The idea to write an eBook about Body De-Armouring developed gradually, and actually originated because of my work as a Thai Massage therapist and my studies of Chi Nei Tsang.
During my work as a Thai Massage practitioner, I regularly had clients who during the session went through profound emotional release. At first, I thought this happened because of the way I gave Thai Massage sessions. That is, always full-body sessions that lasted about two to three hours, accompanied with sustained pressure to release muscle knots, tensions, and constrictions.
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So, I thought they cried or screamed of pain, which, by the way, was sometimes indeed all it was. If it wasn’t so much of pain, I did connect it with release of tension and stress, but it’s only much later in my career that I understood that they went through a Body De-Armouring experience.
This was partly because I had become acquainted with the works from the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, the so-called Godfather of Body De-Armouring. Another reason why I made the connection was because of my training in Chi Nei Tsang, where a lot of attention is focused on releasing tensions in the abdominal area which are said to be connected to pent-up emotions and trauma.
Nevertheless, in my Thai Massage trainings there hadn’t been much focus on emotional release, so it wasn’t a thing I was really occupied with. I didn’t pay too much attention to it and I just thought it was a rather normal side-effect that could happen with some clients.
But over time — basically because of talks with my clients about their massage experience — I started to understand that there was often some kind of trauma connected to their moments of emotional discharge. For instance, clients told me about sexual abuse, childhood issues, job or relationship problems, and so on, stuff they usually wouldn’t talk about in our intake sessions because they didn’t visit me for an Emotional Body Dearmouring or trauma release session but “just” for a Thai Massage.
Nonetheless, even after I had quite some experience with trauma release sessions through Thai Massage I couldn’t really find a pattern, that is, I couldn’t understand what exactly would trigger emotional release (or when) because it was always different, depending on the client. Today, I know that all body parts are susceptible to holding emotions and trauma and as such are also eligible for De-Armouring. This phenomenon is well-described in Wilhelm Reich’s Segmental De-Armoring theory.
Anyway, when I started to write about Tantric massage and bodywork practices, the topic of De-Armouring again showed up, known in Tantra as Tantric De-Armoring. And while busy with Somatic Sex Education and Sexological Bodywork, I found that there’s a lot of work done with regard to sexual trauma release, for instance through Genital Mapping practices, Remedial Scar Tissue Release, or Intra-Oral Massage, among other modalities.
Hence, bit by bit my attention was aroused and finally I dived deeply into the De-Armoring theory and practice and wrote a book about it. Today, I strongly feel that it’s important that massage and bodywork therapists are aware of the possible existence of suppressed and repressed emotions and trauma in their clients and the fact that sessions may trigger trauma resurfacing including emotional release.
It calls for a trauma-informed approach to performing sessions, most notably by having the skills and knowledge not to add to the client’s trauma but to give them the space for release and/or giving them pointers to finding professional healthcare to start dealing with their issues.
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