While women and men armor in the same way in many respects, there are some gender specific differences.
For us women, we are confronted from early childhood on with cultural and social ideals and images of how we should be, behave and look. We are surrounded by images of young looking, slim, sexy females as the ideal of femininity, completely focussed on external attributes. In reality no woman ever corresponds to these images, not even the models in magazines. In that way, we seem to always be behind the social norms, lacking something, having yet to achieve something in order to be right.
Furthermore, aging, for women, is socially regarded as a loss of the ideal. And often enough, a woman is pitied, if not disrespected, for her aging. This is for example mirrored in the “courtesy” rule that a woman is not asked for her age, as if age were an attribute of weakness or shame. Innate female qualities of care, creating and holding spaces, nurturing, are not part of the picture, and neither are maturity of the heart, mind and body. There is hardly any woman who has not struggled with these norms in her search for her individuality and her own way of being herself. While some of us invest a lot of time and energy, and sometimes even pain, to conform as much as we can to the ideals, some others have let go of the ideals altogether, in protest, without however developing their own individual nature.
The effort of finding out who we truly are, in our gender, in our body and sexuality, is a quest in which many women sooner or later give up half way. This friction between individuality and norms is topped off with negative sexual experiences.
Most of us have never received a decent and valid sexual education that has helped us through the mazes of our own bodies and it’s different needs in our cycles, and even less through the veils of interaction with the opposite gender. Rarely have we been made aware, before the fact and before the pain, that men and women are very different in their thinking, their psyche and their sexuality. Therefore, many of us have engaged with the opposite gender without any self knowledge and even less knowledge about the other. This has led in many of us to traumatic experiences of misunderstanding, rejection, loss, frustration, self doubt and resentment. Men themselves are by no means better prepared or educated in how to engage with the feminine.
This engaging with each other blindfolded, from the first young love on, leads in many of us to building up walls of caution, of withdrawal and distance, to a lack of willingness, or even ability, to truly engage and let go. If not carefully aware, some of us might even declare this wall as part of protecting our individuality and freedom, while in reality it is a part of armor and restricting us from fully living and engaging. Justified armor, we might say, as without knowledge about male and female, we have little resources to openly engage without inevitably running into pain.
While this ignorance about male and female and their energetic interplay scars our feelings, therefore leading to a build up of negative emotions, it also often leads to false concepts about the other gender. The result is blame and resentments, the distance increases, and it severely interferes with our sexuality.
It is known today, that very many women have been abused in childhood and early adulthood. And the same is true for men. However, little is spoken about the many incidences where a woman experiences simply rough sex. Sex, to which she has consented, out of her free will, out of dumb choices, or out of her lack of training to say “No” – another aspect of social conditioning. Rough sex most of the time does not hold a face of overt aggression towards the woman, however it can be qualified as highly unskilled and often times a very self centred sexual Engagement from the side of the man, lacking sensitivity and knowledge.
These experiences are highly unfulfilling sexually and emotionally, and tend to beat at the self worth of a woman. However such experiences also directly impact the body itself: The pelvis and the genitalia are the most sensitive areas in a woman’s body. If a woman is touched roughly, or abruptly, or if she is penetrated before she is receptive and open, the tissues will inevitably contract, creating tension and stress. The more however we tense up in our pelvic area, the less sensitive we become, and we not only armor in the pelvic girdle, but we start armoring inside of our vaginas as well, even up to a hardening in the uterus.
This armoring leads to a successive loss of sensitivity inside of our genitalia. For many women, this means that they need more and more outside clitoral stimulation to feel themselves and reach orgasm, while the inside of the vagina stays numb and somehow disconnected from the experience, even in penetration. Other women have withdrawn from sexual engagements all together, or try to avoid sex whenever they can, even inside relationships and marriages.
Through this armoring inside of our genitalia, we are cut off severely from the most sacred life force energy, and from natural ecstasy. Often, this armor and tension also leads to PH imbalances, and can impact our health in the genital area.
In the De-Armoring process, we release the armored plates that restrict us in various parts of the body. In addition, we can reach deep inside and release the armor inside of our genitalia. Using the sexual life force to loosen the armor from inside out is a powerful way to re-claim our physical feelings inside our genitalia and to free the pelvis from past negative, scary or simply unpleasant experiences.
The freedom to truly feel herself and be present within herself in a sexual experience is a major gain for many women that have gone through the De-Armoring process.
For many, this is a new beginning on the journey of self exploration, as well as mutual exploration with her lover. A place of neutrality where the negative aspects of the past have lost their impact and the woman can re-engage into her own sexuality. A second chance.