Before I started yoga training, I thought deltoids were..

a figment of my imagination.

Now I know they exist, because they ache. But then so do my trapezious and all four of my quadraceps.

We have to study in this crazy book called the Anatomy Coloring Book. Yes, I really get to put my big box of crayola markers to work and I figure the best way to learn all these muscles it to look up the ones that ache after yoga classes.

Like yesterday...when we studied sun salutations for three hours. It wasn't so much that we did a lot of sun salutations, but more that we did them well, hovering over the ground in a pose that vaguely resembles the end of a push-up (chaturanga dandasana). We did big cobras, baby cobras, and a whole flock of upward dogs (urdhva mukha svanasana). Those, I am certain, have made me well aware of the muscles at the top of my arms that I had to look them up in the book and name them. Deltoids. I have deltoids.

I have muscles beneath my boobs...who would have known? They're called pectoralis majors and they talk to me a lot these days too.

My hips though, can I talk about my hips? I didn't realize how tight they were and I think it's the piriformus muscle that is making itself known. Then again, I've done so many pigeon poses this week that I feel like scavenging for crumbs on the sidewalk.

I'm getting used to this muscle soreness. It's strange though, because I've never been an athlete so this is new. In the past when muscles made their presence known I would take a break, now it's becoming familiar. I know my body is strengthening and the aches are like growing pains.

T says he can see the difference of a week and a half of daily yoga on my body. I feel stronger, more stable, more rooted firmly into the earth.

I also feel like I'm learning two new foreign languages: the language of bones and muscles and Sanskrit, the language of all of these yoga poses.

It's all brand new and yet familiar and it's all good.