WordNet
n. a sensory system located in structures of the inner ear that registers the orientation of the head [syn: equilibrium, labyrinthine sense, vestibular sense, sense of equilibrium]
Wikipedia
Sense of balance or equilibrioception is one of the physiological senses related to balance. It helps prevent humans and animals from falling over when standing or moving. Balance is the result of a number of body systems working together: the eyes (visual system), ears ( vestibular system) and the body's sense of where it is in space ( proprioception) ideally need to be intact. The vestibular system, the region of the inner ear where three semicircular canals converge, works with the visual system to keep objects in focus when the head is moving. This is called the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR). The balance system works with the visual and skeletal systems (the muscles and joints and their sensors) to maintain orientation or balance. Visual signals sent to the brain about the body's position in relation to its surroundings are processed by the brain and compared to information from the vestibular, visual and skeletal systems.
Usage examples of "sense of balance".
Within those almost-walls, his sense of balance abandoned him utterly, leaving him nauseous and heartsick, holding onto Julie.
The sense of balance was stronger than anything, and that couldn't have hurt too much.
He saw the signs of stress around the eyes, the sense of balance in the stance, the passive mouth with its quirking sense of humor.
The Miraculous Mirambelles, poised and confident, aerialist builders with a grace and sense of balance that would shame a cat or a squirrel, directing the robot spinners in their monofilament spans three thousand meters above the ground.
He claimed to be a necromancer, and that some disastrously botched ritual in the past had left him over-sensitive to ghosts - they followed him, he would assert, adding that by cutting off their mortal toes he took from the ghosts all sense of balance so that they fell down so often that he was able to leave them far behind.
Such a perch might seem dangerous to one who, without my experience and natural sense of balance, gazes up at me from below, in fact, to such a one, a man such as I might seem in imminent peril of a great .
Part of that power was a hypnotic effect-something the Other himself probably never understood, any more than the rest of us spend much energy considering our own vision or sense of balance.
There was a bitter anger in his heart that threatened to become a scarlet mist that would shroud his brain and imperil all sense of balance and harmony.
She didn't like high places, and had never prided herself in her sense of balance.