Travel sickness or not being in sync with the road

Today I am going to share with my readers a different side of travel – the not so pleasant aspect of motion sickness on a road journey. And for those of us who love the mountains, and  also suffer from road sickness, this can be quite a deep cut, as most hilly regions of India are ill served by good roads, leave alone comfortable trains and regular, reliable flights.

As a child I would be given a tablet of Avomine by my parents the night before a long road journey in the hills. In the plains they would hope for the best and leave things to chance, and mostly I managed to complete plains road journeys alright. It was the constant zig zagging and curves uphill and downhill that got my stomach all twisted and apt to throw up its contents every now and then. Eating anything was a torture as it would come up sooner than it went down and I was perpetually left with a bad taste in my mouth. The other option, of not eating would make me nauseous with hunger. So it was a no win either way. The Avomine though, would work at times, putting me into deep slumber and not let me enjoy the experience of the journey or the place being visited.

As I child I never really thought about this much, or tried doing something to get over the condition- I guess thats just how kids deal with stuff. Now I wonder what made me such a stoic about the condition. Was I aware somewhere in my subconscious that with a lifetime commitment to the hills, I just would find a way sooner than later to deal with this? I don’t know, but what I do know is that sometime in my early adult life I started to actively look at ways to deal with travel sickness when I realised that Avomine induced sleep robbed me of a lot of the experience of travel and kept me groggy long after I reached my destination too.

So a search for other ways to cope began, and carried on for years. Homeopathy was tried, with quite effective results, as was just mind control – NLP of a self taught, self invented sort, and driving simulation – meaning, you pretend you are actually driving the vehicle- because as everyone has surely noticed, the person driving the vehicle never ever gets motion sickness! All sorts of churans, pachaks and sour lozenges for keeping nausea at bay….and so on. With time I moved closer to many more healing modalities in alternate / traditional health systems, and tried yoga, accupressure and Bach Flower remedies for the control and eventual wiping out of this tendency for me to be road sick. All in all,there is a clear shift now, a mild one initially which has grown stronger and stronger to the point where now I am not car sick at all in long mountain drives, unless the vehicle is really ramshackle and jolts too much or the sun blazes right into my eyes.

So I hope all of you who do have a case of road sickness take heart from my story and keep trying your coping methods till you come to the right mix. Do not stop being on the road though, just because your body does not keep comfortable pace as of now with the quick moves of a mechanized, fast moving, sharp turning  turbo fueled super-machine on wheels.

Here are the few tips, tricks and tools that I have felt are at the core of overcoming this roadsickness phenomenon

1. The driver’s seat is the best place to sit. Two, next to driver is the second best place. Then come the other seats.

2. Eyes always on the road straight ahead is another key learning.You have to really look straight ahead, being one with the road, with each and every curve and turn embedded in the software of balance and motion in our brains that we are trying to enhance. No looking back, leaning sideways and forward to catch snacks, water or chats to share or such like ….

3. Singing loud and clear. Yes, singing ! Always makes the arising giddiness or nausea just vanish 🙂

4. Eating dry and light. Slow and small munching on dry toast, roast namkeen, and pulped up bananas. Tea and coffee don’t help. Lemon drinks do help. Saunf and churan help too. Eating light and at short intervals also works better.

5. The accupressure routine that works instant miracles is this – press deep and sharp on the inner wrist at a point two finger breadth away from your inner wrist and palm joining line, and keep pressing hard for 2 full minutes. Do a two minute routine with both arms and then repeat till you are totally symptom free.

6. Another amazing tool is tapping, as propagated by the system of EFT healing- the Emotional Freedom Technique, to elaborate. This is a modified accupressure practice, with tapping on ‘energy points’ releasing blocked ‘energy channels’, along with some positive validations, acknowledgements and affirmations. Have had amazing outcomes for myself and for friends and family too.

Don’t know the scientific reasons for how any of this works and is effective, but  these are the coping ways I learnt and this is how I have overcome my chronic motion sickness. And now I share my coping tricks with all my friends, and anyone else who is looking for some way to cope. I was on the other side and having made it across I know what it feels like when you can’t see, experience and enjoy the best that the journey has to offer. Happy travelling and many joyful road trips to all .