Benefits: Opens the chest. Strengthens the arms. Your hand-waving endurance is improved if you are ever on a parade float.

Suffering: Medium. Just-got-nicked-by-a-cactus-thorn amount of suffering.  

To make cactus arms, lift your arms to shoulder height or slightly lower and bend your elbows to make field goal post shapes. In yoga, cactus arms should maintain symmetry, which is the opposite of what the plants do in the wild. Unlike most living things in nature, cacti aren’t trapped in the planetary rat race of symmetry. They confidently extend their arms wherever they want and in whatever size they want and say, “What’re you looking at, fool?” There's a lesson to be learned from cacti—we should let go of self-concern and appreciate the beauty of our bodies and their natural variations.

     If that doesn’t work, as a Plan B, we can take inspiration from cacti and grow out spikes to make people think twice about making negative comments.