DIP Critical Reconstruction · From: Boundaries

Sensing My Space

Where do I end — and what happens when other people do not respect that?

The original exercise family

Bodynamic boundary work often involves extending the arms to a felt edge of personal space, or having another person approach until a limit is sensed and can be marked, physically, with a gesture or a raised hand.

What the theory may be assuming

Full arm range and the ability to mark a boundary with a specific physical gesture as it’s being sensed.

Boundaries are bigger than an invisible bubble

The classical exercise centres one specific kind of boundary: physical proximity, sensed and marked with a gesture. But boundaries also involve touch, time, privacy, communication, care, medical procedures, wheelchair space, equipment, and personal assistance. A body-space exercise built around one arm’s reach can miss almost all of this territory.

You might recognise this

“People lean on my wheelchair without asking, and it feels exactly like someone leaning on me.” “A carer has to enter my physical space every day, but I still want control over how.” “I need somebody close enough to assist me, but not closer than necessary.” “My boundary around my medical information gets crossed far more often than my boundary around physical distance.”

The psychological function underneath

Where I end and someone else begins. The felt sense of a limit, and the capacity to register it as real information, regardless of whether it’s demonstrated physically to anyone else.

A lived scene · fictional teaching example

A client who relies on a personal assistant for most physical care describes a classical arms-length boundary exercise as almost meaningless to her — someone is inside what the exercise calls her “personal space” for hours every day, by necessity. But when the therapist asks about boundaries more broadly, something opens up: she describes exactly how she wants to be touched during care tasks, how she wants to be asked rather than told, and one specific assistant who never checks before starting. That is where her boundary work actually lives — not in the space around her body, but in the manner and consent around what happens inside it.

Accessible ways in

Noticing, internally, the moment something feels like too much or too close — in proximity, in conversation, in a request — without needing to demonstrate that noticing physically at all. A word, a change in breath, a shift in attention, or simply an internal “that’s the edge,” held privately and trusted.

A process: Notice → Name the kind → Locate where it actually lives → Communicate, in any form

Notice: that something feels like too much, too close, or too fast.
Name the kind: is this about physical distance, touch, time, information, or something else entirely?
Locate where it actually lives: for this person, in this relationship, where does the boundary actually need to be drawn?
Communicate, in any form: a word, a gesture, a written note, a prior agreement, or a trusted advocate speaking on the person’s behalf.

Where interpretation should stop

When physical closeness required by care or assistance is mistaken for a lack of boundary capacity; when a client’s inability to perform the classical arm’s-length gesture is read as poor boundary awareness rather than a mismatch with the exercise’s original form.

A question worth carrying

Do I notice the moment something crosses a limit for me, even if I never physically mark it — and can I trust that noticing as real?

You may also want to explore

Embodied No · Reaching, Receiving, Pushing Away · Bodynamic Psychology

Evidence & sources

Sources checked in October 2026, using targeted searches rather than a systematic review. “We have not located” means our searches did not find it.