New York fashionistas can now seek the guidance of yoga instructor Yamuna Zake to help make walking in their most vertiginous stilettos less painful.

Zake, 59, offers specialised foot-yoga classes, with students taking along their most torturous pair of high heels to practise a daintier, less damaging walk, The Daily Mail reports.

Classes last 60 minutes and incorporate small balls, developed by Zake, to help massage the feet and teach women to distribute their weight evenly when standing or walking.

Women elsewhere can still try her technique with a US$65 (S$81) foot-fitness kit that comes with ball tools and an instructional DVD. While Zake doesn't necessarily advocate wearing heels, she says that it is all right to slip on a pair occasionally, "just as long as you are smart and have a healthy foot-practice regimen".

She adds that most women abandon stilettos by the age of 45, while she still proudly rocks a pair from time to time - a testament, perhaps, to her technique.

According to reports last year, some women are going so far as to seek dermal filling in their feet - or even toe jobs, reportedly dubbed "Loub" jobs, after shoe designer Christian Louboutin - to make high heels less painful.

Described as being "virtually painless", the treatments involve injecting collagen into the feet to create a pillowy effect, providing built-in cushion to soften the strain of wearing high heels.