Motion sickness: spiritual meaning and emotional causes

What motion sickness is

Motion sickness, or travel sickness, happens when the brain receives messages about movement that do not match. The inner ear feels the car, boat or plane moving, while the eyes, fixed on a book or a screen, report that everything is still. The result is nausea and vomiting, dizziness, pale skin, a cold sweat, yawning and sometimes a headache. It can happen in cars, on boats, planes and trains, on fairground rides and even with virtual reality.

It is very common, especially in children, during pregnancy and in people who get migraines. Symptoms usually settle once the movement stops. Simple steps help: look at a fixed point on the horizon, sit in the front of a car or the middle of a boat, get fresh air, avoid reading or screens, close your eyes and breathe slowly, and avoid heavy meals and alcohol before travelling. A pharmacist can suggest travel sickness medicines, which work best taken before the journey.

The emotional meaning of motion sickness

The body's own explanation already holds the image. Motion sickness comes from two sources of information that do not agree. Spiritually, it is read in the same way: a duality, a disagreement between two messages, that makes it hard to find your bearings with certain people or situations.

Two worlds that do not match

The classic example is a child whose mother says one thing and whose father says another. Which one is true? Later in life, it can be the gap between your inner world, your imagination and hopes, and the outer world as it really is. When the two do not line up, it is hard to know where you stand.

Losing control

You may feel perfectly fine in charge of your own vehicle and much less at ease with the people around you. Spiritually, motion sickness sits with insecurity and discomfort, and with the sense that your settled habits have been disturbed. You may feel you are losing control of what is happening in your life, and having to put up with people and events rather than choosing them. The unknown is frightening and, further down, so is death, the greatest unknown of all.

Wanting to be there already

There can also be something you want to get away from. You want to have arrived, now. That impatience sits uneasily with a journey that takes the time it takes. Car sickness in particular is linked to feeling trapped, stuck or smothered.

Resentment and retching

In French, resentment is rancœur, and retching is a haut-le-cœur, a heave of the heart. Both words carry the heart. Spiritually, resentment carried on a journey may show up as that heave in the stomach.

Driver or passenger?

• If you find it hard to drive yourself, the question is how you drive your own life. Are you in charge, or do you let others manage it, perhaps because authority and the responsibility of decisions frighten you?
• If you dislike being driven by someone else, the question is about trust. Can you rely on others, or do you need to control everything to feel safe?

Seasickness

In French, seasickness is mal de mer, which sounds exactly like mal de mère, "mother sickness". Spiritually, being seasick is read as being tossed about by events, without your feet on the ground. You feel you are not in control, that you might lose everything, and the insecurity grows with your apprehension about the future. Like a boat left to the winds, you let outside events choose your course. You may criticise others and hold a grudge, while underneath you blame yourself for feeling powerless. The pun invites one more question: is there pain in your relationship with your mother? She may have died and you miss her, or the bond between you may be tense.

A body that remembers

Sometimes discomfort with one kind of transport goes back to an earlier journey that was frightening, or simply unpleasant. Back in a similar situation, the body remembers and reacts. You may, for example, have received very bad news while travelling. Without realising it, you now link journeys with bad news to come, and find reasons not to go again. The train or the plane starts to look like a bad omen, when the pain belonged to the news and not to the vehicle.

A gentler way to hold it

• Make peace with yourself. Stop judging yourself harshly for feeling sick or afraid. Look inside for the answers to your questions.
• Build safety on the inside. Transport is generally safe. The sense of security you are looking for is something you can grow in yourself.
• Find your horizon. In the car and in life, look for one fixed point you can trust, a value or a person, when everything else is moving.
• Take the wheel where it matters. Choose one decision you have been leaving to others, and make it.
• Let go of the need to control everything. Practise trusting someone else to drive, even for a short trip.
• Welcome new experiences. Trust the future, and let each journey be a chance to grow.