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We have more than 5 senses as we are ex­plor­ing in this se­ries. One of the most ob­vi­ous is the sense of bal­ance. ( See links to other ar­ti­cles be­low). There is a dif­fer­ence be­tween the sense of move­ment and the sense of bal­ance. The first gives us a sense of our joints, mus­cles and bones when we move and is also called the sense of pro­pri­o­cep­tion. The child de­vel­ops that from rolling, crawl­ing and walk­ing and feel­ing the pres­ence of its own body from within. You can read more about it in the link be­low.

The sense of bal­ance is dif­fer­ent it gives us the re­la­tion­ship to space; up or down, left or right, for­ward or back­wards. It is a sense of ori­en­ta­tion and closely re­lated to the ear and the or­gans of bal­ance the vestibu­lar or­gans and hence also called the vestibu­lar sense.

From the child start to walk it will take every op­por­tu­nity to cul­ti­vate that sense. Climb­ing logs, boxes, tak­ing the stairs by the rail­ing, climb­ing trees etc.

As you get older this sense de­clines if you do not en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties like walk­ing, danc­ing, bik­ing, ski­ing, yoga or play­ing with your grand­chil­dren in na­ture.
Chil­dren that do not get the op­por­tu­nity to cul­ti­vate the sense in the first years can strug­gle in school with the sense of bal­ance falling down from a chair or other awk­ward sit­u­a­tions. Chil­dren grow­ing up in a flat town, can be very clumsy when they get to play in na­ture the first times if they do not get op­por­tu­ni­ties to cul­ti­vate this sense. Let your chil­dren play on the edges that life so safely pro­vides! It is amaz­ing how quick chil­dren learn and adapt.

Some par­ents are too busy teach­ing kids to read or use the iPad long be­fore the ba­sics and the foun­da­tion for the rest of life is achieved. I once was in­vited to lec­ture for a group of chil­dren at a Wal­dorf school about old Egypt­ian cul­ture and to my sur­prise and joy the teacher en­gaged the stu­dents in stand­ing on one leg and then the other even with closed eyes if they wanted, just to stim­u­late this sense.

The vestibu­lar or­gans, with the semi­cir­cu­lar canals, see pic­ture, are like a lit­tle 3-D con­struc­tion with canals on right an­gles to each other. Flu­ids in the canals, hairs and small stones are part of telling the body where the grav­ity pulls and how we ro­tate or ac­cel­er­ate in a co­op­er­a­tion of both body sides. If the small stones get stuck in the wrong place you get ver­tigo the Ep­ley ma­neu­ver can ad­just them back to place and the ver­tigo can dis­ap­pear like a mir­a­cle – worth try­ing first. If this does not work you should con­sider see­ing a home­opath, they have many good reme­dies they can use for ver­tigo. Ver­tigo will make you bedrid­den or you would have to stay in a chair. The sense of bal­ance is vi­tal to get up and about.

Senses co­op­er­ate and the sense of your body (pro­pri­o­cep­tion) to­gether with vi­sion helps you to keep bal­ance. Some peo­ple can­not stand with eyes closed with­out falling. They com­pen­sate the poor bal­ance through vi­sion.

Bal­ance is im­por­tant on so many lev­els in life but it has to start with the abil­ity to bal­ance your body as the foun­da­tion for the bal­ance of your emo­tional life as well as think­ing later.

In As­trol­ogy the sign of Li­bra is of­ten called Bal­ance. It is re­lated to the kid­neys in med­ical as­trol­ogy. Also in Tra­di­tional Chi­nese Med­i­cine, TCM, the kid­neys are re­garded as im­por­tant for bal­ance. They say “ The kid­neys are the foun­da­tion of Yin and Yang”. You can read about the kid­neys in this per­spec­tive here.

The fun­da­men­tal bal­ance be­tween yin and yang, ac­tive and pas­sive, male and fe­male, day and night as­pects of our life is a ques­tion of hav­ing the same amount of each. Find­ing the bal­ance in the mid­dle.

Keep­ing bal­ance is about not go­ing to the ex­tremes on ei­ther side and cul­ti­vat­ing the sta­ble cen­tre. The strength­en­ing of the cen­tre pro­motes growth and evo­lu­tion.

You can find sim­i­lar ar­ti­cles in my blog holonity

Sense of com­fort/​life:
When all is well the sense of life gives you com­fort

Sense of move­ment:
Do we have a sixth sense or more?

Sense of touch
The sense of touch is the foun­da­tion of kind­ness

Sense of vi­sion
Vi­sion – a per­spec­tive on life

Sense of hear­ing
Wis­dom is hid­den in the ears

Sense of smell
Jus­tice a mat­ter of nose

Sense of taste
Love comes out of the mouth