This is my discovery from recent times, based on my own work with the subject of setting boundaries, crossing borders, and most of all feeling them in any way.
Setting boundaries is a very important topic. When I can say “NO”, I can set a boundary, but when I say “YES”, do I still have my boundaries or not? Because that’s how we can understand it. And yet sometimes it happens that in some role, e.g., at work, we can say “no”, and in our personal life, with close people, we fail. It can also be the other way around. The combinations are many and at that point things get a little complicated, at least for me.
And how do I know where my boundaries are if I don’t feel them, understand them? I have been thinking about it for some time because I had a great inner need to touch them, to build some image of them. Be it a wall, or a wooden fence, or a moat, or maybe something transparent, luminous or velvety to the touch. I was wondering.
What are they REALLY for?
According to the Bodynamic system that I study, our ability to set boundaries runs on 4 levels, at different stages of our development as children, although in practice we develop this skill or recall it throughout our lives. These are:
- Physical boundaries
- Boundaries of personal space (energetic)
- Territorial boundaries
- Social boundaries
We learn physical boundaries by sensing the skin; energetic boundaries are the feeling of one‘s own personal space separated from other people‘s spaces. We usually mark territorial boundaries with our own things, geographical places, our property. The boundaries of social space are related to belonging to a group, and this at the same time is in connection to creating a place for oneself being in a group, filling one‘s space – being visible. Not occupying space makes us invisible.
Setting boundaries is seen as the ability to clearly distinguish between what is me and what is not me and is supported by the sensations coming from the body.
Boundaries protect my center, what it is, what is important to me.
If I don’t have a center because I don‘t know what’s important to me, I don’t feel myself and I don’t have a connection with myself, then I don‘t know what needs protection and when.
Then either I have no boundaries – everything flows to me and from me, whether I want it or not, or I set my boundaries exaggeratedly. I close myself to everything, because I do not know what serves me and what does not, and this also means closing myself to what is good – to receiving and giving. We often need to do a lot of our own work to get to know ourselves in this aspect.
What is illusory is the expectation that someone else will take care of my boundaries and will not cross them. This is my task and my responsibility to know them and take care of them. But it also works the other way around. It is not my job to worry about the boundaries of the other person, because how can I know where they are, I can only imagine them, and this is often confusing and leads to conflicts and misunderstandings. They must be communicated both ways.
Boundaries are not something that separates me. They are something that marks my space and serves the exchange between me and the environment on different levels. If I am aware of my center, of what is important to me and I can feel it in my body, then boundaries arise naturally, they just are. I don‘t need to have any ideas about them anymore, I need to be in touch with myself and my center. Then I can be in conscious contact and exchange with the other person on a level that serves both parties.
And how do you sense your boundaries?
If you want to remind yourself about your boundaries and how they serve you, I invite you to work together. Do not hesitate to contact me.