Are you one of the many who panic about a forthcoming holiday, focusing on how to avoid embarrassing yourself through motion sickness, rather than focusing on the adventure ahead? Instead of enjoying the journey, so to speak, are you fearing the ride?
What is motion sickness?
Motion sickness is a condition where your eyes are telling your mind that you are stationery, because you are sitting in a chair, but your balance centre can sense motion occurring. Your balance centre is inside the ear. This creates a mismatch between your visual record and your balance centre.
The mind decides that you must have been poisoned to be feeling this motion occurring, and so it creates a sensation of purging, to rid you of the poison!
What can you do about it?
There are a few things that you can do to alleviate the feeling of nausea while travelling, such as looking outside the vehicle or craft, if possible. This works by informing your mind, through your visual faculty, that motion is in fact occurring. In fact it is a good idea to gather as much external information that you can in order to convince your mind that you are in fact moving. Sometimes this is hard to do on the inside of an aeroplane or a boat. Even if you are positioned in the back seat of a car, rather than the front seat, it can be hard to convince your mind that you are moving, whereas, in the front seat, you have a whole windscreen with a greater span to take in.
When you take in the outside world, your eyes and inner ears can both mark your experience as movement.
How can hypnosis help?
For clients with motion sickness, I place them into a deeply relaxed, hypnotic state and explain the mechanics of motion sickness. When the unconscious mind understands why it is happening, it can begin to adapt. I then provide them with metal devices with which to alter the impact of the nausea, giving them control over the sensation.
This approach works for all types of motion sickness. It can also work for things like examination nerves, where the mind and the stomach lose control. Much of my approach here will depend on the symptoms.
You can find out more about motion sickness here
If you are interested in making motion sickness a thing of the past, contact me to discuss