What Is Armouring And Why We Create It
You may have heard the term “de-armoring” floating around in various tantric and spiritual circles. There’s a lot of talk about it, yet the question still comes up so often: what actually IS de-armoring?
I think the question is best answered by starting with an understanding of armoring, what it is, and how we come to carry it. (Note: this post will address overall armoring, rather than genital de-armoring, which is its own topic).
Charge and Life Force Energy
If we understand our physical bodies to be a manifestation of an underlying current of energy, then it makes sense that our optimum vitality hinges on the balanced flow of this energy. This is the life force that powers our body, our thoughts, emotions - literally everything that goes on within this structure that we call the self.
As dynamic living beings, we are intended to move through cycles of charge and discharge; energy builds up in our system, and it releases. A breath is the simplest example: we charge through the inhale, release through the exhale. Arousal and orgasm, work and rest, feeling emotion and expressing emotion, all represent cycles of charge and discharge.
To better understand charge, think of the sensations in your body whenever you feel energized by something. This energy can feel positive or negative: it could be the excitement of a first date, or the terror of public speaking. In either scenario, there is a physiological buildup of energy, and hopefully a subsequent natural resolution.
What Is Armoring And Why We Create It
Armoring begins to form when our charge/discharge cycle is interrupted, and we are stuck with a sensation or experience that feels overwhelming and unbearable. Armoring can be formed during a single, traumatic event, or throughout an ongoing challenging circumstance. Our armoring is our unique response to this overwhelm.
Armoring is the habitual physiological tension and alteration of our flow of attention that serves to block or minimize sensations of overwhelm in the body. It manifests throughout patterns in the body, mind, and emotion, all of which are connected.
Every single human being has a strategy for doing this. While our strategies may differ, the goal is the same: to block an experience of charge that has become stuck, and doesn’t appear to have a resolution.
Energy flows freely in an open and relaxed body, but if we want to block an unpleasant sensation, it requires us to tense ourselves in various ways and redirect our attention away from the pain. While this helps to manage overwhelm, in the long run it takes us farther away from presence, being available to love, and being open to pleasure.
We begin to form our armoring strategies early in life. When we experience a high charge as a child and don’t have an attuned adult to help us discharge appropriately, or if we are interrupted in our discharge, we begin developing our own strategies to manage that energy. Once we have found a strategy that works, we practice it repeatedly until it becomes an ingrained habit, completely unconscious, and part of the way we “know ourselves to be”. For some this may look like a tendency to fragment and leave the body when under stress; staying in the body feels like an ongoing challenge. For others it may feel like a closed heart, and a tendency to control one’s environment for fear of vulnerability.
Numerous patterns have been described historically by pioneers in the field of somatic psychology such as Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos, followed later by Anodea Judith and Steven Kessler (check out their work - super interesting). While this piece won’t go into depth about each of the armoring styles, it’s important to understand the core observation in this lineage of work:
Armoring is an alteration in the flow of our energy that impacts our perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and how we inhabit and carry our bodies. These are all interconnected by the underlying defense strategy.
How Armoring Takes Us Away From Presence, Love and Pleasure
At our core, we are all pure Presence, and the closer we can remain to Presence, the more flexibility we have to respond to life in ways that are authentic and generative. Energy charges and discharges freely, unencumbered by past conditioning.
While every human being has defense strategies, some wear them more densely than others, unconscious that they are stuck in a pattern, and fully bought into whatever belief patterns come with their armoring. Unfortunately, this follows us into our relationships and impacts the way we connect, make love and experience pleasure (or lack thereof) in our body.
Say for example, you hold habitual tension around your hips and have learned to direct attention and awareness away from your pelvis because you were taught early in life that this was “bad”. A person with this pattern will be less aware of internal cues of arousal and external sources of pleasure, and may consider themselves unresponsive. The potential for responsiveness is there, but the armoring is getting in the way of energy flowing there.
Another example might be someone who has constricted their entire core and lost touch with their gut, their inner truth, because their family of origin prioritized external sources of authority. Such a person will have trouble expressing authentic emotion, and distinguishing between their real desires and what they think they should do. All of this may boil down to a relationship that feels practical, surface level, and lacking life. Again, the potential to re-access that inner life force is there, but the armoring needs to be softened.
De-armoring: Softening The Edges
We observed how armoring exists simultaneously on multiple levels: physical, emotional, mental. We can address it from any of these levels, but there is something especially effective about working with the body.
The whole field of somatic work is based on making changes on a bodily level, which then trickles up to the mental and emotional level to promote a deeper sense of ease and congruence.
When we work with the body, we disrupt our habitual holding patterns and create space for more presence.
The process begins by coming into contact with the body. We need to develop an acute awareness of what is actually going on in the body so our patterns can begin to emerge and we can begin a gentle dialogue with ourselves to create new possibilities.
We may start coming into the body through practices like a body scan meditation or breathwork. Once we notice how and where we are holding ourselves, we can tune into the underlying energy that wants to express itself. Perhaps there’s a latent emotion that wants to emerge through a sound. Or maybe we notice our inner energy prompting us toward movement, something we typically brace against and suppress. The key is staying in a state of mindfulness so we can track the flow of energy and allow it to move more naturally and effortlessly through the body. The more effortlessly we can charge and discharge, having comfort at each stage of this cycle (ie. we can hold a charge, but we can also be still and empty), the closer to presence we will be.
Our armouring will become most obvious during states of high stress, especially relational stress. The next time you feel triggered by someone close to you, take a moment to notice what’s happening for you: Where does your body tighten? Is there any part of your body that goes limp and lifeless? What kind of posture does your body assume? Where does your attention go? What are your corresponding thoughts and emotions? This is your armoring strategy at play.
Take some time to be present with yourself to see how that energy may wish to resolve so you can inhabit your body with more ease. You may need to move or make sound. Or for some, you may need to be still.
Of course, this is a deep and complex process, and we are barely scratching the surface here. There are many practices that can help us shed our armoring, far too much to cover in one post. If you’re curious to learn more, stay tuned for future posts on de-armouring where we’ll dive into some specific strategies you can use based on your unique armoring patterns. And if you’d like to chat more about how you can begin your own journey of de-armoring, I invite you reach out and book a call with me.