The inner sense, one of Steiner's twelve, through which a person experiences uprightness and orientation in space.
The Sense of Balance is the inner sense that gives a person the experience of standing upright and orienting in space, one of the twelve senses Rudolf Steiner distinguished. We rarely notice it until it fails, in dizziness or a faint. While it works quietly, it relates us to above and below, right and left, so that we feel poised and at rest within the world.
The Sense of Balance in Anthroposophy is one of the twelve human senses Rudolf Steiner distinguished, the inner sense through which a person experiences uprightness and orientation in space. Steiner described it in The Riddle of Humanity (GA 170, 1916, lecture of 12 August at Dornach) as a sense in its own right, ranked among the lower or bodily senses alongside the sense of life and the sense of movement. We notice it mainly when it fails, in dizziness or faintness, just as sight is interrupted when we close our eyes. While it works, it lets us relate ourselves to above and below, right and left, so that we feel upright and at rest within the world. Its bodily organ is the three semicircular canals of the inner ear. The young child wins this orientation gradually in learning to stand, and Waldorf education treats that achievement as a developmental milestone to be supported rather than hurried.
In Steiner's Own Words
A further sense that must be distinguished is the sense we will call balance. We do not normally pay any attention to it. If we get dizzy and fall, or if we feel faint, it is because the sense of balance has been interrupted. This is exactly analogous to the way the sense of sight is interrupted when we close our eyes. When we relate ourselves to the world, orientating ourselves with respect to above and below and to right and left so that we feel upright, we are employing our sense of balance, just as we employ the sense of movement when we are aware of internal changes of position. Our sense of balance, therefore, is due to a distinct sense. Balance is a proper sense in its own right.
What it Means Today
Of the twelve senses, balance is the one a Waldorf teacher watches the youngest children win for themselves. An infant does not arrive upright. Through the first year the child lifts the head, sits, pulls to stand, and finally walks, and in each step a hidden sense is finding its footing against gravity. Steiner placed great weight on this victory of uprightness, treating the move from crawling to standing as one of the three foundational achievements of early childhood, beside speaking and thinking. The bodily organ that serves the sense is concrete: the three semicircular canals of the inner ear, set at right angles to one another, register the head's position and motion in space.
In a Waldorf kindergarten this conviction shows up as practice, not theory. Since the first Waldorf school opened in Stuttgart in 1919, teachers have protected the time a child needs to find balance on the child's own schedule, resisting the pressure to seat or stand an infant early. Climbing frames, balance beams, rope ladders, and the daily rhythmic circle are kept in the room precisely because they feed this sense. The Thalira reading is that orientation in space is the body's first rehearsal of a later inner uprightness, the moral poise Steiner saw the same sense providing in the spiritual world. Learning to stand is the ground floor of learning to stand for something.
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