The Butterfly Chronicle

Like most of us, I have been working out at home and trying some new stuff. A few years ago, Lululemon partnered with Taryn Toomey who is the creator of something called ‘The Class’. Gwyneth Paltrow featured it on Goop and it gathered a cult-like following in the upper westside of NYC where Toomey teaches from her Tribeca studio. To be honest, that hype was enough to turn me off. It was the same for me when Kundalini yoga became ‘a thing’ because of Madonna’s endorsement of it.

But I happened upon an amazing Kundalini yoga instructor on the alo moves yoga app as I decided yoga was worth a try for dealing with chronic headaches. I had found that my conventional fitness regime of running and weights was doing little to relieve the tension and if anything, those activities exacerbated it. I felt I had to start unwinding from the inside out.

Yoga and stretching were a good start but it was the mental component of the Kundalini yoga that got me hooked. I started regularly doing an online series with the most charming woman who has the remains of a texan drawl but, swathed all in white including a head scarf, looks every bit the part of a yogic swami.

Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa is enchanting and full of mirth. Her youthful spirit belies her chronological age and so much of that seems to come from her general attitude about naviating life. “Life is going to be hard. That’s just who life is! But you can go on, even when you think you can’t, you just keep going!”

One of my favorite parts of her practice is when she talks about living in grace. Grace is more than the elegant posture of a ballerina, she explains, it is the intention and place from deep within ourselves that guides how we approach the world and our place within it. It is the place of ease and comfort we develop within ourselves from being kind in all ways to ourselves, each other, animals and our environment.

As we do Khalsa’s Kundalini yoga which my mom describes as pre-school yoga for its universal ease and joyfulness, Khalsa narrates her life philosophy which is the journey to experience enlightenment of the spirit. Kundalini is sanskrit for serpent and the idea is that enlightenment starts at the base of the spine and travels upward. The movements are entirely accessible and the relaxation and ease I enjoyed made a profound mark on me.

But I also wanted to incorporate some ‘traditional’ strength and cardio training and wondered if I could find it ‘packaged in’ a more wholistic kundalini type experience, meaning that I would feel inspired to be fully mentally present while I worked out. In the past, I had always used more difficult training as a way to ‘turn off’ the brain, and to escape my thoughts and worries. Meditation can be defined as ‘observing our thoughts’ but i’ve never been very good at being still and observing my thoughts. I wanted to find a rigorous physical exercise program that was also mentally rigorous.

In my reading about Taryn Toomy’s ‘the class’, I found it described as ‘an emotional exorcism’. I was intrigued. Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘Goop’ describes ‘the class’ this way:

“This is one of those fitness situations that evades basic definition: Started by Taryn Toomey, it’s a self-titled cathartic experience, where you spend 75 minutes engaging in intense movement to “break open and activate ‘stagnant’ layers in the body.” In short you move, and scream, and shake, and yell as you release emotional energy–and get a pretty incredible workout in the process. It requires an open mind and a willing spirit.” 

After trying ‘the class’ online I was ruminating about it and realized it reminded me of the movie Fight Club. I hesitate to draw that comparison lest that seems it’s a criticism in any way of ‘the class’. I know it seems an extreme and bizarre comparison, but hear me out. Anyone who has seen Fight Club knows what a raw, intense, visceral movie it is. For those who haven’t seen it, I will summarize it by saying it is a journey into the psyche of a man battling the different sides of himself. On the one hand, the main character is an insurance company employee who lives in a picture perfect ikea-ed apartment, seems conventional and wears a suit. On the other side he is like an animal, fighting other men in a darkened basement, lit with bare bulbs and coloured by sweat and blood stains on the floor.

His boxing club, ‘Fight Club’ is hugely popular by men of all kinds. Suits are peeled off and men fight in only shorts, without gloves or mouth protection and teeth are readily strewn about the floor in pools of bloodied saliva. Men chant and fists fly. Black eyes, broken noses, cuts and deep bruises remain for members as evidence of their nocturnal selves.

It’s an intense movie to say the least, but is some of my favorite work by Ed Norton and Brad Pitt. It’s super raw and gritty and disturbing, but amid all the violence and gore, there exists a kind of beauty. There is honesty in the raw portrayal of what it is to be human. And we humans, after all are animals. Fight Club is an unfiltered exploration into some of the darkest corners of the human psyche, where our animalistic impulses are distilled to their most basic elements.

I like that this movie reminds me that we are vulnerable to elemental desire, yet we also have brains that allow us some advanced powers of thinking and control. I think this creates a real paradox for humans. There are ways we want to behave and ways we are taught to behave. Watching toddlers play for only a few minutes reminds of us of this constant internal conflict. As we age as individual human beings we mostly learn to evolve our behavior to become socially palatable. But it also stands to make sense that as a species we should be evolving collectively.

There exist examples which demonstrate we are slowly evolving to use our brains ‘better’, but I’m convinced we are NOT fully harnessing our full potential in ways that are actually propelling our race and planet in a forward enlightened direction.

We are living in interesting times when we are at once mostly terrified of being taken down by a virus, and also inspired to throw caution to the wind so that we can converge in massive public gatherings of solidarity over inequality. George Floyd’s funeral had in excess of 50,000 people in attendance in the form of a massive conglomeration of bodies filling the street. Human fears are vast but they can be effective to also inspire us into action. But what kind of action makes the world better when it seems the very act of existing as a human is by definition being a detriment to the world?

I have read fascinating ideas about how humans could evolve to become less parasitic on our planet but that’s a whole other topic, but I think that what many humans share is this nagging guilt about our status quo. For example, we may logically know all humans are created equally, yet racism continues to thrive. And in the space between the status quo and us wanting to become better for all of us on this planet is where a lot of tumultuous emotions live: powerlessness, hopelessness, worry, dread, guilt, longing, doubt, despair, and anxiety being but a few.

In that way I feel drawn to try and release those feelings of lament that we aren’t doing our best work yet here on this planet, whether it’s myself personally, or looking at our race as a whole. Judgment of self and others is mostly harmful, except as it propels us to positive change. As I struggle to comprehend all that I feel, I also desire a reprieve or an ability to clear that lamentation away. I seek to be in the presence and tutelage of those wiser than me who are further along the path of comprehension of our place in ‘it all’, individually and collectively.

Taryn Toomey’s class has become one of those places of respite for me. It is really compelling how she brings the mind back into the body as we move the body physically. It feels like meditation in motion and it works for me. I feel like i’m learning to focus in on my thoughts as I’m moving my body. It’s a very mindfully present physical experience and I am finding it is bringing me greater peace and a feeling of ease.

In the last two weeks the Black Lives Matter movement has been in full force and it’s been really interesting to hear Taryn Toomey talk (as she instructs us via Live Streaming) about her evolution in learning. She said that she has always looked past people’s physicality (and skin color) and thought of them as souls. And that she views all people as being of one soul. But she acknowledged that though she and others like her see people in a non-divisive one-ness of being, that is not what people of color (or other minorities) are experiencing as they move through the world.

Toomey went on to say that her white privilege led her to believe it wasn’t appropriate for her to say anything, but she now realizes it should be the opposite. She said she needs to speak because it’s a waste not to use the privilege of both having a voice and having the platform to use it. When I caught the next class of hers a few days later, she readdressed having spoken about what were thoughts in motion and ideas not yet fully incubated. She acknowledged she may have said the wrong thing, or not been fully articulate in her voicing of her feelings and thoughts, but that she is learning.

She articulated it so beautifully saying she comes to the classes she teaches open-heartedly naked, with weapons down and armour off. In fact she created her class as catharsis for herself as a way to process being a human in this world and the conflicting emotions that entails. Toomey’s classes emphasize what she calls sounding which means just letting lose with any kind of sounds participants feel inspired to make and she emphasizes the importance of sounding as a way to clear ourselves of the sludge that builds. I think it’s one of those things that if it resonates with you, it really does, and if it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.

And therein lies my comparison to Fight Club again. If you understand the desire to strip down and get raw and fight without protection like an animal, the Fight Club concept makes sense. I feel similarly with ‘the class.’ If you understand and enjoy the physical and emotional release of both working out strenuously (burpees and jumping jacks are a foundation) whilst focusing on the inner dialogue too, it can clear and energize your whole body in the most wonderful way.

I loathe getting on the bandwagon with anything, so the fact that i’ve become a serious card-carrying Taryn Toomey fan chagrins me, and reminds me of the universe’s sense of humor. But I think that Toomey’s class is so popular because so many of us seek to open a valve and feel release. We need an outlet for all the emotions that circle our brain like a tornado. It seems so (too?) common for women to feel a tremendous angst in our journey as mothers/daughters/sisters/wives/lovers and friends.

I think society has long understood mens’ desire to throw some punches. And women have been lacing up their boxing gloves too. Some of my most admired female friends don the gloves and ‘fight like girls’ in the oft-heard battle-cry for female boxers and fighters. They are fierce and I am in awe. But boxing doesn’t appeal to everyone, and in that way I think of ‘the class’ as a boxing class for body and mind (without the punching.)

Despite reminding me of Angelina Jolie (as Lara Croft) in Tomb Raider, Taryn Toomey, clad in earth toned lycra and desert boots, feels genuinely charming and humble. As she takes us through her paces she tells us that she is always learning, and means only to progress and evolve while doing no harm. This is such a beautiful sentiment and takes immense courage to be outspoken in an era where everything we say invites vehement criticism. Like my lovely Kundalini instructor, Toomey guides our consciousness inward. She speaks of nurturing a gratefulness for our movement, and for our life and breath. She reminds us to embrace our wholeness in ourselves and our one-ness with others in this human experience we all share.

Every edition of ‘the class’ has a section when a heart-opening exercise is done and the musical accompaniment seems thoughtfully chosen. As we sit on our knees moving our arms back and forth so many times, it starts to feel meditative, I often become aware of the music and its lyrics. Yesterday was Tina Turner’s ‘the best’ which is such an oldie but a goodie from a legit bad ass lady. Today was Alanis Morissette’s ‘Thank you’ which I hadn’t heard in years but remembered I liked the lyrics:

“Thank you, India. Thank you, terror. Thank you, disillusionment. Thank you, frailty. Thank you, consequence. Thank you, thank you, silence.”