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"  At 7:30 AM on a recent Tuesday morning, on the fifth floor of an inconspicuous high-rise in West Tribeca, 20 or so women assembled in an unadorned studio that moonlights as a children&amp;#039;s ballet school. While fiddling with a wireless microphone, Taryn Toomey, the 35-year-old instructor behind a cardio-yoga-kickboxing hybrid fitness movement known simply as &amp;quot;the class,&amp;quot; greets each student with a hug. In the second row, a barefoot Taylor Schilling practices fluttering her lips; in the back, a woman in black Lululemons and a sleeveless Aerosmith T-shirt scrolls impatiently through her Instagram feed. But when Toomey, who, in white leggings and knee-high American Apparel socks, looks like a popular girl straight out of Dazed and Confused, cues up a techno version of Coldplay&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;A Sky Full of Stars,&amp;quot; all activity comes to a halt. &amp;quot;Close your eyes,&amp;quot; she insists in a raspy hush over the song&amp;#039;s swelling baseline. &amp;quot;Open your mouth and clear your space.&amp;quot; She then leads the group through proper burpee form: start in plank position, hop feet forward to meet hands, jump up in the air, kick back to plank. Repeat. Gaining momentum as the song careens toward the chorus, Toomey, 118 pounds of lean and lifted muscle, zeroes in on the front row. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re probably thinking right now,&amp;quot; she challenges. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re just thinking about it, thinking about it. Just notice, come into your body, feel the heart.&amp;quot; Just as Toomey, already gleaming with sweat, lets out a bellowing, &amp;quot;Inhale! Exhale!&amp;quot; Gisele B\u00FCndchen hustles to find her place among the front row. By &amp;quot;shoulder smacks,&amp;quot; a sequence during which the class kneels while batting away invisible demons with their hands, the whole room\u2014actresses and supermodels included\u2014yawps along with Toomey, who is grinning from ear to ear. &amp;quot;When we go into that class, we unpack the body,&amp;quot; Toomey later says over a glass of ros\u00E9 at the Greenwich Hotel. &amp;quot;You have to move the physical body\u2014if you don&amp;#039;t, you end up in this hole. It leaves wounds and then it shows up as illness.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s hard to believe that someone as perpetually warm and perky as Toomey, who has cultivated a high profile clientele that includes Naomi Watts, has ever felt submerged. But after a near-decade-long career as a sales executive at both Ralph Lauren and Christian Dior, where she worked in the wholesale handbags and shoes department until December 2007, Toomey found herself 20 pounds heavier and &amp;quot;living in my head.&amp;quot; A longtime yoga enthusiast, she completed her teacher training on a whim, and, in May 2008, followed her favorite instructor on a retreat to Peru. Though she won&amp;#039;t go into specifics, it was through an intense experience with Shamanic healers that she encountered a woman named Mama Kia, an expat who opened up the Casa de Milagros orphanage in Cusco. &amp;quot;It was one of those relationships where you meet someone for the first time and you&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;This person is the most amazing person I&amp;#039;ve ever met in my life,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Toomey says. &amp;quot;I had never really experienced that before.&amp;quot; And when Kia, a sometimes doula, who, on top of her four biological children adopted 25 Peruvian kids, passed away in 2010, Toomey felt compelled to devote her life to honoring her late mentor. She began teaching classes in the basement of the apartment she now shares with her husband, Mark, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and daughters Scarlett, 4, and Finley, 2, charging students $100 a month for three classes a week. &amp;quot;It was probably a lot less than I should have done,&amp;quot; she says with a laugh. For nearly two years she sent every penny\u2014between $1,200 and $1,500 a month\u2014to Mama Kia&amp;#039;s children. And though she&amp;#039;s in the process of restructuring the operation (at $30 a class, she stands to net a much healthier income these days), Toomey intends to set up a 1:1 business model so that for every class taken in New York, a child in Peru has access to toiletries, school supplies, or a similarly taught class to help them find &amp;quot;a physical, emotional, and mental release.&amp;quot;  But in the meantime, she&amp;#039;s focused on proselytizing the movement\u2014one convert at a time. After training male executives at the March 2014 TED Talks in Vancouver, Toomey received an impromptu Twitter review from Fortune writer and Fox commentator, Adam Lashinsky: &amp;quot;Fitness class by @taryntoomey,&amp;quot; he wrote, &amp;quot;is part Fight Club part religious experience.&amp;quot; Pass it on. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/news/a19417/taryn-toomey-profile/>