Foot Pain

Many types of FOOT PAIN, like Bunions, hammertoes, plantar fascitis, heel pain, weak arches, flat feet, and pronation can all be helped by a basic tenet of The Vance Stance®, which examines in great detail the way people learned to stand, how it is usually incorrect, and how it causes parts of the body to cease working properly.  

Through The Vance Stance, your body will learn to correct itself and achieve more length by stretching and contracting.  Flexibility is necessary to repair all these ailments, which precedes strength. 

Here is an easy exercise derived from a Movement called Toe Crunch Series II (page 104-105) in The Vance Stance book.

• Try this: sitting at your desk, or as a passenger in a car, or on the couch, flip your right foot over, so the top of the foot is facing forward, opening the shin and front of ankle away from you, with the toes curled under. If you have foot ailments, this will most likely seem impossible, and may be very uncomfortable, if not downright painful. As you see with The Vance Stance program, the old adage of “if it hurts, stop immediately”  does not hold in this case. There are two kinds of pain: the intense pain of a bunion, for example, and, the deeply uncomfortable feeling of getting your body to reverse the tightness that has caused you to make your body crooked. This distinction takes a while to differentiate, and the book, The Vance Stance, goes into great detail on how to steer yourself through. 

• To continue: with your foot flipped over, notice if your ankle is rolled to the outside, and feel what is tight when you gently bring it to vertical alignment with your second toe and ankle bones. Try to move the heel forward, into the resistance.

NOTE: If you can’t even get the toes to fold over, or can’t press the shin forward into the stretch, this is a loud message from your body that this is a critical part of your body that must be changed!  Switch feet, and repeat.

The Movements for clients with foot pain is Heel Drop on Stairs (page 94-95 The Vance Stance) which can be download here.

Upon completing the above two Movements, you can also try:

• On the Ball (page 106-107) which further releases the tightness in your foot muscles.
• Ankle Sit (page 124-125) which opens the entire front of your shins and lower leg.  Important: If you have any hint of damaged knees, or post-surgery here, don’t do this until you read it in the book, with all the precautions to prevent injury to your knee area.

You can see from the above that there are many manifestations of how the toes, arch, heels, instep and lower leg can be tight and restricted.  While they have individual names, really the problem is always the same: tightness and misalignment. Until you reverse the pull of the muscles that is causing your particular manifestation of this tightness, pain will ensue. The ankles are the most important joints in the body, and the most under-used. Until you open this area, you will have a difficult time changing these problems. But rest assured, you can change things if you do this work.