"Your taking a battering this morning aren t you. As we are about to extend backwards. We stay on one spot and our knee starts to bend to the front as our leg continues to extend to to back. What would you call that. Just the body, not the leg and knee. Would you call that not a pause in travell."
I'd call it a FATAL MISTAKE!
Yes, the action you have described is a pause.
The problem is that you are doing it wrong. While something that feels a bit like what you describe occurs, it is actually only supposed to occur in relative terms. The body does not "stay on spot", instead it is actually moving across the standing foot during this time. But yes, there's a phase where it almost feels like your knee is moving against the direction of travel, though it probably isn't. Unless you make the MISTAKE of PAUSING THE BODY - then you will KILL THE CHARACTER OF THE DANCE, and yes, your knee would move against the travel.
Of course, there are teachers who will ask you to pause your body in a lesson and bend your knee forward. The thing to remember is that this is a PREPERATORY EXERCISE - it is not HOW THE FOXTROT IS DANCED by those who have the necessary skills to do it right. EXERCISES intended to build skills often break the proportions that would be present when those skills are applied to actual dances.
But smarty pants students sometimes forget this... they learn only the exercise, and never actually learn to the dances themselves!
So I'll say it again, anyone who wants to pause in their feather, listen to quickstep... everyone else, who has some clue about the nature of foxtrot, will simply laugh and move on.