Motion Sickness: A Whole-Body Approach
Why This Matters
Motion sickness can turn even short, everyday journeys—like a bus ride or a car trip—into a source of anxiety and discomfort. Over time, the fear of triggering symptoms may lead people to avoid travel or miss out on experiences they would otherwise enjoy. By approaching motion sickness through the lens of whole-body integration, yoga offers a gentle, empowering path forward—helping individuals regain confidence, reduce sensitivity, and reconnect with movement in a way that feels steady and supportive.
While motion sickness is often seen as a simple reaction to travel, it’s actually the result of the body struggling to make sense of mixed messages from the eyes, inner ears, muscles, and joints. In this sense, it can be viewed as a disordered sensory integration process — where the brain receives conflicting information about movement and position, leading to nausea, dizziness, and discomfort.
Yoga offers more than just symptom relief. Through mindful movement, breath awareness, and grounding practices, it helps the body gently reintegrate these sensory systems. This happens not just through calming poses, but by building proprioception (awareness of body position) and interoception (awareness of internal states), helping to 'recalibrate' how the body responds to movement and stress.
Instead of focusing only on “what poses help,” yoga invites us to explore ‘how we inhabit the body’ — offering a whole-body balancing system that can reduce sensitivity, restore confidence, and support lasting equilibrium.
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