Course Outline for Structural Reprograming ®

This is the format for seminars from four hours to sixteen hours, or longer.

Hour one: Check-in: We discuss why each person has come to the class, and what is happening with their bodies - where they have problems and feel pain, including accidents, traumas, and chronic problems.

Postural Assessment
We will systematically look at how participants currently stand, starting at their feet and ankles, and working up to how they hold their heads. This is an interactive process: students think about and share what is going on as we work our way up.  Problems we will discover and start to correct in the seminar include:

Bunions, hammertoes, flatfeet, weak ankles knock-knees, bow legs, runner's knee, knee pain, sciatica, low back pain, pot belly, sway back, tight or chronic pain in hamstrings, Kyphosis (dowager's hump), round shoulders, neck pain, frozen shoulder, forward head, scoliosis and TMJ.

We will ask such questions as on which foot they tend to put their weight on.  Are they knock-kneed or bow legged; is their waist tilted one way or another; and how they hold their shoulders and head.

As we do this, I will begin to discuss links between these conditions, poor posture and pain.  They will begin to learn how problems they find in themselves can be caused by standing improperly. I will talk about why people learn to stand, sit and move improperly.  For example, small children lock their knees when they are starting to walk, to gain stability, and never unlearn that incorrect behavior.

The Vance Stance ® first time through
 Next, participants will learn a specific way of standing:  The Vance Stance ® . This revolutionary technique of body alignment, created by myself more than 35 years ago, was a response to the philosophical notion that "the body was not created with a flaw."

I asked "What if the problem instead is in the way we're using our body?'' This work has helped thousands of people, from professional athletes and sports figures to bodyworkers, and children with chronic pain, become pain free. The Vance Stance ®  is outlined in my book. It is the proper way to stand, and is a grid which everyone can use to determine how to be in space at any point in time. We build The Stance from the feet to the head. In my book, I use many images to help students visualize and remember what to do.

Hour two: Body Awareness
I have students shake out and return to their "old, normal'' way of standing. This allows them to sense the difference between what they have been doing and what they are learning. They then resume The Stance, to begin learning how to be in it, and gain more awareness of just exactly where they are tight, and what wants to pull them off the grid of The Stance.

During the course of the seminar, fifteen theorems and slogans will continually be referenced to help students remember the information and "get it," to be able to have success, later, at home, Some of these phrases include:

The Stranger is Feels the Better
The body is used to performing out of alignment. What feels "normal" is causing the stress on their structure, which results in pain. The new, yet-to-be-learned way of standing, in the flow of gravity, will feel odd.  Using the intellect as the first access point is why this work is so quickly effective: the realms of the psyche and emotions take longer to come into alignment as does the physical.

Could there be a connection?
We show the correlation between poor posture and pain and to where you've had the trama and accidents.

There are two kinds of pain
We make a distinction between your chronic, painful condition, and the new, often uncomfortable feeling of energy going to a new place,

The body changes by stretching and contracting
We explore using muscles in their full range.  Poor alignment is often the result of one of a set of opposing muscles being too stretched out, weak and slack, while its opposite number is too tense and shortened.  This is how we actually bring about change, so you will look and feel different.

Breathing is the oil that greases the wheels of change
We teach a specific way of breathing to train the body to act as if the new feelings are comfortable and safe, so that it will eventually be so.

The remainder of the program (be two hours or six hours) Students learn specific therapeutic movements to change the shape and function of their body. We continually refer to the discrepancy between their former "normal way of standing'' and the new, extremely awkward and possibly uncomfortable Stance. It is, as Paul Harvey would say "the rest of the story!" (N. B. : in the eight hour format, we will be able to include using The Stance in sitting (at desk, car or airplane) and walking. 

We will learn specific movements from my book, plus many more.  Most people are too tight to stand comfortably in The Stance.  In general, people are too tight in places which have been chronically contracted, rather than too weak.  It is also the case that a muscle cannot be strong if it is not flexible.  Thus, most of these movements focus upon stretching by lengthening and contracting.  The exercises I teach will be suitable for all levels of expertise and ability, body, mind, and emotion. As students do each exercise, we check in with them about how they are feeling, where they are feeling the pain, and what is going on by the end of the class, students find that The Stance has become more natural for them to do.

Seminars for Bodyworkers and Massage Therapists
We will relate all this to their daily work.  My assistant and I will circulate, providing hands on guidance to help students experience The Stance at work.

What the Student Will Take Away
A new understanding of how the body should be in space and what may be causing their own pain and inflexibility.  They will have learned specific movements which they can do on their own to increase their ease of being, release pain, improve their performance, and avoid injuries.  By learning to Reprogram their body they may be more comfortable and effective well into old age.

The magic of The Vance Stance ®  will allow them to change what they didn't think they could change.
Top