NATURAL WAY TO DISSOLVE BODY ARMOR

Muscular armoring was defined by Wilhelm Reich, the famous psychologist and one of the most prominent students of Sigmund Freud, as a muscular rigidity that appears when one suppresses or repeals his or her emotions. This muscular armoring is a self-protective biological mechanism.

"Armoring is the condition that results when energy is bound by muscular contraction and does not flow through the body” (Reich:1936).

Dr. Patricia Frish explains in her article "Reich's Concept of Armoring":

"Wilhelm Reich coined the term armoring as a reference to character and body armor. Initially trained as a psychoanalyst with Freud, Reich veered from standard theory and practice and over time conceptualized a very different paradigm. He practiced with an engaged style in the here and now, interacting with how patients presented in the office and toward him. 

Reich created the term character armor. He meant that we all have coping patterns – stylistic character defenses that we develop throughout our life, usually starting before we can think or talk. We scope out our life situation with parents, caregivers, and early schooling, and figure out the best way to adapt. Depending on how our life unfolds, our defensive structure either becomes more adaptive or becomes problematic. Reich called our habitual demeanor, stance and attitude character armor. Our dominant, submissive, pleasing, withdrawn, petulant, stubborn styles, for example, become a uniform we wear in relationships – our suit of armor.

As Reich’s work progressed scientifically, his focus turned to the body and the way it mirrors the character in all systems. He found that our bodies embody the template of our personalities and conform to those dictates. Reich discovered the basic pulsation in the universe and that healthy organisms and organs have natural expansion and contraction. That life energy pulsates. When we are armored, our pulsation is interrupted and the movement restricted; the energy flow throughout our body is impeded. We may experience this as a lack of sensation, aliveness, a stiffness or tension. Armor can develop into painful sensation if places in our body have chronic holding or are under-charged. So our physicality speaks as well as our voice. Our armoring reduces our creative capacity, our natural expression of our unique Self.

If we allow expansion, we naturally experience new ideas and interests that we have energy to pursue. As we reinstate our natural pulsation by interrupting our character and dissolving our body armor, we naturally and spontaneously embrace life in the way suited to us. When we are imprisoned in unconscious ways of being, we lose flexibility necessary for healthy adaptation."

When we are stressed, our muscles tense up. This tension actually is our reflex reaction to stress — we build up muscular protection against injury and pain.

Our normal healthy condition is a state of constantly and dynamically changing stress. The muscular protection of healthy individual is also a very dynamic. The chronic stress results in chronic muscular tension, which is a muscular armoring. Therefore, the body armor is a bodily expression of the chronic stress.

The new born baby is free of chronic muscular tension or armoring. The chronic stress appears later during our life and expresses itself in armoring.

We can easily distinguish muscular armoring by palpation. It's also appears as impairment in motion and stance. 

Reducing the chronic stress level reduces body armor as well as reducing muscular armoring reduces chronic stress.

Years of research and practical work show me that the natural and the most effective way to reduce muscular armoring is a natural calibration of motion and usage natural motion during all our physical activities. Then we can reach the state of maximum dynamic relaxation.

The natural calibration of motion and breathing can be observed among all living creatures and this is pandiculation and yawning. 

Younger or more vital the living being more it pandiculates and yawns. Pandiculation and yawning make the bogy strong and vital, produce Post Isometric Relaxation (PIR) and restore Natural Motor Schemes both for motion (pandiculation) and breathing (yawning).

Once natural qualities of the motion were restored by pandiculation and yawning, the maintenance of these qualities plays the most important role. This means that the motion will be dynamically relaxed and changeable as much as possible. Both are the inherent qualities of the Natural Motion which represented in Central Nervous System as a Natural Motor Scheme. This motion is close to Self-Annihilating Inertial Motion (SAIM) as much as possible.

In this state, free of body armor, one will enjoy good health, great relaxed aliveness, pleasant and unrestricted mobility, high sensation and flourishing creativity. 

The personal and social relationships will be also greatly improved.  

Dissolving body armor is one of the most important tasks of FORMLESS FLOW^TM. After about twenty years of research, practicing and teaching my students and I discovered and elaborated revolutionary, highly effective and proven methods to deal with this problem.  

On the level of the practical training in FORMLESS FLOW^TM we speak about Natural Power Stretching Exercises (NPSE), Natural Stance Stretching Exercises (NSSE), Natural Steps Flow Exercises (NSFE), Harmony Improvisation and some other natural training methods.

After comparatively short training period one, free of body armor and inner tension, will move freely, like flowing water, experiencing lightness, peace and happiness.