Local Hypnotists

By Alan Densky

 Quitting smoking is a necessity at this point in history, because cigarettes have been banned from restaurants and other public places. And in fact, it is the smart thing to do for more reasons than good health alone. This commentary explores the very best NLP methodologies that can be used to make it as painless as possible to break the addiction to tobacco.

There are three individual factors to a smoking addiction. Two of the parts are mental, and one part is physical.

Part A: YOU SMOKE FOR RELAXATION AND PLEASURE.

When you were a toddler and you became cranky, your mother would put a nipple into your mouth to calm you down. You would get distracted, become calmer, and often go to sleep. That scenario was repeated many, many times so that your unconscious mind was programmed: When something goes into your mouth, you get relaxation and pleasure from it.

Now that you are a grownup, if you feel tense or anxious, you crave something in your mouth for relaxation and pleasure - a smoke!

Part B: SMOKING IS A CONDITIONED RESPONSE.

Remember Pavlov? He rang a bell every time that he fed his dogs. After a few repetitions, all he had to do was to ring the bell, and that would make the dogs salivate.

When you connect smoking with any other action, the other action will trigger cravings for a cigarette and a feeling of urgency that makes you want to smoke. This is called a conditioned response.

For example: If you light-up a cigarette when you see a cup of coffee, you will automatically get an urge to light-up a cigarette each time you have a cup of coffee.

Here is exactly how this conditioned response gets programmed into your subconscious: If a person lights-up a cigarette and simultaneously drinks a cup of coffee, the mind takes a snapshot of the cigarette in the hand, and connects it to the cup of coffee. Thereafter, every time the person has a cup of coffee, her subconscious mind fills in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of the cigarette, and the smoker gets a craving for a cigarette.

You may be unaware of the mental picture of the cigarette, because it may only be at the subconscious level of mind. Just as you are unaware of what you are seeing through your peripheral vision until something or someone draws your attention to it. But the image is there, creating a craving for a cigarette.

Part C: THERE IS A PHYSICAL ADDICTION TO NICOTINE, BUT . . .

I’ve worked face-to-face with several thousand people who smoke and I give you my guarantee that the physical addiction is the weakest part of the habit. In fact, I believe that it is only ten percent of the addiction to tobacco. I believe that ninety percent of the addiction are the mental and emotional parts! (Parts A and B).

HERE IS WHAT THIS MEANS TO A SMOKER WHO WANTS TO QUIT.

After you have eliminated the anxiety that pushes a smoker to smoke a cigarette to create relaxation and pleasure (Part A) . . . and when you erase the conditioned response of feeling an urge for cigarettes when having a cup of coffee, driving, or finishing a meal, etc. (Part B) . . . then you can break the addiction to tobacco without requiring willpower, and without having to experience withdrawal symptoms or weight-gain.

Self Hypnosis can help motivate a smoker to quit. Hypnosis will make it easy to break the addiction to tobacco because it takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how:

Part A is where people light-up for relaxation and pleasure. It’s your thoughts which create feelings of tension. More exactly, people constantly watch mental movies in their mind’s eye. If the movie is negative, it manufactures a feeling of anxiety.

We can use different NLP and Hypnosis methods to program the subconscious to automatically take those anxiety producing mental pictures, and instantly exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies. This produces relaxation and pleasure, and obliterates the anxiety that creates the oral compulsions and cravings for a cigarette.

Because of the elimination of stressful feelings, the smoker who is quitting doesn’t feel the compulsion or need to substitute food in place of the cigarettes. So quitting without weight gain is possible.

Part B is where people light-up because smoking becomes a conditioned response to many different activities and locations. Remember in the earlier example how smoking became unconsciously associated with other activities and environments so that each time you get into that activity or environment, the mind flashes an image of a cigarette, and the image of the cigarette causes cravings for a cigarette?

There are powerful NLP and hypnosis methods that can effortlessly eliminate those conditioned responses so that a person’s unconscious mind will lose the cravings for cigarettes, and the compulsion to smoke. As a matter of fact, you can even get a compulsion to reject the cigarettes.

IN SUMMATION

In summary, when we use certain hypnotic techniques, it becomes very easy to stop smoking without weight gain or having to suffer from withdrawal. And many of these hypnotic techniques don’t even require post-hypnotic suggestions. They depend on training the subconscious mind to use the same mental processes that the subconscious is using to create the addiction to cigarettes, to eliminate the mental addiction.

Alan B. Densky, CH started his practice starting in 1978. He offers Neuro-VISION Video Quit Smoking Self Hypnosis DVDs and Audio Quit Smoking Self Hypnosis CDs. Visit his free library of original hypnosis & NLP articles or download FREE NLP & hypnosis newsletters and MP3’s.

http://www.neuro-vision.us/

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Psychologist Recommends Ways to Use FREE Internet Tools and Hypnosis Downloads to Quit Smoking Now!
By Gerald Solfanelli

 As an American psychologist and certified hypnotherapist, I advocate the use of clinical hypnosis for smoking cessation, one of the least expensive and most effective approaches to becoming smoke-free. Since the American Medical Association approved its use, in the 1950’s, hundreds of thousands of people have found hypnosis to be an effective way to stop smoking, lose weight, and otherwise improve their lives.

Since 1992, according to New Scientist magazine, it has been known that “Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking.” Its quote was based upon a study cited within the Journal of Applied Psychology, earlier that same year. These findings appear to hold true, even in today’s healthcare environment that seemingly demonstrates an overemphasis upon pharmacological approaches.

Over 80% of smokers admit that they desire to be smoke-free. Nonetheless, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nicotine dependence causes more annual premature deaths than HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides and murders combined. Smoking robs lifetime smokers of an average of seven years of their lives, with their final years often characterized as painfully debilitating. Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Former Director-General, stated it most succinctly, when she said “A cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer.”

The insidious truth, about this profit-driven problem, is that the annual American health care costs of smoking reaches over $50 billion. It is responsible for more than 7% of all deaths, throughout the world. According to the WHO, within about a decade, this same estimate will likely increase to nearly 18% of worldwide deaths. Yearly, an average of over 3,000 American children and adults, will experience disease and premature death, from second-hand smoke. Worldwide, careless cigarette smoking is the number one cause of deaths from residential fires.

Although combining hypnosis with other forms of treatment, which can be recommended by your family physician or pharmacist, can increase its efficacy, it is not a necessity. If you know where to look, the Internet actually offers a place wherein you can download FREE self-hypnosis MP3 audio smoking cessation programs and even FREE ebook copies of best-selling smoking cessation books, like Allen Carr’s popular “The Illustrated Easy Way to Stop Smoking.”

Not surprisingly, clinical hypnosis is an often-misunderstood treatment that is basically an exercise in deep meditation. Once in a deeply relaxed state, one’s mind simply develops a natural, heightened focus. It is this fixed concentration that affords one the unique ability to incorporate the hypnotist’s smoke-free suggestions into everyday life.

Any behavior can be instantly changed, if there exist enough emotional pain associated with the old behavior, and enough motivating pleasure associated with the new behavior. On a subconscious level, in order to create lasting behavioral change, hypnosis can help to reinforce these real positive / negative consequences, like manipulating a dream, but more absorbing. The healthy result is often described as a nearly effortless, permanent change.

Most people are actually quite susceptible to the phenomenon of hypnotic suggestion, if it is consistent with something desired. In fact, it is not uncommon for many two-pack a day, twenty-plus years smokers to quit, after their first treatment. Nonetheless, I recommend reinforcing the hypnotic suggestions, with a self-hypnosis audio program for smoking cessation. Daily listening to your recording, for at least two weeks, should help to ensure a more positive treatment outcome.

Although most smokers attempt to quit using “willpower,” it is the least effective approach, requiring numerous, successive attempts, in order to finally become successful. Most prescription and over-the-counter quit smoking aids are only about 25% effective. The best indicators of success, with using the effectiveness of hypnosis to quit, are one’s prior ability to have successfully quit for at least one month; and one’s desire today to be smoke-free.

Gerald Solfanelli is a PA psychologist and hypnotherapist in private practice, who also hosts www.ThePsychologist.com and www.QuitForFree.com.

FREE Audio Hypnosis MP3 Download for Smoking Cessation - Instantly download your FREE Hypnosis Program for Smoking Cessation and your FREE ebook copy of “The Illustrated Easy Way to Stop Smoking.”

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