About an hour before I taught my Meditation Flow class tonight at Karma Yoga Center, I learned, along with the rest of the world, that Steve Jobs had passed away.

I pulled up my Twitter feed and there it all was. A collective display of digital grief, making all non-Steve Jobs related tweets seem woefully out of place. I couldn’t remember what I had planned for my class theme anymore. The news was too encompassing to shelve it for an hour and 15 minutes.

So I took it with me to class. My students had already heard. And I talked about this quote of his:

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Although it was couched in the terms of Mastin Kipp from The Daily Love:

“Steve said once that it is by living with the awareness of our own death that frees us to be ourselves and give our gift to the world.”

And that’s when I did it. I brought up the fact that the rest of us will all meet the same end.

There it was. The raw, naked truth that our beautiful, life-giving prana will one day cease. I paused and the silence was thick.

The yoga class must go on

But here were my students, still looking back at me. Waiting for the hope to come.

We spent the majority of class celebrating the breath and life, and acknowledging that the work we do on our mats is the body’s alchemy for continual healing. For a chance at new life and infinite possibilities that come with living in your genius, as Steve Jobs had done. The word death never made its way back into the practice.

I think that’s why it struck me only after class, after I had driven home and after I had walked in the door and let my dog outside, that it might not have been appropriate to bring up death. After all, I don’t know what my students are going through. Perhaps someone in their life has pancreatic cancer. Perhaps something has recently passed away. Perhaps they, themselves, faced a brush with death.

Who am I, as a yoga teacher, to talk about the yoga mat as a place where “mini deaths” can happen? As a place where the skin sheds and layers unpeel to reveal the person that you always were, and the person you are recreating yourself to be?

Anything goes in yoga class?

But then again, yoga is the essence of life itself. It’s yin and yang. Effort and yield. Dark and light.

Alive and dead.

Yoga is also about connecting in with the collective to understand that in life and death, we really aren’t alone. So being in a yoga class, breathing with everyone else’s breath and settling into Warrior Pose on a night when you feel anything but a Warrior, is revitalizing.

Before class one of my students was telling me how she finds herself being healed by yoga, and that at first she was digging in the topsoil, but now she’s digging down into all the grubs and the roots. Life is messy, as is death. But death seems tidy because many don’t witness it happen. Of those who do witness it, many don’t talk about it.

After class, my student told me she was invigorated. It was the ultimate compliment for a class that mentioned the “d” word. So maybe talking about death wasn’t so inappropriate after all.

What would you have done, or how have you addressed death in yoga class (if at all)? If we can’t accept death while on our yoga mats, then where can we?

Photo: Pete Birkinshaw

From Oct.1 until the 24, I’m participating in The 24 Things, a project by Marylee of Chakras Yoga which I discovered online through my Twitter chat, @omchat. The goal is to practice conscious consumerism by purging one item a day from your home while abstaining from purchasing anything other than the necessities.

Marylee writes, “Consciously letting go and making room for the new creates a sacred space. In that space you can create anything you want for your future.”

This phrase inspired my yoga class theme tonight. Instead of letting go of physical things, I had my students identify something emotional or mental they could clear out. During the practice we focused on hip openers (Warrior II, Pigeon, Malasana, Baddha Konasana) and created some heat with Ujjayi breath to ignite and burn away inner baggage. The hips are like a baggage carousel for unclaimed luggage. If you don’t identify and pluck out the problem, it keeps going round and round.

I’m no stranger to this kind of emotional off-loading now, but I wasn’t always this way when it came to things.

My journey from packrat to purger

I’m the daughter of two Baby Boomers who still have the Depression-era “if it still works, let’s keep it” mentality. This includes such things as tax files from 10 years ago, all of my baby toys and an entire bucket of nails I once collected when our family’s home was under construction. (I still love you, mom and dad.)

Following in their footsteps, as each school year ended and another began, I’d stack my notebooks and homework in a corner of my closet, because, you know, I didn’t know when those math quizzes from 3rd grade would ever come in handy again. Soon, schoolwork overtook my entire closet. Even as a kid the stuff weighed me down.

Sometime during my high school years I trashed the whole pile, keeping only a file folder full of mementos. It felt totally unnatural and counterintuitive, but I did it and I’ve never looked back.

Ultimately, I became a spartan by necessity. I’ve moved 11 times in the past 10 years. That means packing, unpacking and cramming everything I own into less-than 800 square feet apartments sorely lacking in closet space. I learned, quickly, that what I brought in was what I had to eventually take out.

But it wasn’t until earlier this year when I started a real war on clutter. I downloaded Man vs. Debt’s Sell Your Crap and embarked on a 3-month long Craigslist and Amazon.com selling spree, which so far has yielded nearly $800 in cash. That’s some serious space creation.

What creating space is really about

Money’s nice, but it’s not why I keep giving away my things. I’m a chronic organizer. I love streamlined closets and things all lined up in a row. I love the act of gathering up to give away.

When I found out about The 24 Things, I was all, “I’m gonna nail this!” So far, here’s what my roster looks like:

• Oct. 1 – old ski boots, recycled
• Oct. 2 – six pairs of shoes, donated, and a bunch of papers in my junk drawer recycled
• Oct. 3 – huge pile of clothes, some shoes and purses for consignment

As you can see, I’m kind of cheating on the “one thing a day” requirement. My inner overachiever is feeling pretty smug right about now.

Until I realized that the project’s not about what I’m going to gain by giving things away. It’s about the giving itself – the mindfulness of choosing something every day to gift, donate or sell. And the pause button on bringing things back in, so that the space you’ve created can sit and expand and affect everything around it with its absence.

It’s not unlike every time we come to our yoga mats.

It’s one thing to create space and then refill it immediately with something shinier or newer. It’s another to create space and be content with the emptiness. Whether we create space in our bodies or in our homes, the void holds potential. For what? For whatever you want it to be.

How’s that for giving away a pair of shoes? Or, for that matter, spending three minutes in pigeon pose.

Feeling inspired? It’s not too late to start The 24 Things.

Photo: asteegabo

In another life (or at least the earlier years of this one) I was somewhat of a Web geek. Well, OK, I still am. And it’s this part of me – the part that loves beautiful design and used to be a decorating editor for HGTV.com – who cringes when she sees beautiful blogs about yoga juxtaposed with hideous WordPress blog themes.

In my quest for a better blog theme for myself, I came across several which would work well in general for yoga bloggers. There’s a spacious quality to these WordPress themes, and an emphasis on typography, which is essential if you want your blog to stand out.

If you’re not ready to invest in a custom design, check out these inexpensive (and free!) install-it-yourself WordPress themes for blogging yoga teachers and students. You can easily add these to a WordPress custom site installation, such as mine, but the first two are also available for WordPress.com hosted blogs.

1. We Wei – FREE
Sleek and simple, this theme embodies saucha. It’s straightforward and minimalist in design so that your pictures and words pop. Features a custom header, background and alternate dark scheme.

2. Twentyeleven – FREE
This official WordPress.org theme is the next-gen Twentyten theme from last year, so you know its code is solid. Customize the header image, background and menu, plus choose a dark or light color scheme with three layout choices. It also includes a “showcase” page — which most themes don’t offer — to transform your homepage into a showcase of your best content.

3. Edmin – $39
A nice departure from typical blog layouts, this theme features a rotating slider of recent blog posts. And because most yogis don’t want to bother with HTML, the theme has an easy-to-use options panel to take the guesswork out of customization. Oh yeah, and tons of documentation if you get stuck.

4. Mondo Zen Theme – FREE
With a henna-inspired header and lotus flower, how can you go wrong? This simple green and white blog design is reminiscent of Blogger’s two-column templates. Great for busy yogis who don’t need all the bells and whistles.

5. Easy – $35-37
For yoga bloggers churning out tons of content, this simplistic theme from Mojo Themes easily (ha!) features your best stuff front and center with a rotating slider and access to top posts, comments and tags. My one gripe is the link text is light gray and hard to see, but you could probably change that in the CSS code.

6. Modest – FREE
Crisp, clean and focused on the typography, Modest is another theme from Mojo Themes I couldn’t pass up. If you don’t plan to use a lot of photography, this theme is for you.

7. Memoir – $39 + get access to all of the themes on Elegant Theme’s website
Featuring four gorgeous backgrounds, this theme takes a visual page from an old-fashioned book. Photo gallery and portfolio pages ensure you’ve got plenty of flexibility to show off headshots and yoga poses.

8. Unstandard – FREE
This two-column theme cleanly showcases the latest comments on posts to promote conversation. Categories are front and center, perfect for breaking out posts about poses, meditation and more.

9. Seven Five – FREE
For yoga bloggers who have a lot going on digitally – Twitter, videos, photos and articles – this minimalist theme showcases it all, all on your homepage.

10. Big Square – FREE
This theme’s massively-sized photos puts a yogi photographer’s pictures front and center, capped off with elegant scripted headlines and plenty of white space.

Looking for more WordPress themes?

No ugly, typical WordPress themes here. These websites feature gorgeous designs, many for free:

• Press75
• Best WordPress Themes
• Design Disease
• Theme Forest

Disclaimer: I was not paid or asked to choose these themes, but I do have affiliate links on some of the paid themes. If you purchase them, you’ll help me out, too.