Massage Therapy and Body De-Armoring | Pressure, Acupressure, and Stretches

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Massage therapy is an important and abundantly used treatment modality in Body De-Armoring practices.

Giving sustained pressure and acupressure or applying stretches to tensed, contracted, or numbed bodily areas that are associated with repressed or suppressed emotions and trauma was already pioneered by Wilhelm Reich, and undoubtedly among his most used somatic techniques.

In De-Armoring theory, it’s thought that by manually stimulating bodily areas of tightness, tension, contraction, numbness, and pain with massage techniques (notably working on muscles and/or connective tissue) people can get rid of physical blockages and reap the associated physiological health benefits, and in addition release mental and emotional issues and trauma.

In fact, most types of whole-body massage therapies can be used for De-Armoring purposes, although the appropriateness and effectiveness of a modality depends a bit on the sort of techniques available in the specific type of massage therapy used, and on what parts of the body need to be De-Armored.

For instance, in Genital De-Armoring one would typically apply techniques from Genital Massage treatments, such as Karsai Nei Tsang, Taoist Erotic Massage, Prostate Massage, Pelvic Floor Bodywork, Lingam Massage, or Yoni Massage.

And to give another example: for Abdominal De-Armoring purposes one would rather use Abdominal Massage modalities and techniques such as Chi Nei Tsang, Pelvic Release Massage, Hara Abdominal Massage, Sobada Massage, Maya Abdominal Massage, and so on.

The types of massage techniques used may vary depending on the exact aim, but are mostly those that are designed to give (strong) pressure or acupressure, such as hand-palm, finger, thumb and elbow pressure, or alternatively techniques that are used to stretch or loosen-up bodily tissues, knots, tangles or adhesions, which include techniques such as joint mobilization, stretches, myofascial release, or trigger point release, to give some examples.

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