CARRBORO -- The dozen or so people twisted every which way on the mats as they tried to "let their energy pour like sweet, magnolia milk into the earth."

The class was bending to the rhythm of "Feeling Poetry Through Yoga" on Saturday, part of the West End Poet's Weekend program at the Century Center. Molly Drake, a local yogini, or female yoga instructor, led the students as she read from several books of poetry.

Who here has taken yoga before? Drake asked.

All raised their hands.

Who here has written poetry before?

All but three raised their hands.

And from there, the session began:

Shift their bodies into the lotus position. Check.

Journals and notebooks resting on the floor next to their mats. Check.

Pens and pencils next to those, ready to scribble. Check.

Drake pushed a button on her iPod and allowed the music to flow through the speaker and fill Century Hall.

To get her students' bodies in sync, she hit a large crystal bowl-like instrument with a rubber-tipped stick. Then, she rubbed the lip of the bowl with the stick in continuous circles to create a deep, echo that reached all corners of the auditorium -- a deeper, louder version of running a wet finger around the lip of a crystal wine glass.

As the men and women slowly dipped their bodies, rolled their shoulders and turned their heads side to side, their movements became more relaxed. They must have felt the reverberating, gong-like sound from the crystal swelling their hearts and tickling their muscles.

"Where do you feel it?" Drake asked. "Is your skin softening, receiving the sound?"

Drake teaches at Balanced Movement Studio and Carrboro Yoga Company in Carrboro, Triangle Yoga in Chapel Hill, Yoga Spot in Durham and out of her own home. She says writing poetry and practicing yoga complement each other, because the energy to do both comes from within.

"You feel it in your body, and you feel it in your mind," she told her students. She compared the body to natural objects, like a tree or the ocean.

"Let your shoulders tell their story," she directed. "Are they rising easily as a wave rises and falls? Or are they gnarled like roots?"

As the yoga practitioners-turned-poets moved into their various "asanas," or positions, Drake recited some poems. Among them were "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver, "Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman" by Grace Nichols and a few in David Whyte's collection, "Fire in the Earth."

"Stick your tongue out. Open your mouth. Catch a raindrop," she told them. "Let some of the images that came into your brain go down on the paper. Did you see rivers? Did you see geese?"

So, they wrote. Their pens scratched their papers swiftly, before their thoughts slipped away, before their snapshots of waterfalls and tigers and oaks could disappear.

As the class wrapped up, Martha Crowley walked away rejuvenated.

"It's a very different way of spending your time, of energizing yourself," said the 58-year-old woman. "There's a sense of energy that's not like the same energy you need for work. For me, it's a little bit of cleansing -- from the battles at work."

She said the echo from the crystal bowl at the beginning of class sent a vibration throughout her body for much of the session.

"It started from my right side and moved to my left!" she said excitedly. "It's an interesting experience -- a sensory experience."

But Sue-Anne Solem was there more for her poetry. Though she did some stretches throughout class, her mind was more in her pen and paper. The yoga had made her feel more creative, she said.

"I've got lots of ideas!" she said as she waved her notebook around and a huge smile spread across her face.