Meet the Portsmouth woman bringing yoga and poetry together as One Soul Yoga

In a bid to reach that inner voice which can be so easily drowned out, yoga teacher Andrea Bailey is running a unique session of yoga and poetry.

Andrea, who has been practicing yoga for about 20 years, did the teacher training and has been running classes at Eastney Community Centre for nearly two years under the name One Soul Yoga.

“I felt that I wanted to impart my passion to others – I love it,” she says.

“We're always asked that question: what do we want to do with our lives? But I also had some personal things I was going through as well and I thought: this is really what I want to do.”

As a counsellor it was also a way for Andrea to add her knowledge and expertise from yoga to her day job. “Doing counselling/psychotherapy, I was also wanting to incorporate more body work into that – our mental wellbeing isn't just a mind thing, it's a body thing as well, and I could always see that. I wanted to integrate the two of them together. Naturally the soul comes with that...”

She has regular classes every Wednesday from 6-7pm, and Yoga Saturdays once a month. These extended sessions tend to take a different theme and the next one, on January 20 from 9.30-11.30am will combine yoga and poetry.

“Were so busy in life, so busy with trying to catch up with things and sometimes we can get really stressed,” explains, Andrea, from Milton. “I felt that actually we need space to sit and be silent and have that stillness. There's also a lot we're not hearing in ourselves – that sense of that inner voice. I felt that was missing somehow.

"I love being creative and I love reading as well, so I thought I could combine these passions – reading, writing, journaling – anything that involves free-flow of the body and the mind.

"I've not heard of anyone putting yoga and poetry together before and I've been asking why? It's just another way of expressing yourself. It's a way of channeling your inner voice and just expressing. There are no limits as to how that might be manifested.

“I saw a programme about Laurie Lee (the famed poet and novelist who wrote the classic Cider with Rosie) on TV just this week and he was talking about the expression of poetry. He said there will be a time when I will just write poetry and that will be it, I won't have to revise it or edit or anything - it will be coming from an inner place. And I thought, yes, he understands!

“I guess living in the Cotswolds and walking in the countryside, he was getting into that meditative place. But sometimes we don't have that place in our lives. If we can get into that space through yoga, we can channel it differently.”

The session will begin with yoga, to help bring everyone “more in touch with our inner selves.

“And then there will be a space to sit and create your own poetry, perhaps bring some poetry, and then we sit and chat over a cup of chai. Some people might not want to share, but at least they can respect the space that they've been given to do that – to sit and just connect with that inner voice.”

If it goes well Andrea intends to make it a regular thing: “I love any aspects of creating that space and intimacy to share. Poetry and writing, or even painting, is good. Then I'm also doing a retreat in March where I'm hoping to incorporate drumming as well – I want to be more creative with the yoga.”

For more information go to onesoulyoga.co.uk.

Andrea’s poet of choice for the session

Andrea will be taking Lemn Sissay’s Let the Light Pour In with her, released last September.

For the past decade, Sissay has composed a short poem as dawn breaks each morning. Life-affirming, witty and full of wonder, these poems chronicle his own battle with the dark and are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy.

Here is the first poem from the book:

​‘How do you do it?’ said night‘How do you wake up and shine?’‘I keep it simple,’ said light

‘One day at a time’