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Because we live in a physical world, geometry and spacial relationship are fundamental properties of everything that happens in that physical world. To the extent that it is easy to forget this, because the “Where-ness” of whatever we sense is often implicit. Time is also (at least in the English language and all other Indo-European languages [1]) represented spacially, usually from behind (the past) to ahead (the future) as we progress (walk) through time; and also often represented as if it is a written story, the past being on the left (what is already written), progressing to the right (what is yet to be written). So if you speak an Indo-European language, you will tend to have time and place to some degree mixed together according to those linguistic and conceptual conventions.
When using awareness to Arrive, or to know what the qualities are of the immediate environment, or have some qualitative sense of the interoceptive world (any impressions of what the body feels like “from the inside”), location in 3-D space is an important attribute. Full awareness therefore also includes the “Where” - and the more aware of the location, the more comprehensive and clear and fully engaged is that awareness. So an interest in shape and 3-D position of interoceptive sensations brings full - rather than partial - awareness. If one is interested in “Where”, the “What” (i.e. the specific sensation) also tends to be more clear, and requires more attention, and the interest in the specifics of “Where” is part of the transition from Left to Right cortical dominance
Being interested in the internal “Where” is - as far as your non-conscious and the metaphorical symbolic meaning-making processes of the body-mind are conerrned - is directly equivalent to an act of external exploration, and activates all of the neurology that would take part in that external exploration of a real landscape - including the visual cortex (that processes 3-dimensional/spacial location) and the Vestibular system (that allows the body to position itself and move within that three-dimensional landscape). Activation of the Vestibular system is particularly important for regulation of the ANS, and my interpretation of that fact is that we only explore when we feel safe, and so exploration, Visual mapping of a 3-D landscape and Vestibular orientation / movement within the landscape whilst also being in a relational / R cortical type of awareness are demonstrations to the body-mind of inherent safety. Well - of course, all safety is relative, and any exploration may come across the unsafe. But exploration is fundamentally an expectation of abundance and potential goodness-of-the-new, demonstrated through the senses and motor/musculoskeletal system. Think of a dog being let off the lead in a woodland.
There are interesting parallels here with quantum mechanics and the Uncertainty principle. When the location and size of a quantum particle is better defined, there is more energy in the surrounding quantum field. Which makes for measurement of the energy of a particle less possible for physicists. But also (for our purposes) creates a greater potential for the contained information to be anything at all (rather than fixed in one form).
“Where” also connects to the principles of spaciousness and boundary. If I am interested in the “Where”, then I am also aware of a space that has edges / boundaries, and both dissociative fields and imprints - even generational imprints - usually have a distinct physical presence that may have a distinct shape and almost always distinct limits to its size - i.e. it also has an outer edge.
Effectiveness and perceived safety in Bodywork are closely tied to a principle of “Spaciousness” - the ability to NOT place attention in places that invoke imprints. I would say that Spaciousness as a principle in bodywork is the capacity to be aware, but to skilfully rest the attention outside fields of overwhelm (and not have the attention sucked into that overwhelm). Gently placing attention on the outer skin of an imprint provides BOTH spaciousness AND connection of resources to tha imprint. It is a skill that can be also applied to oneself, but less easily (tha by an outside observer) due to the fact that we are inherently sitting inside our own perceptual boxes - and so inherently tend to become entangled in imprints we are carrying. If the skill of spaciousness is practiced for oneself, that translats directly into learning the skill of finding Health and settling into it. i.e. defining and settling into the parts of the body-mind that feel most “comfortably alive”
References & Notes