What do you think of when you hear someone described as 'well balanced'? Is it that they don't fall over much, or are good on a balance beam? We are more likely to be thinking of someone who is well-adjusted - 'emotionally or psychologically untroubled', as one medical dictionary describes it.
This link between our balance mechanism (the vestibular system) and our emotional well-being is very real, as Sally Goddard Blythe explains in her book The Well-Balanced Child - Movement and early learning.
Balance is more than just the ability to walk along a narrow beam, or stand upright on a wobbly plank. It is a full body mastery that seems to be fundamental to emotional development and later learning.
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