The Vance Stance ®, also known as The Bonner System of Structural ReprogramingTM, is the revolutionary body/mind technique developed by alignment pioneer Vance Bonner, Ph.D. over 35 years ago. It has helped people suffering from scoliosis, sciatica, back and neck pain, forward head, frozen or hunched shoulders, bunions, flat feet, plantar fasciatis, pronation, bow legs, knock-knees, and sway-back significantly. 

When Dr. Bonner first developed the work in 1974, she called it Structural Reprograming®? , to emphasize the deeply body/mind, structure-changing aspect of the technique. With the publication of the book, The Vance Stance, clients began referring to the work as The Vance Stance. Many thousands of clients still know and love it by its old name. 

- Anyone who is in pain, who is suffering from conditions that they may not know are caused by mis-alignment, such as sciatica, scoliosis, back pain (low, middle or upper); disk troubles; tight or high or frozen shoulders; forward head or tight neck; knee pain; tight hips (pre-or-post replacement);  bursitis at joints; foot problems, such as bunions, hammertoes, plantar fasciatis, flat feet, weak ankles , pronation, heel pain. 

- Anyone who is dissatisfied with the appearance of their body: poor posture, pot belly, slumped shoulders; forward head; concave chest ; different shoulder or hip levels; humps and valleys at the spins (scoliosis); crooked legs, unsightly toes or feet. 

- Anyone who is unhappy with the performance of their body: flexibility; strength; balance;  perhaps even after much effort at improvement.

- Anyone who is suffering from the aftermath of injury or accidents, or surgery, even years later. 

Many conditions respond beautifully to the correction of the problem by changing the pull on the muscles and joints to straighten out the body. Bunions, for example, while unsightly and usually very painful, do so much better by correcting the underlying cause of them: tight feet, legs, and incorrect use of the body. Surgery is deeply invasive, and often results in the rest of the body being thrown off. It is not unusual for a client to eradicate the bunion of the second foot with Dr. Bonner after not getting the relief expected with surgery on one foot, and noticing how much worse off they were after it. Scoliosis is often said to be "corrected" by bracing and or surgery. When clients see and feel huge changes with The Vance Stance instead, they are grateful to have not undergone those outdated and uncomfortable remedies, which so often do not succeed, and often make things worse. 

Since 1974, Dr. Bonner has taught her body-alignment work to elite athletes and clients who appreciated her advanced method for correcting their posture, performance, and pain-elimination.  In the Hamptons, New York City, Los Angeles, Sun Valley and Canada, thousands of happy clients passed the word along to friends and colleagues.

With the publication and welcome reception of the book, The Vance Stance, and the 27-city book and media tour (including appearances nationally and on CBS This Morning,) Dr. Bonner began training and certifying Teachers in her work.  Settling in Bend, OR, and teaching thousands of students in nearly 10 years at the local college, the work as expanded to include people of all conditions, ages, and levels of ability. It is finally time to present this work to a larger audience through the web. 

While some of the movements may seem at first to resemble other modalities, such as Yoga and Pilates, just as they are not the same, The Vance Stance starts with a unique premise, and offers a new and underlying matrix for change. Yoga is great, but many clients who have been practitioners, some for decades, have found that they had not achieved the results there that The Vance Stance offered. Bunions remained. Scoliosis had not budged, despite the client being extremely flexible! The Stance posits that we are all using our bodies in only one of the ways we could, and that until we learn to be in gravity in a radically new way, we miss the power of gravity to lift the spine, while allowing the leg joints to do a new and major part in freeing the body. 

No. Dr. Bonner created this work from her undergraduate studies of Art, Philosophy and Communication, after rejecting the traditional model that asserts that were designed poorly and that deterioration is to be expected. Instead of assuming the back and knees were design flaws, her eureka moment came as she asked a different question: "What if the trouble is not in the design, but rather in how we are standing on our feet? What if the answer lies in a new use of the ankles?" And The Vance Stance was born.