Balance

Continuing on our blogs on embodiment we will be looking at the sense of balance this time. Being embodied is often a vital step on the healing journeys for children, teenagers and adults alike. We have senses that tell us about the world around us, like vision and hearing. We also have senses that tell us about our bodies and how we are grounded in them. The sense of touch is the sense that tells us about the boundary between our bodies and the world around us.

The senses of balance, self-movement and our sense of wellbeing or interoception are the other ones we will look at.

The sense of balance.

Feeling we are in balance, is also an inward sensing. When we are in balance, we are not aware of this sense. It is when we are almost falling over that we are aware of our muscles contracting to compensate and bring us back into balance. Even when we are ‘still’, staying in balance is a constant activity of tiny adjustments in our muscles. All our muscles are constantly involved in adjusting their tension and relaxation to hold us in the right position, between gravity and levity.

The little baby is totally at the mercy of gravity. When the child has started standing, the weight of the body is overcome. We don’t feel the weight of our body when we can stand freely. This overcoming of gravity develops from the head down. At first, we can hold our head up when we lie on our tummy, arching our back and strengthening the back muscles all the way from the neck to the hips. Then the frontal muscles strengthen, we can lift the head when lying on our back and we start to roll. Later we can hold our spine up and sit, we get ready to crawl and become mobile, able to move away from people and towards them. Then we can stand first by pulling ourselves up and holding on with our hands, then by the support of our legs only.

The development of control of the movement system, and the connected sense of self-movement, is closely linked to the development of the sense of balance.

Once the upright position is achieved, then the exploration of the different directions of space can start to happen. The sense of balance is the starting point of that orientation. From our uprightness in stillness, we know where in front and behind is, where left and right are and above and below. All these dimensions like left, right, etc. are always from a still reference point in the middle. Without that middle, those directions don’t make sense. Having this mastered in our body and the three-dimensional world is the foundation for the later abstraction when we start reading and writing and need to recognise the difference between a p, q, d, and b, in the two-dimensional world on paper, and so is important for academic learning.

In this way the sense of balance is a sense that is not strictly limited to giving information about our body but is the starting point to our relationship to the three-dimensional world surrounding us.

The organ for the sense of balance is the vestibular system. This is located in the inner ear, in the hardest bone of our body: the petrous portion of the temporal bone. It consists of two parts. One that tells us if we are in a vertical position, the other perceives our movements in the three dimensions of space through the three semi-circular canals. It is through the connection of this organ with every muscle in our body that we are able to hold our balance.

Our vision is supporting our balance all the time. Our eyes give direct information that lets us know if we are upright. Being able to hold our head still while our body is in motion is a very important part of balance. Those of us who get motion sickness know that focusing our eyes on a still point on the horizon helps with reducing the nausea.

The sense of balance does not rely on any input coming from the outside, like touch, smell, taste, vision etc. Its information comes from the inside of ourselves, from Self Perception.

The sense of balance, the ability to stand upright, also gives the child a big step in the development of consciousness. While it anchors us more deeply into ourselves, it also allows us to orientate towards the world around us. It brings us in relationship with the world around us. It shows how we are not independent from the world we live in, but we are orientated towards it and in it. Orientating ourselves in that world allows us to move towards and away from what surrounds us. Curiosity, interest and wonder draw us into movement into the world.

The ability to be still in our centre of the three-dimensional space, allows us to eventually recognise that others also have their own centre, different from us. This is necessary to freely share that same space with others and become social human beings. Around 1-2 years the physical foundation is built and practiced and around 12 to 14 years the social recognition of Self and Other is built on this physical foundation.

Research by occupational therapists shows that improved balance reduces anxiety. Feeling secure in our own reference point means that we can meet the world in a stronger way. That inner security in the physical world and in our body, is the basis for our emotional inner security. We are not as easy ‘thrown off balance’ when we meet an unfamiliar situation or a new person etc.

The word ‘equilibrium’ gives us a sense of being in the world that a good sense of balance gives us. We can go out in the world and come back to ourselves, find a balance between flowing out, being that little bit more independent, and coming back in, self-soothing and coming to rest.

With the sense of balance bringing us into uprightness and mobility in the space around us, language develops and children speak their first words, taste changes and they can be weaned off the bottle or breast. There’s an initial realisation they are separate from the world around them, which is needed to start to name the world, to start to use language.

They can move away from the parent and come back: connection and separation are practiced, sympathy and antipathy, feeling their own impulse to move, leading to the ability to say ‘no’ around 18, 24 months.

I am I, wherever I am within the wider world

With a healthy sense of balance, I know that my point of reference is different from the other’s point of reference, and that difference is not threatening to my sense of who I am.

The organs for the sense of balance and hearing are interconnected, sharing the same space in the inner ear and the same nerves.

Being able to be still and upright, to adjust our muscles to our changing position in space, allows the 2 ears to simultaneously receive sounds, orientate towards sounds and orientate to the world around us. The vestibular system moderates the tension and tone in our muscles throughout our body, also the 2 tiny muscles in our middle ear which moderate the sounds we hear. This is important for hearing and also for processing what we hear, for auditory processing and discerning the different sounds in a language, for discerning between foreground and background noises etc.

Practicing balance we can do by walking on an uneven ground, like in the bush or on a stony riverbed. Stepping on and off structures where we don’t need to use our hands, but we are instead relying on using our whole body to stay balanced while we step. We can walk on a balance beam, first forward, then backward, then while juggling some balls, then with our eyes closed, taking away the visual cues and only relying on the cues from the body.

We can practice standing on a wobble board. At first, we will be wobbling quite a lot. Our muscles contracting and relaxing and overcompensating so that we won’t fall over. With practice, those compensating movements will become smaller and smaller, so that eventually we can stand on it and juggle at the same time, with a minimal, but always present, tiny little wobble.

Riding a bike and if you can a unicycle, are all relying on a well-functioning sense of balance, and if a child is too scared to try them, practice balance on the ground first.

References:

-            Blanning Adam MD, Raising Sound Sleepers, Helping Children Use their Senses to Rest and Self-Soothe, Floris Books 2023

-            Ritchie Robyn, The Twelve Senses and Sensory Integration, 2024

-            Schoorel Edmond, The First Seven Years, Physiology of Childhood, Rudolf Steiner College Press 2004

June 2026

Lut Hermans