Here’s a module synopsis which Mr Glenn Lim will be conducting for Youth Trainers in Term 3 (2009). This pioneer batch workshop is already full-house, but you can email info@glennlim.net to enquire on the subsequent workshops…

PSYCHOACTIVE SPACING is part of some major developments of David Grove’s theory involving both imaginary and physical space. These spatial relations can create optimal conditions for a psychoactive response, especially amongst youth. There are essentially 4 fundamental ways to generate or invoke psychoactive space:

1) Movement of attention. The apparent ‘theatre of the mind’ in which we consciously perceive our experience is created through our attending to different components of that experience located in different places. This is a private, interior space which has to be externalised through language (or through 2, 3 and 4 below) before it becomes known to anyone else. Language can be used to invoke a psychoactive space but only because our mind-body perceives that space as something real within which we seemingly move our attention.
2) Movement of part of the body. Most often the part of our body that moves is a hand, the head or the eyes, but almost any part can be involved in spatial marking — i.e. indicating that our ideas, feelings, images, etc. have a location in relation to our body.
3) Movement of the whole body. We can imbue space with meaning when we move through it, or act out a scene, or dance. Sometimes just turning around or moving a few inches from one place to another may radically alter our perception.
4) Physicalising is representing an interior perceptual landscape in an exterior material form. This includes drawing (mapping, sketching, charting, diagramming), sculpting, arranging the physical environment, using post-it notes, etc. The defining characteristic of physicalising is that the end result has a physical existence independent of its creator — and that the where of things matter.

These 4 behaviours are rarely if ever independent and two or more are nearly always happening simultaneously.