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Kick Your Smoking Habit with Hypnosis!

Jane Ransom

In February, a friend of a friend telephoned asking for help quitting cigarettes. Sheila had been smoking since age 16. The habit felt like such a part of her that she was willing to give it up only for one very good reason: She was pregnant.

byJane Ransom, Certified Hypnotherapist

Can Hypnosis Help You Quit Smoking?

Sheila wanted to know if hypnosis helps people to quit smoking. Numerous studies have found hypnotherapy to be the most effective way to kick the habit, the reason being that it works to change a client’s subconscious programming.

Like most smokers, Sheila felt that smoking relaxed her, and that she needed cigarettes to get through times of stress. “I know this sounds weird,” she added, “but I sort of feel like smoking is my friend. It’s just always been there for me.”

Nictoin IS Poison

I reassured her that many smokers see cigarettes as their “friend,” even though they know logically that nicotine is a poison (drinking even a thimbleful can kill you) and that a real friend doesn’t poison you!

Most smokers also feel smoking relaxes them, even though this is just as illogical: Nicotine is not only a neurotoxin, it is also a stimulant. Nicotine cannot relax anyone.

So why do smokers have the impression that their “friend” nicotine relaxes them? It is because throughout the years, they have created an association in the brain between cigarettes and moments of relaxation: smoking while taking work breaks, socializing with friends, relaxing after a meal, or with a drink, and so on.

Moreover, usually when a smoker first lights up, she inhales deeply and exhales slowly.

The truth is, anytime you inhale deeply and exhale slowly, you will relax your own physiology. (That is why so often you see public speakers and entertainers taking a moment to breathe before they perform, to calm their nerves.)

You Have Trained Your Brain to Believe that Smoking Relaxes You

Thus, over the years, a smoker’s brain learns to subconsciously associate smoking with relaxation. Once that neural association is created, then whenever the smoker reaches for a cigarette, the brain releases hormones and neurotransmitters connected with calmness.

So it is not that smokers are imagining the relaxation they experience when they smoke. It is just that it’s their brain, and not the cigarette, that is actually creating the calming effect.

Like most of my smoking-cessation clients, Sheila was able to quit during her first session. Through hypnosis, we dislodged her subconscious association between smoking and relaxation, and we created healthier tools she can use to calm herself in the future. The session lasted nearly three hours, because we took time to “desensitize” her to all the old triggers, all those times in the past when she used to reach for a cigarette: with coffee, after meals, having a drink, etc.

Hypnosis Helps You Quit Smoking

It has been more than four months now since Sheila quit. Her recent sonogram came out well. She and her husband Steve are thrilled to be expecting their first child, and they are both ecstatic that Sheila is smoke-free. She will be a wonderful mother, and she already has a great start.

Jane Ransom, MA, C.Ht., conducts hypnotherapy sessions in her downtown San Francisco office, as well as by phone and online web-cam. She helps clients with a multitude of health issues, including weight loss, chronic pain and smoking cessation, and she also leads clients to achieve career, sports and artistic success.

As a public speaker, Jane offers talks and workshops on how to boost self-confidence and motivation, improve relationships and invite inspiration. For more information, please visit Jane’s website, HypnotherapyThatWorks.

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