Armoring is the condition that results when energy is bound by muscular contraction and does not flow through the body.

Wilhelm Reich was a significant contributor to the body of mind sciences of the early 20th century and is credited as being the key driver of this form of scientific inquiry in the West until the 1940s. Reich proposed a model of the human condition that postulated a theory of energy being a primary component of all matter and space, a concept he called the orgone energy. This energy was necessary for living organisms as, in effect, it was a "life force." He devised ways to quantify this orgone as being electromagnetic and that it could be measured, sensed, and worked with in therapy.

Reich had developed some key concepts about the human condition that fell under his theories of Orgonomy. Reich delineated armoring concepts during the Character Analysis and Orgasm Theory period of 1928-34. Reich defined Orgonomy as the science of cosmic orgone energy (Reich:1934). Reich (1934) further explained orgone energy as "primordial cosmic energy; universally present & demonstrable visually, thermically, spectroscopically, and using Geiger-Mueller counters, in the living organism."

From this place, Reich was interested in how this orgone energy interacted with the human condition and expressed itself in the body and the mind. Reich established orgone therapy from this place as the "Mobilisation of the orgone energy in the organism, i.e., the liberation of the biophysical emotions from muscular & character armoring to establish, if possible, orgastic potency" (Reich:1934). Reich stated that we develop muscular armoring to block this orgone energy.

The overall effect of muscular armoring with character armoring created the individual. Alexander Lowen, an associate of Reich, best summed up this overall effect as "The character of the individual as it manifests in his typical pattern of behavior is also portrayed on the somatic level by the form and movement of the body. The body expression is the somatic view of the typical emotional expression, which is seen on the psychic level as the character. Defenses show up in both dimensions, in the body as muscular armoring. ” (Lowen:1976).

Contained this theory within Reich's overall view of the energy economy. This theory stated, "Economically speaking, the character in ordinary life and the character resistance in the analysis serves the same function: avoiding unpleasure, establishing and maintaining a psychic equilibrium – neurotic as it may be – and finally, that of absorbing repressed energies. One of its cardinal functions is binding "free-floating" anxiety, or, in other words, absorbing dammed-up energy in the body. (Reich:1934).