gone. And that’s not healing. That’s interruption.
Photo: Maria Santos
The Class is built on intention. Sound. Repetition. Self-inquiry. It’s breathwork meets cardio meets catharsis. You sweat, you make sounds, all sorts of them, you shake, you still. You can say “fuck it” out loud. Or you can leave. It’s entirely up to you. You can run with the wolves – right there on a yoga mat.
Because I knew: if I put my fire in the wrong direction, it could incinerate. But if I focused on it with love? It could burn away the stale. The false. The crust around the heart.
And so, we move. We hold. We inquire. What’s coming up? Is it true? We contract and expand. Contract and expand. Not because we’re broken. But because we’re remembering.
I’ve done the psych work – EMDR, parts work, psychology, Freudian analysis. I’ve sat in the jungle and I’ve sat on the couch. And what I’ve found is this: we don’t need more fixing. We need more feeling. Sensation is the doorway. The body doesn’t lie. It’s not going to lie to you. It will shake, shiver, talk to you – until you listen.
That’s the technology of The Class. We get bored, we get triggered, we want to quit. And then something breaks open. A weep. A laugh. A roar. And then silence. That’s the gold. That’s where the truth lives.
People say, “You’re taking us to the edge.” And I smile. Because yes – I am. I’m taking you to the edge of your self-imposed rules. The tidy box of who you think you need to be. We sweat and scream and swear because we’re remembering that we’re wild. Holy. Whole. Words are just a series, a symbol placed on an energy to give it meaning. So just sound it out over and out until you remember. Connect to the heart. Thats where it is.
I’ve always been primal. Ocean girl. Earth girl. God girl. Spirit speaks to me through wind, through water, through playlists on repeat. And sometimes, I hear things I can’t explain. I used to be scared of it. Now I let it in. I hold it gently. I breathe with it.
And I’ve learned this: sacred clusters find one another. Resonance is real. The aligned people show up. The mirrors. In the moment. You don’t have to chase it. You just have to be present. You will know what you need to know when you need to know it.
Because if you’re looking at someone in Class and judging, that’s not about them. That’s your unrealised self, staring back at you. Close your eyes. Come back in. Breathe. Be. That’s where it all begins.
And so, we move.’
‘I didn’t set out to create a method. There was no grand plan. No market gap analysis. Just a slow burn – two years of marination inside my apartment building, I couldn’t even think what to name it because it wasn’t for me to decide what it is to you – so I named it: The Class.
People often ask me, “What was the catalyst?” There wasn’t one. Perhaps there was only the ache of something missing, an invisible bruise. I didn’t know I needed something until I began to move in a certain way. That was it. It was doing the thing I needed. No business plan.
Growing up, my home was, well, let’s call it… unconventional. If someone tried to diagnose it now, they’d probably toss out a buffet of mental health terms. My mom was practising NichirenBuddhism – chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo like a warrior, east to west, morning to night. Meanwhile, I recall my dad reaching into her altar, grabbed her gohonzon, and flung it off the back deck. At seven years old, I remember thinking , “Oh no this is not good”.
Even then, I could sense when someone was spiritually disregulated. It wasn’t about the practice – it was the energy behind it. I could see the furrowed lines in my mom’s forehead when she chanted, the clenched desperation in her face. Something about it scared me. As a child, I didn’t have the language. I just knew something felt… off.
She was trying to regulate, of course. Still is. My mom has always had this open channel – psychic, intuitive. But my sense is she never figured out how to ground or use it in a way that didn’t scare her – and of course she had her own history. And when you’re that open and that scared? It gets messy.
So, I learned early that if you’re going to open yourself to spirit, it’s wise to have the container to hold it and use it in the aligned way. Otherwise, you become a live wire with nowhere to land.
For me, movement was always the conduit. I was all fire and fidget and spunk and couldn’t sit still if my life depended on it. These days they’d probably call it ADHD. But back then, I just knew if I didn’t channel that fire, it would turn inward and burn the house down. I would see it come up in school – and remember the desire to massage my friends hands in order to settle myself. Which of course, I would get in trouble for. I was trying. So I used my own hands.
I ran sprints up a tiny hill outside my house when things got gnarly. A two-minute dash to sanity. Up. Down. Better. I think That’s how it started. When I read back to journals when I was little and it was the same thing – “dear god” – making notes of the size the moon, my heart was a combo of broken and then open, felt broken again. But I always said, “I will wake and try again. Try to love myself.”
“We don’t need more fixing. We need more feeling. Sensation is the doorway. The body doesn’t lie. It’s not going to lie to you. It will shake, shiver, talk to you – until you listen.”
“We don’t need more fixing. We need more feeling. Sensation is the doorway. The body doesn’t lie. It’s not going to lie to you. It will shake, shiver, talk to you – until you listen.”
At 17, I went to get a job at a local gym, and found my way into a job teaching step aerobics. I was asking for the front desk but really wanted to teach – and when I approached the topic with no certification, they said NO. But this huge trainer , Saul, saw something in me , and told the head of the program, Holly, to work with me. And in tandem, he took me under his wing. He taught me about the body. Holly taught me how to teach rhythm. And I learned: music, movement, rhythm – these things weren’t separate. They were Tools. Technologies.
Eventually, I landed in New York. Corporate job. Ralph Lauren. I was the girl watching the clock to make the 6:30 p.m. yoga class at Kula in Tribeca. If I didn’t leave at 5:57, I’d miss the window. Yoga became my lifeline.
And then came Peru.
I sat in my first ceremony with Ayahuasca in my 20s, and that’s when the medicine work began. I’ll never forget the woman reading my coca leaves before that ceremony. She looked at me and said, “There’s a little girl who wants to come in. Her name is Scarlet.” I wasn’t even thinking about children. But I knew. The leaf knew. She told me, “You have to get healthy first .” and I could feel the self loathing come up. I knew what she was referring to. Not just body-healthy. Heart-healthy. Soul-healthy.
I was unwell. Not on the outside – I always have a lot of fire and get it done. But inside? I disliked myself. I didn’t want to be here. That’s not wellness. That’s the shadow, hiding behind your green juice.
In that first ceremony, something massive showed itself to me in the form of a colour and shape – and ten years later, it unfolded as shown. Time, I realized, isn’t linear. Not in those realms. The messages don’t come with timestamps. You only understand them in hindsight.
It was in that first ceremony that the seed of The Class was planted. The boundaries were clear: stick to your mat. Don’t touch anyone and don’t talk to anyone. Let the energy move. Hold your space inside your body for you to process and allow others to. Hold the centre and let it come up. That’s what we do in The Class. If you see someone sweating, crying, purging – they don’t need to be rescued. Or be fixed. Hold space. Let them feel it.
Because when you reach over with a “You okay?”, you break the transmission . You pull them out of their process and back into performative normality. That moment is gone. And that’s not healing. That’s interruption.
Photo: Maria Santos
The Class is built on intention. Sound. Repetition. Self-inquiry. It’s breathwork meets cardio meets catharsis. You sweat, you make sounds, all sorts of them, you shake, you still. You can say “fuck it” out loud. Or you can leave. It’s entirely up to you. You can run with the wolves – right there on a yoga mat.
Because I knew: if I put my fire in the wrong direction, it could incinerate. But if I focused on it with love? It could burn away the stale. The false. The crust around the heart.
And so, we move. We hold. We inquire. What’s coming up? Is it true? We contract and expand. Contract and expand. Not because we’re broken. But because we’re remembering.
I’ve done the psych work – EMDR, parts work, psychology, Freudian analysis. I’ve sat in the jungle and I’ve sat on the couch. And what I’ve found is this: we don’t need more fixing. We need more feeling. Sensation is the doorway. The body doesn’t lie. It’s not going to lie to you. It will shake, shiver, talk to you – until you listen.
That’s the technology of The Class. We get bored, we get triggered, we want to quit. And then something breaks open. A weep. A laugh. A roar. And then silence. That’s the gold. That’s where the truth lives.
People say, “You’re taking us to the edge.” And I smile. Because yes – I am. I’m taking you to the edge of your self-imposed rules. The tidy box of who you think you need to be. We sweat and scream and swear because we’re remembering that we’re wild. Holy. Whole. Words are just a series, a symbol placed on an energy to give it meaning. So just sound it out over and out until you remember. Connect to the heart. Thats where it is.
I’ve always been primal. Ocean girl. Earth girl. God girl. Spirit speaks to me through wind, through water, through playlists on repeat. And sometimes, I hear things I can’t explain. I used to be scared of it. Now I let it in. I hold it gently. I breathe with it.
And I’ve learned this: sacred clusters find one another. Resonance is real. The aligned people show up. The mirrors. In the moment. You don’t have to chase it. You just have to be present. You will know what you need to know when you need to know it.
Because if you’re looking at someone in Class and judging, that’s not about them. That’s your unrealised self, staring back at you. Close your eyes. Come back in. Breathe. Be. That’s where it all begins.
And so, we move.’
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