Yoga Break

Since India is the birthplace of yoga, it's not surprising the ancient discipline is practiced just about everywhere. Even at the Consulate, where one of Sarah's colleagues launched a five-minute afternoon yoga session last fall. Most afternoons, a group of anywhere from five to 25 men and women get up from their desks and take to the consulate courtyard to limber up.

The group even takes part on a Sari Friday -- when both local staff and American officers don the traditional Indian wear.

The crew, ready to get their five minutes on.

Stretching. Performing a move created by one of the group's
members in honor of Chennai's busy consular section:
a "Visa Stamping pose."

The practice is just one of the ways the consulate and some of its counterparts across India are using Indian traditions to balance their busy visa work. Because you can't take the journalist out of the Foreign Service Officer, Sarah even wrote a piece about how the Embassy and consulates are incorporating Indian traditions into their daily consulate lives for the State Department's State Magazine. You can read the piece here.