“The
brain computes a buffer zone around the body. We have this “second skin”
hardwired into our DNA.
De term ‘personal space’ is relatief nieuw maar van ouds bekend. We hebben deze “second skin” hardwired in onze DNA. De
hersenen maken deze bufferzone rondom ons lichaam, buiten het bewustzijn om en
het is flexible en verandert van vorm, afhankelijk van de omstandigheden
Mensen of anderen kunnen in
deze sfeer komen en dat valt niet goed, wordt gezien als een invasieve, een
aanval.
Als ik auto rijd dan reikt mijn personal space zelfs buiten de auto en als
een andere auto te dicht bij is schrik ik en wijk direct. Ook houd ik bepaalde
mensen op afstand, ga er niet heen of mijd bepaalde plekken automatisch dat
mijn lichaam zelf aangeeft. Ook moet ik niets hebben van huggende mensen die je
overvallen met hun ongeciviliseerd systemen.
In het subtiele is deze
persoonlijke sfeer al veel langer bekend als aura, als drie dirmensioaanl
projectieveld van niet bewuste patronen.
Als onderzoeker herken ik
daarin openingen, beschermers, aanvallen, indringers als spirits, entiteiten,
demonen, buitenaardsen, andere dimensiewezens of anders. Elke dag is het weer
een mooie reis om de indrukken die dagelijks boven komen te ontwarren en veelal
geprogrammeerd waren op basis van oude patronen uit andere tijd, ruimte en
materie, vorige levens e.d. een gevoelig bewust aura is daartoe nodig om de
fenomenen daarin te herkennen, te ontmaskeren, te neutraliseren e.d.
"The invisible
second skin is primarily protection. It has a huge range of
functions. It can be as basic as protecting you against an actual physical
threat, like a predator. It was first studied in the 1950s with animals that
had a personal space or “flight zone” around them, which they compute to
protect themselves from predators.
It can also protect us in
the simplest way from the objects all around us in everyday life, like walking
through a doorway without bashing your shoulder on it. We don’t even think
about it because we have this system that’s unconsciously monitoring where
things are and adjusting our movements. In humans and other animals, it also
has this huge social component to maintain a buffer between one individual and
another.
The idea that a dominant
individual has the larger personal space is probably a mistake. President
Kennedy’s 30-foot rule showed up in a book in the 1960s about personal space by
Edward Hall.
Hall described how President Kennedy was always surrounded by floods of people
but there was always a bubble around him of about 30 feet and only a very few
people were allowed into that bubble. But this was probably not his personal
space but rather the 30-foot nervous, personal space of all the people who were
near him. They kept that distance from him.
Trump is very
grabby and handsy in general.
When you see him with dignitaries, he’s very comfortable reaching out,
grabbing people’s hands, putting his arm around them. This is a guy whose
defensive bubble is very small. He’s not intimidated by other people.
That’s classic. The idea
that higher status or alpha males have a larger personal space is not true.
It’s that everyone else has a larger space with respect to that person
and therefore clears the space around that person.
One of the most practical
uses of peripersonal space is that we wrap, or extend, that defensive margin of
safety from our peripersonal radar system around extended objects sticking out
of our hands. If you use a fork to put food into your mouth, you need a sense
of the space around the fork so that you don’t hit or stab things.
Of all facial expressions,
the smile is the most thoroughly studied. But humans are not the only ones who
smile; it’s widespread in the primate world. This is a nonaggressive behavior,
a sign of nonaggression. The upper lip pulls up, the eyes squint, the head
ducks, the torso hunches. It’s a whole set of defensive behaviors.
Crying and laughter are
similar. It can even be possible to confuse them. Laughter seems, in its most
primitive form, to be part of play fighting. When you tickle children, they
laugh. It’s part of a play fight. But a play fight is still a fight. You’re
still impinging on someone’s peripersonal space. The natural reaction is the
defensive set: lips up, squinting eyes, even tears coming out, protective of
the eyes, and so on. All these are natural reactions during any fight or any
situation where something is impinging on your peripersonal space.
My son has dyspraxia, which is surprisingly
common. About one in 20 children have it. It’s an inability to move in a fully
coordinated way with respect to your environment. Some people have described it
as knowing what you want to do but having difficulty getting it out in a
coordinated way.
There are lots of flavors
of dyspraxia but, in my son’s case, it seemed more to have to do with his
personal space—understanding objects in the space immediately around the body
and how to interact with them. He had a host of difficulties. He tended to bump
into things. It was hard for him to learn how to hold a pencil.
It was shocking to us, how
much of our ordinary everyday life is built out of personal space. When you
don’t have a clear sense of the space around you, it isn’t just that you bump
into things, or have trouble learning tool use. You have trouble learning math
because you can’t point accurately. The first lesson you learn in school is to
point and count for math. You also can’t read well because you have trouble
understanding where the book is—where the words are—in relationship to you.
But the social impact was
most shocking to us. He would lean and bump against people, stand too close, or
barge through, squeezing between people where there wasn’t a space. All the
things that, at some unconscious level, bother people socially. People are very
attuned to this special social dance. When that goes wrong, people don’t know
why, they just don’t like it.
His whole social world came
crashing down. His school didn’t know what was wrong but they didn’t like it
and expelled him from school. He was six at the time, in first grade, and they
thought he was sexually assaulting the other students! Of course, he had no
idea what he was doing. We had expert after expert saying, “He needs physical
therapy, he doesn’t understand the space around his body.”
We went through a whole
court case on that. It taught me that this is probably way more common than we
think. Personal space is so under the surface, it’s so unconscious most of the
time we don’t notice it. But, boy, when it goes wrong, you notice!
“Don’t invade my personal
space” and “respect my boundaries” are phrases we hear a lot today.
No! I think we’re in danger
of the opposite! The mechanism of personal space, and the deep
discomfort of having that invaded, has been there since before we were human.
But today we increasingly live in cyberspace, which has no physical, personal
dimension to it. I suspect this is one of the reasons why we have increasing
difficulties with social interaction. It’s so much easier online—when you’re
not in or near someone’s personal space—to fire off insults or to be incredibly
undiplomatic or destructive."
Bron: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/personal-space-between-us-graziano-peripersonal-dyspraxia/
