The Afternoon Flow
1:00 pm
We break for lunch, and it is rare a day where I am not the first person to fix up my plate from the mini-buffet laid out on the kitchen island. The food is always vegetarian, and it seems like each day I am trying a new type of dish. Thankfully I am not a picky eater because each item I try has been delicious.
We get a full hour and a half for our lunch break to recharge for the afternoon session. If it is sunny, I'll head down to the pool to read and lay out in the sun. If it isn't sunny, I'll take a nap (or in all honesty, veg out on my phone for a bit). The 6-hour time difference between France and Indiana means my friends are just waking up as I go to lunch.
2:30 pm
Back to the studio for more learning. Just like the morning session, the afternoon is equally varied in what we do. We are either doing another posture lab, perhaps a more chill yoga session, reviewing material, or my favorite -- sutra discussions -- which is basically a philosophy chats. The philosophy chats are incredible because our group is made up of people who have vastly different backgrounds and experiences. The language barrier between French and English can be a struggle at time, but we work through it as a group.
5:30 pm… ish
Most days we are finishing the "official" part of the training between 5-5:30 pm. Since dinner isn't until 7pm, I try to use this time to work on the homework. The homework can take upwards of an hour or two, and is typically a mix of reading or journal assignments, but as we progress in our training it is become more of work around designing our own yoga flows. If the weather is sunny, I do this work either in or by the pool. The studio can get warm in the afternoons so it feels incredible to dip in the pool to cool off.
7:00 pm
Growing up, our family would typically eat dinner at 5:30, a tradition I kept into adulthood. 7 pm is a late dinner for me but I've managed :) Dinner is equally if not more impressive than the lunch food, and it always includes a good desert. We eat dinner as a group every night on the outside dinner table. It is an amazing routine as it allows us to calm down from a day of activity and share stories and laugh.
9:00 pm
Bed time! The first two days I was nodding asleep while studying around 8:30 pm. As I've gotten more used to the training schedule, I'll stay up until 10pm… but since wake up is at 6:40, I try to be asleep by 10:30 at the latest.