Shamanism can offer Reichian work a larger picture of who we are and where life energy comes from: deeper than all our layers of history lies the Soul, and life force, which shamans call Power, comes from our connection with nature and the Power Animal. Some of what the body holds may also be an intrusionIntrusion. Something lodged in us that should not be there, having entered through the holes soul-loss and Power-loss leave. Four broad types: unhelpful thought-forms, introjects, foreign-body energetic intrusions, and entity possessions. More about this rather than armour, and shamanism traces the controlling culture Reich saw back to domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer.
What does Reichian work see, and where does shamanism start? #
Reichian work, which grew out of Wilhelm Reich’s ideas, sees the body’s chronic tensions as armour against feelings we were not allowed to have. The Reichian therapists Nick Totton and Em Edmondson put the core idea simply: “Emotions are e-motions, movements out”, and armour is what stops them moving. They are kind about it: “We have no reason to feel guilty and inadequate about being armoured”.1 Therapeutic Shamanism shares this picture, and the answer on armouringArmouring. Wilhelm Reich’s term for the chronic muscular tension that locks unbearable feeling into the body. The body holds the truth of what has happened to us; healing is somatic, letting the held movement complete. Read the full answer sets it out. See What is body armouring and what does Reichian work contribute?
Totton and Edmondson go further, and describe Reichian therapy, with its focus on the body, on symbolic death and rebirth, on energy and transformation, as “a thoroughly shamanic form of healing”.2 Shamanism can add to that picture.
What lies deepest of all? #
The Soul. Reichian work aims to free the life and feeling the armour holds back. Shamanism says there is something deeper than all our layers: “Underneath all our personal history, deeper than the layers of our childhood and those of our family and ancestral stories, underneath all the layers of the Fall, underneath all this domestication, our Soul is waiting for us.”3 In Therapeutic Shamanism, the Soul lives in the Lower-World, and it is found by going there and meeting it, with the help of the Guides. See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
Where does life energy come from? #
From our connection with the living world. Totton and Edmondson note that many traditions have named the life energy, as prana, chi or kundalini, and that “Reich’s name for it was Orgone”.4 Reich’s later theories about orgone as a physical energy are widely rejected, and Therapeutic Shamanism does not build on them. Shamanism has its own word for life force: Power. “By ‘power’, here, what shamans mean is essentially ‘life-force'”, and “Power lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer is caused by disconnecting from the natural world; by cutting oneself off from Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this.”5
So shamanism adds a source to Reich’s picture of energy flowing freely through a body. Our life force is renewed through relationship: with the Power Animal, with the other Peoples, and with Mother Earth. Totton and Edmondson come close to this when they describe healthy groundingGrounding. Returning fully into the body and physical reality; the bedrock of safe practice, and how every journey ends. More about this as “a springy, reciprocal relationship with Mother Earth”.6 See What is Power-loss?
Is everything the body holds armour? #
Not always. Armour belongs to the person; it is a defence they built. But shamanism knows that some of what we carry is an intrusion, something from outside. An introjectIntroject. A foreign belief, message or story swallowed whole (often in childhood) and lodged inside as if it were our own; a type of intrusion. More about this, a rule we have swallowed whole, can be felt in a particular place in the body. To one person, the belief that they must not be vulnerable “might feel like having a steel rod in their back which keeps them upright at all times, and which never lets them relax or collapse.”7 Such things may need to be removed, not only released. But it is unwise to assume: “there can be an intrusion behind any physical symptom or disease”, yet “It is important to know that this is not always the case though.”8 See What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?
Why are so many of us armoured? #
Reich and those who followed him blamed a repressive, controlling culture. Writing about why visions of a freer society so often go wrong, Totton and Edmondson conclude that “it is not possible for armoured characters like ourselves to create a healthy society”.9 Shamanism traces that culture back further, to domestication and the Fall. “Civilisation is all about control. Control over nature, of course, but also control over our own human inner nature.” The religions that followed told people “that we cannot trust ourselves and our own instincts, or trust the feelings in our own bodies”.10 Shamanism’s way back includes reconnecting with the other-than-human world that hunter-gatherers never lost. See What is the Fall?
Does shamanism change how armour should be worked with? #
It brings safety and patience. Reich’s biographer Myron Sharaf warned that some newer therapies influenced by Reich, such as the encounter movement, “often err in the direction of sadistic attacks on the armour of patients and of raising false hopes”.11 Shamanic work offers a place of deep safety in the Lower-World, and respects a person’s own pace, because “people have to face particular issues at their own pace, and in their own time.”12 See How do embodiment, grounding and the nervous system support healing?
