Every Monday is yoga night. It has been for several months now. I'm in level 1A, which is sort of like training wheels yoga, and it's kicking my ass. I enjoy it but some of the things we do? Jee-zus. Sometimes they're difficult things and I'm okay with not being up to it. I'm simply nowhere near being ready to do a handstand so I'm okay with sucking at attempting them. (I do NOT want to think about what upper level yoga students are doing. Pinky stands? Wrapping both legs around their necks?)

It's when the move is easy that I despair. Like tonight. During one of our rest periods, we're supposed to sit back on our heels with our toes flexed under our feet. This is supposed to stretch the bottoms of our feet. Wrong. I feel no stretch. What I do feel is intense agony in the knuckles between my big toes and my feet.

In a former life, I was an archaeologist. An archaeologist whose specialty was analyzing human remains, in fact. I regularly analyzed how a person's life wrote itself on his or her bones. You can tell that someone kneeled a lot during life with her feet in that hyperdorsiflexion position because it deformed the bones. Finding it in a skeleton? Way cool talking point. Having it in my own body? Totally not cool pain point.

Every Monday night for a couple of five minute periods isn't enough to deform my metatarsals radically but the changes it causes are associated with osteoarthritis in that joint in older individuals. A couple of hours after finishing the class, those joints hurt. I think that's a move I'm going to have to pass on in future sessions -- but I hate being such a wimp over something like *kneeling.*

I feel compelled to report that I'm not a complete loser in the kneeling department because after that we kneel with our feet pointed rather than flexed and that's 100% comfortable to me. :)