A favorite teacher of mine has an article called “Dismantling the Armor” that I read once a year or so. Here’s an excerpt:
“Like the armadillo, we are clad in a protective cloak of armor that clings to our bones and keeps the world at bay. In the human body, this cloak is the buildup of thickened muscular padding primarily around the shoulders, neck, buttocks, and legs. This armor protects against outside forces, both real and imaginary, warding off the unwanted and guarding our inner self.
The practice of yoga melts our armoring, increases our range of motion, and releases us from our physical and psychological burdens.”
– Tias Little, from Yoga International November 2003
When you have a chunk of time, you may want to read the entire article here, because it’s very enlightening. I think about this when I look around at people, especially because I teach yoga everyday.
I think about it in reference to myself, too. We each have ways in which we’re protecting ourselves from the big bad world, right? I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve read Lin-Ann’s guest posts over the past few months. It takes a lot of courage to allow your armor to be dismantled – it’s there for a reason!
In the end, though, all that defensiveness weighs us down. In ways that feel appropriate and safe for us today, it’s a good idea to practice becoming undefended. It will feel vulnerable, but it will also feel releasing. Over time, with practice, the evolution continues and more of our armor will melt away. I love that yoga is a process that continues for weeks, months, years, our whole life.
You can find out more about Tias Little (a teacher I’ve studied with several times) at: http://www.tiaslittle.com/
The magazine that originally published this is here:
http://www.himalayaninstitute.org/yogaplus/
Enjoy your practice,
Barrett
RSS Feed
Wow Barrett I can’t believe you posted this today. I just read the whole article and it is fascinating. Just last night I had bodywork done and that very issue of guardedness came up.
I had tweaked something in my back when I was hanging curtains in my house so I decided to go to the mat to try to figure it out. I did some slow movements and seemingly unrelated to my asanas, this sharp pain came across the mid-section of my back whenever I inhaled deeply. I told this to my bodyworker who thinks that I did not injure myself during my yoga practice but that the yoga practice let my guard down enough to put me in touch with this injury, which he believed to be in my intercaustal muscles (hence the difficulty inaling). During the bodywork we discovered a thick cable of “armor” that stretched from my shoulder all the way down to my glutes. Once this this armor was worked out, then the smaller more tender clenching of my intercaustals could be addressed. 24 hours later, I am pain free. Thank you for this article. I will use it in my teaching!
Yeah, it’s kind of an incredible article that gives voice to what a lot of us feel happening inside of us the more we practice. It’s not a new idea, I guess, particularly in massage therapy as you mentioned, but there’s just something about reading it once a year or so that helps me reconnect with the power I know yoga has in my life to help me feel less “defended.”
Glad it was so helpful for you 🙂