It’s no mystery that smoking is bad for you. With an estimated 45 million American smokers alone, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention considers smoking the number one preventable cause of disease and death in the US. The other thing that isn’t a mystery to most who smoke is that quitting is extremely difficult, but it can be much easier and attainable with self hypnosis to stop smoking.
Smokers try everything from going cold turkey to nicotine patches and prescription medications in their efforts to put down cigarettes. When these methods fail, it can be easy to become resigned to lifelong smoking. A method many would-be quitters could benefit from, no matter what other approach they are using, is a stop smoking hypnosis approach. Using hypnosis to stop smoking can make every other approach much easier to accomplish and today such hypnosis mp3 programs can be accessed immediately by downloading them or getting them on CDs. (http://www.jonathanparker.org/catalog/health-healing-fitness/additional-programs-health/stop-smoking-forever-5-cds)
Hypnosis may sounds like a treatment approach held over from the 1950’s, but a study conducted at the University of Iowa analyzed over 600 quitting smoking studies. This study found that stop smoking hypnosis techniques had an approximate success rate of 36%, which is one of the highest success rates for any approach. While not every hypnosis study has provided solid evidence, the overall trend of the studies clearly indicates that hypnosis has something real to offer smokers in terms of quitting.
Is Hypnosis as Scary as Portrayed in the Movies?
Hypnosis, despite what television and the Hollywood movie machine would have you believe, cannot be used to program a person like a robot or do anything that violates a person’s conscience. In the case of using self hypnosis to stop smoking you will find you are in complete control at all times, and the procedure is quite relaxing and empowering.
One of the main aspects of hypnosis that for it to be effective it must utilize a state of soothing relaxation. In this highly relaxed state, the mind becomes more suggestible, which means that the subconscious mind will become your ally helping you to reduce and eliminate all the reasons you smoke. The suggestibility is limited by the individual’s own code of ethics and morals so a person wouldn’t be programmed to do anything other than what is wanted.
How Does Hypnosis Work?
For the person who is ready to give up cigarettes, suggestibility provides an opportunity to get around the objections and resistance of the conscious mind and capitalize on subconscious motivations to quit. Fortunately, long gone are the days of needing to track down a qualified hypnotist to enjoy the benefits of hypnosis. Stop smoking hypnosis programs are widely available on CDs and as hypnosis mp3s. You will find such tools in a variety of formats at this link: (http://www.jonathanparker.org/catalog/health-healing-fitness/additional-programs-health/stop-smoking-forever). Having your own stop smoking hypnosis recordings is a particular boon for the time-crunched and cash-strapped. You won’t have to travel to someone’s office and these audio programs are often offered at a fraction of the cost of seeing someone in person, and you can utilize them in the privacy of your own home at your convenience.
What is Hypnosis Like?
Hypnosis techniques vary from program to program, of course, but generally they combine a variety of associations, visualizations, and positive affirmation techniques. An effective visualization approach is to encourage the subconscious mind to see the outcome already achieved. In other words, you would use your creative imagination to see yourself already enjoying all the benefits of being a non-smoker. Another approach is to associate the idea of smoking cigarettes with negative imagery, such as the tailpipe of a bus belching out plumes of smelly dirty smoke. A different approach is to encourage the subconscious to associate smoking with a variety of unpleasant smells. This is called aversion therapy and in some cases can be an effective tool utilized in a comprehensive program. Of course, such negative imagery and sense impressions only address part of the problem. Quitting smoking isn’t just about getting past the mental pleasure that a smoker may still associate with smoking.
Positive affirmations are an important aspect of a self hypnosis program as they instill new positive patterns and associations for the subconscious mind to utilize. My stop smoking hypnosis audio programs make use of guided visualizations as well as positive affirmations to give continual reinforcement which is crucial when going through the transition to becoming a non-smoker.
When a person quits smoking for several days they go through a physical withdrawal as well a mental withdrawal. The withdrawal can manifest as an inability to concentrate, anger, nausea, depression, irritability, and anxiety. All my stop smoking programs include a variety of affirmations to help the smoker deal with this set of symptoms. The affirmations may include suggestions to help increase the person’s belief in their own ability to cope with the symptoms until they pass. My full 5 hour stop smoking program which is available on CDs or hypnosis mp3 files to download, offers a variety of relaxation exercises to help manage the nervous energy and anxiety people experience as the nicotine leaves their systems and their bodies becomes increasingly desperate for another dose. (http://www.jonathanparker.org/catalog/health-healing-fitness/additional-programs-health/stop-smoking-forever-5-cds)
Like Having Your Own Success Coach
Even for those who are not entirely sold on hypnosis as a standalone solution, it can be combined safely with any other type of quitting smoking approach. In point of fact, research suggests that combining medicine-based approaches, such as nicotine patches, with non-medical approaches, such as hypnosis, significantly increases the odds of successfully quitting.
For long-term smokers, in particular, the prospect of quitting can seem downright unreachable, even when the evidence suggests that people can and do quit successfully. Failed attempts to quit in the past tend to make the goal seem that much more difficult. The important thing for any smoker who wants to quit to keep in mind is that most people make multiple tries before they succeed. Rather than seeing previous attempts as failures, it can be helpful to view them as trial runs on the way to success.
Whether someone is preparing to make their first run at quitting or is a repeater at the quitting game, a stop smoking hypnosis option can offer a powerful tool in the fight against cigarettes.
