Hypnosis Can Help With Motion Sickness

Hypnosis is well know for it’s effectiveness in treating many things such as weight loss, smoking, stress, IBS, phobias etc. It is also very effective at treating motion sickness. This is great because it removed the need for any drugs, or other potions that have side effects. How does hypnotherapy help with this? It is down to changing the way the mind interprets the information it receives when in a moving vehicle. Let us discuss this in more detail!

Motion sickness is largely caused by confusion. The balancing mechanisms in the ear are quite sensitive, and can detect the motion of a journey in most types of vehicles. The mechanisms in the ear can detect all the little bumps and all the twists and turns because of the g force that is exerted upon us. This device then sends these signals to the brain, which are often interpreted as the body being in motion. The eyes when looking around the vehicle will also send a message to the brain. This message is sometimes interpreted as the body being still, since a lot of what we can see in inside the vehicle is not moving. These two very conflicting messages can then cause nausea, and even actual sickness.

Sickness is caused because the brain realises that it has a problem with its perception. It knows that something is wrong if it is receiving two very different messages. Some bacterial diseases can play with our perceptions, like when we have flu for example. The mind, in an attempt to protect the body, may trigger nausea in an attempt to expel any bugs from the system. This results in the traveler feel sick. Sometimes people can help themselves by looking out forward at the front of the vehicle. This helps the brain to ‘see’ what the situation really is, and that you are actually moving, which will hopefully correlate with the information that the ears are sending.

But we know what is happening on a conscious level any way, regardless of whether we look out at the front or not, so what is the problem? Consciously we know that we are sitting still on a moving object. The confusion lies in the subconscious part of the brain. The subconscious part does not always know exactly what is happening, even if the conscious part of our mind does. The subconscious part of the brain is very powerful. It controls all of our automatic functions, such as sweating, blushing and breathing, and is responsible for our intuition. However it can sometimes become confused with unnatural things that are happening to us, as it does not understand words like our conscious mind does. This is where hypnosis can help.

A hypnotic trance basically turns down the conscious part of the mind in order to communicate more effectively with the subconscious part. This is the part of our mind that controls the automatic functions of our body (like being sick!), and also our drives our habits and desires. A good clinical hypnotherapist can talk to a subjects’ subconscious mind and persuade it to make changes. They can talk to it and persuade it to desire eating a more balanced diet, or to quit smoking for example.

In the case of motion sickness, a clinical hypnotherapist can communicate with the unconscious part of the mind and inform it as to what is actually happening when you are in a moving vehicle. If you can effectively communicate this to the subconscious mind, then there is no longer any confusion when you are traveling. All you need to do is tell the subconscious part of the mind that when you are in a vehicle you are actually moving, when the ears detect motion, despite what it may interpret from the eyes. When there is no confusion, there is no need for the body to trigger feelings of nausea, as it will know that there is no bacterial infection in the body that is causing perception problems. In fact there will no longer be any perception problems, since the subconscious mind will now know what is going on. With a well informed subconscious mind, you can now travel in comfort without the need for a sick bag!