The suggestions that you are given by the Hypnotist would naturally take the form of reasons why smoking is bad for you, and also points of leverage such as family reasons why you may want to quit, which is essentially what makes stop smoking hypnosis particularly effective.

Entering down into the calm, hypnotic state allows these suggestions to be effective by using both visualizations and breathing techniques to get those ideas across to the patient’s mind in an effective way. In effect the patterns of behaviour that the patient has been exhibiting which has led them to smoke in the first place is interrupted, and the hypnotist is then attempting to replace them with new, positive suggestions not to smoke.

In many respects stop smoking hypnosis has dual benefits, because not only does it help to dissuade someone from smoking, but it also taps into the patient’s feelings of being centred and calm and so they are also able to experience being more in control when the craving to have a cigarette strikes them.

In terms of the number of sessions that it will take to see results with hypnosis, this varies depending on the particular client and their circumstances, and whilst some patients may quit in just one session, others may need several.

Regardless, however, quitting smoking through hypnosis is considerably easier than simply trying to quit on your own without help, because smoking is both physically addictive because of the nicotine and other chemicals, and also psychologically addictive. Some people get anchored for example to smoking when they have a drink, or in order to calm their nerves after a hard day at work and so when these scenarios repeat themselves it is very common to feel a strong urge to smoke.

One of the key ways that stop smoking hypnosis can help to combat the psychological dependence that many people feel about smoking is through creating mental images that break the association between smoking and certain key moments in your day to day life. So, for example, if you always smoke when you have a drink, then the hypnotist will act to replace that association by creating another association that creates the same sense of calm, but without the urge to smoke. In that way you get the double benefit of both ridding yourself of an urge to smoke, and creating a new positive anchor (like exercise or eating better food for example) that better serves you.

The end effect of the work that the hypnotist does with you to stop smoking will be to not only give you a new powerful urge to stop smoking, but re-enforce all kinds of positive habits so that you exercise more, eat less bad food, eat more healthy food and stay away from the smoking for good!

My Webster’s New World Dictionary contains this after “guilt”, as its second definition: 2. a feeling of self-reproach from believing that one has done a wrong.

I am of the opinion that guilt is a psychological and emotional state of experience common to all living, breathing things, just as are joy, fear, confusion, love, hate, apathy, rage, and the spectrum of feelings from bright white to darkest black in tone and feeling. All have a place within our human lives, and each is meant to express in an inwardly and/or outwardly way what the spirit that dwells within is experiencing.

I believe each of us, without regard to fact, fantasy or reason takes his or her station in life according to the degree of ongoing guilt felt at the core of that individual, whether or not that guilt is now apparent to their current state of conscious self-awareness, or even if it is valid guilt. It may not be. Still, it has the same effect as though it was and still is.

Second to what is commonly perceived as love, I believe guilt to be the strongest, and certainly one of the most volatile and potentially destructive of all emotional experience. It is certainly in a league with rage and jealousy.

I believe each of us carries with us everywhere we go, every minute of our existence, waking or sleeping, our personal dolly of psycho-baggage, filled with those things we would rather be kept in a distant, dark past, mostly out of the sight of those who would recriminate.

If one can find a way to lighten that load, relieve some of the nagging weight of guilt, then one will automatically find that strength remains and is gained from having carried such a load, now discarded.

Once purged to any degree, one will find a noticeable increase in positive applicable energy that may be applied toward new and heretofore seemingly unreachable goals, considered previously as perhaps unattainable while carrying that baggage of guilt.

It has been my experience over the better than half-century of my lifetime to have had cigarettes as members of our family since my earliest memories.

From birth, and all the while I grew up, every single adult in my life smoked cigarettes. All my parents (mother, father, step-mother, two step-fathers), both grandfathers and grandmothers, both my father’s brothers, my mother’s brother, and many others in our family have all fallen to fatal smoking related diseases, all but two dying before their sixtieth birthdays. Both those made 72 before dying of cancer. Before it struck, both seemed apparently in relatively good health.

I believe I am the first in my line on either side of my family to have escaped from the clutches of the addiction/habit of smoking. As good as my health is at my current age, it is clear that, barring an “untimely” demise, I will surely live to be the oldest member of either of my parental clans for at least 100 years back.

That pleases me, but puts a responsibility on me too. I believe it is not just enough to live long, but to live well, and to contribute progressively and perpetually.

Of the true guilt and shame I feel and have felt in my life…the kind of feeling that never goes away, nor is ever truly forgotten…I’ve only a very small number of incidences.

But that guilt, if publicly known, would likely be so humiliating that just remembering some of it while typing these words is upsetting me.

That kind of guilt. Know it?

Remember it?

It’s not an intensity of guilt often felt by adults. It seems reserved primarily for the young.

For by adulthood, one has discovered ways of covering that guilt, that shame, that anger at one’s self for not being who I/you/they set out to be.

We compensate for those feelings. Numb them. Deny them. Often blame others. Bury them in the past, and go on.

For that’s what we must do to survive, or we’d all go mad, wouldn’t we? We walk along, pretending to be mature adults, working to develop the traits we observe in others we perceive to be adults.

We make the best decisions we can, given the circumstances. And to the greatest degree that we allow ourselves, we avoid feeling the guilt.

Eventually, we realize, not many of us seem to truly “grow up”, but everybody does grow old.

We in the USA, my generation, are now growing old. We were the “Baby Boomers!” The state-of-the-art, first class, second, third, even fourth generation Americans! It’s been an amazing demographic of which to have been a part.

We’ve done “the most…”, been “the most…”, are “the most…”, and on and on for over fifty years now. That includes bought and smoked the most cigarettes of any age demographic to date.

And died of more smoking related diseases of any age demographic to date.

So the evidence that we all knew all along is in. Yes, smoking can and will kill you, after making you very sick for various periods of time.

But when we started, we really didn’t need statistics and research to tell us it was bad for us, did we? That first inhaled drag told us all right then.

The first time anyone anywhere tries to inhale a full drag from a cigarette, especially if it is a young teen, and especially if it is an unfiltered Chesterfield as I had begun with, their body will reject the smoke with such a clarity of feeling that this person, usually a child of not more than sixteen years of age, often far younger, instantly knows on the most basic physical and emotional levels that this hurts and damage is likely being done to their body.

But then we made a decision to manually override the body and its signals until indifference toward those indications seemed to become natural.

Once the “thinking” mind successfully convinced the body to either comply or remain in pain, the signals became either totally unacknowledged by the conscious mind, or misinterpreted at the conscious level.

While doing this act, this painful, otherwise senseless, self-destructive act for the first few times, whether to rebel against adult authority, parental authority, or to emulate others, we all had to feel guilt.

That guilt was heightened by the fear of being caught. Fear of recrimination. That type of energy inflates guilt. Takes it from being passive to active.

Every cigarette for a long time after that first was an assault on, and an insult to, our inner intelligence, as well as our body and the signals it was sending to help us survive.

Call it inner intelligence, higher power, or a number of euphemisms I may suggest. I believe that at our basic core, every one of us knows right from wrong, good from bad. (The exception to this is that there are those who have been so severely abused as infants that they no longer are able to have natural access to their feelings, an ability lost before gaining the ability to speak. But that is mental illness beyond the scope of this opinion.)

We forced our bodies, against their wills and protests, to absorb smoke through the lungs. We knew it was the wrong thing to be doing the whole time.

We felt guilt.

We eventually just blew it off.

We grew up, we smoked, and forgot about it, unless some television show would air, or some news flash sparked that occasional and insincere thought that we were about to quit. As soon as we were “ready”.

Right?

I believe it is entirely possible that for many of us, guilt because of smoking is among the biggest items in the bags of guilt we carry.

A perpetual, unconscious, weighty guilt with no secret attached.

Everyone knows. Almost no one cares. So many others are doing it. We rationalize, it couldn’t really be that bad, could it?

But down deep we know better.

Now you have a wonderful opportunity. Now you have an advantage. Now you are in a position to make the biggest “unloading” of unnecessary guilt you’ve probably ever unloaded without some trauma attached.

No clinic, no therapy, no shock treatments, no Prozac or Valium or Welbutrin, no Zyban, no patch, no hypnosis clinic, no trips to the Chinese herbalist or acupuncturist.

You are capable of going back into your memory, recalling the original decision to become a smoker, and then successfully remake that decision while successfully retracting and erasing the original commitment to be a smoker. You will, by doing this, also unload all the weight of the load of guilt you’ve been carrying around with you all this time about that issue.

I believe that it’s not enough to simply stop smoking. I believe you must get to the core of it and stop wanting to smoke.

You must realize that you never did truly want to smoke. That you are awakening from the hypnotic spell you’ve been under, and are no longer attracted to suicide in any form, especially by inhaling the smoke from the fire of a burning poisonous weed in your hand.

It’s a lift to the spirit that only those who have truly become non-smokers, rather than ex-smokers, can experience.

It goes hand in hand with any addiction. I firmly believe, and it is supported by my experience of my own infatuation with cigarettes; to lift out this addiction at its core is to lift out all the guilt that’s attached to it.

I believe it is worth whatever you have to do to get it done.

• Parents who smoke are aware that their smoking somehow endangers the health of their family and children. This is why they usually would turn on a fan and open a window to prevent their children from inhaling the smoke.
• Other parents have a smoking room.
• Still others would confine smoking outside their homes to shield their family from the harmful effects of second hand smoke.

But are their children really safe from harm?

Most of us are aware of the dangers of inhaling someone else’s second hand smoke. However, very few know about the health threat posed by cigarette byproducts that cling to the smoker’s clothing, hair, fabrics, cushions, carpeting and other surfaces. These are called third hand smoke and remain long after second hand smoke has cleared.

Third hand smoke contains heavy metals, radioactive materials and carcinogens. Young children often get these harmful substances on their hands and ingest them if they play or crawl on contaminated surfaces.

What you should know as a parent is you can’t shield your family from the harmful effects of smoking by simply opening a window, or turning on the fan or using air conditioning. You might decide that from now on you’re going to keep your car and home smoke free to protect your family, and that’s good. But, what about your hair and clothing, are they smoke free as well? There seems to be no other way to permanently address this problem except to stop smoking.

Now, should you decide to quit smoking, the decision must come solely from you. Otherwise, if you merely succumbed to pressure coming from your spouse, relatives and friends, your quit nicotine success will be short lived.

There are many ways to quit nicotine. Whichever Stop Smoking Program you choose, make sure it suits your needs. Different quit nicotine clinics will put you under different therapies and Lung Detoxification methods depending on your needs and preferences. You will be advised to take up a new interest or hobby once you’ve successfully finished the quit smoking program. This is to take your mind away from thinking about smoking again.

Experts believe that the smoker’s resolve to give up smoking must be reinforced even after he had completed the stop smoking program as this stage of his quitting is even more crucial than before. Most clinics stay in touch long after the therapy has ended and continue to send emails to family, relatives and friends.So, are you ready to quit smoking? Save your family from the harmful effects of second hand and third hand smoke.

Seek expert help today.

People who only think about giving up smoking are really sabotaging themselves. I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying “what we think about happens.” When people are thinking about giving up smoking, they are still thinking of smoking. The mind is in the wrong place.

If you really want to quit, you need to start thinking of yourself as an non-smoker. You need to see yourself being able to exercise or jog without running out of breath. You want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and like the person you see.

You need to prepare yourself for success and you can do this by imagining what you will be able to do with the money you will save. Perhaps you can have a vacation with your family. You can picture yourself in those new clothes you will finally be able to afford to buy. Start right now by putting the money you spend each day on cigarettes into a jar. You’ll be pleasantly surprised after only a month.

You must focus on the positive benefits instead of focusing on anything negative, such as the words “giving up” or “stopping”. These are negative words which will put up a mental barrier in your subconscious mind. However, if you focus on the positive such as “freedom, energy and more money”, your mind will find ways for you to achieve these things.

Once your mind is in the right place, you need to find someone to support you in your decision. Someone you can talk to and trust. If this person has given up smoking as well, they can be of immense help to you

ST. LOUIS — There’s no question trying to extinguish the habit of lighting up is hard.

“I want to quit. I have tried before and I quit for a year and a half, and then I went back little by little,” said Elizabeth Bleitner, a smoker for 25 years.

But if you’re trying to stop smoking, auriculotherapy might be your best bet.

In auriculotherapy, a mild electrical stimulation is used on the ear where there are multiple acupuncture points.

“There’s an addictive center in the brain and it helps basically stop activity in the area so that the craving, the addiction, the need for nicotine isn’t there. So it eliminates the headaches or the nausea or dizziness, irritability or the jitters that patients get when they’re trying to stop smoking,” said Dr. Michelle Smith.

“It’s not painful at all, and actually, it’s pretty relaxing,” Bleitner said.

It’s a procedure that requires three doctor visits and takes about 30 minutes per visit, but in order to have success, you also need to change your behavior.

“So many of them will say, ‘I like my cigarette on my way to work at this stoplight, it’s a habit.’ So if they don’t have the cigarette, they don’t have the withdrawal symptoms. It’s easier for them to change their behavior,” Smith said.

Smith also recommends saving the money you would have used on cigarettes for something you can look forward to.

“To stop smoking, there isn’t this immediate gratification like there is for losing weight. ‘Oh I’m losing weight, I get to buy new clothes.’ So with the smoking program, we encourage them to take the money they were spending on cigarettes and put it in a tin and save toward something they really want,” Smith said.

It’s not 100 percent, but when it comes to stomping out smoking, it’s more effective than anything else out there.

“It’s 85 percent at three months. The next best thing out there is the nicotine inhaler and then Chantix,” Smith said.

Bar provides temptation for man trying to stop smoking

Ed Schneiderheinze, a Strafford man trying to quit smoking after 23 years, traveled for his job last week, creating a new set of temptations.

Schneiderheinze often works 12- to 16-hour days when he’s on the road installing electronic bingo equipment. He likes to unwind at a bar with a beer and a cigarette. On Thursday, he was in Newark, N.J., with a Samuel Adams winter lager but no cigarette.

“One of the things that would always get me back into smoking was drinking a beer and hanging out with the guys,” he said.

His usual routine while working included smoking after he left a building. “I find myself looking for my cigarettes,” he said.

Schneiderheinze said he’s having more temptations to smoke, but the urge isn’t quite as difficult.

“I’m not having the difficulty as long,” he said. “The struggles are definitely getting easier, but there’s more of them.”

Schneiderheinze, 38, quit smoking Jan. 2. He is using nicotine patches and lozenges in his attempt to quit.

Part of Schneiderheinze’s motivation was his mother-in-law, a longtime smoker who now has cancer. She is expected to have her larynx removed, which will affect her ability to speak.

The News-Leader first profiled Schneiderheinze on Jan. 10 in a story about quitting smoking, and we are following his attempts to stay cigarette-free for a few weeks.

University of Michigan ready to go smoke-free

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WXYZ) – Smokers will not be able to light up on the University of Michigan campus beginning July 1st.

University President Mary Sue Coleman approved a final plan on how to implement the University’s non-smoking policy.

The U of M created the plan after listening for more than a year to extensive input from people on campus and in the surrounding community of Ann Arbor.

“At the outset, we said we wanted to hear from representatives of all members of our community—faculty, staff, students, area residents, smokers, nonsmokers and never smokers—and we did,” said Kenneth Warner, former dean of the School of Public Health and the Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor of Public Health.

“Five different subcommittees compiled surveys, conducted focus groups, held numerous meetings, and more, to get input from those who would be impacted by this change. The final report is a reflection of the input we received,” said Warner.

The U of M says the steering committee for the Smoke-free University Initiative’s report includes 14 recommendations that define campus smoke-free boundaries, commit to treatment and support for those who wish to receive assistance to quit, and outline expectations for compliance. Among the recommendations:

• While all U-M facilities, buildings and grounds will be smoke free, smoking will not be prohibited on sidewalks adjacent to public thoroughfares on the Ann Arbor campuses

• All parking structures and surface lots should be smoke free. This does not include smoking in privately owned vehicles within these locations.

• Peer support, supervisory oversight and voluntary compliance should be relied upon to lead to behavioral changes over time. Smokers refusing to extinguish the product or repeat offenders of the policy should be addressed through existing disciplinary or other appropriate processes.

• U-M should provide resources to support managers, supervisors, students, faculty and staff with methods to address violations in a respectful manner.

• MHealthy and the University Health Service Health Promotion and Community Relations department should support faculty, staff and students in their stop-smoking efforts.

Coleman announced in April 2009 the plan for all three U-M campuses to go smoke free. A target date for implementation was set as July 1, 2011, to allow the subcommittees—facilities, grounds and the Ann Arbor interface; faculty and staff; guests, events and athletics; student life; and communications—the opportunity to gather input and make recommendation to the steering committee. It also allowed time for each campus to develop its own implementation plan.

“We were very pleased that so many in the university took the time to express their opinions, ask thoughtful questions and challenge the steering committee to come up with a policy that considers the impact on all of its constituents. We also are grateful to the many people who spent numerous hours working on the five subcommittees,” said Dr. Robert Winfield, U-M’s chief health officer and director of University Health Service.

“We are confident that with all of this great input we have a policy that achieves our goal of promoting a healthy campus while being as respectful as possible to the needs and concerns of all in our community.”

The University of Michigan says one of the questions heard most often from the various groups was about how boundaries would be defined. While the report calls for all university facilities, buildings and grounds, including athletic properties, to be smoke-free, it makes two exceptions: smoking inside personal vehicles and along main thoroughfares. The ban does not include smokeless tobacco products.

The steering committee recommendation that smoking should not be prohibited along public thoroughfares was a decision based on the fact that the streets are not university-owned and, therefore, U-M has no authority over the adjacent sidewalks.

To be consistent, it also treated the sidewalks along major roads on North Campus—which are university-owned—as areas outside of the smoking ban. Sidewalks within a campus area, such as the Diag, however, will be smoke free. Some signage, website maps and the presence of smoking receptacles in those places that are not included in the ban will help define the areas, leaders say.

In order to keep people from having to walk through smoke-filled areas, the ban also included sections of sidewalk adjacent to access drives, loading docks, parking structures, parking lots or along driveways—even if these areas are along major thoroughfares.

A second question frequently asked by students, faculty and staff was how the policy would be enforced.

“This was carefully considered by the group and it was decided that we would rely on voluntary compliance, along with peer and supervisory support, rather than fines or other means of enforcement,” said Laurita Thomas, associate vice president for human resources.

If you have tried to quit smoking and have been unable to stop with traditional methods, such as nicotine gum and nicotine patches, maybe it’s time you thought outside of the box. There are additional techniques that are being used to help people quit smoking.

Some individuals try acupuncture or hypnosis to deal with a strong habit such as tobacco usage. Other people may decide it is time to try prescription drugs in order to free themselves of their smoking habit.

In many instances these methods are still failing to help millions of people who desperately want to quit smoking. Cigarettes, pipes, cigars and chewing tobacco are all products that are extremely addictive. The fact that smoking is an unhealthy habit is now compounded by the expense of tobacco products. Smoking is also a practice that is frowned upon in many communities and banned in many towns, businesses and workplaces. Even restaurants and bars are now placing bans on smoking.

Of course the primary reason that you should quit smoking is for your own health and well being and those around you. But what can you do when you have already tried numerous stop smoking techniques and you are still compelled to light up a cigarette?

The answer could be as simple as a non-invasive technique known as stop smoking laser therapy. Just think. You could be free from the desire to smoke almost instantaneously.

• What is the success rate for these treatments?

Practitioners of laser therapy have reported a success rate of about 80% when using laser therapy to stop smoking. Some even have claimed a rate as high as 90%.

• Are there any side effects when you use stop smoking laser therapy?

Unlike most other quit smoking modalities there are NO side effects with this type of treatment to beat the smoking habit.

• How long has this quit smoking technique been in use?

Laser therapy treatment to help people stop smoking has been used for 30 years in Europe and for two decades in Canada.

• Are there any benefits when you use this type of laser therapy to stop smoking?

In addition to the health benefits that come from smoking cessation, people who use laser therapy report feelings of calmness and relaxation. These emotional highs are the result of your body’s natural endorphin production. Endorphin production is stimulated to higher levels when stop smoking laser therapy is used.

• How fast does the treatment work?

Most clients respond to this end smoking technique in as little as 1 hour. A few require a second treatment to further help alleviate the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

• What happens during stop smoking laser treatments?

This type of therapeutic technique is completely painless and requires no type of preparation beforehand. A beam of ‘cold’ light (laser) is directed toward approximately 50 known acupressure points on your wrists, hands, neck and face. These pressure points are the same sites used for acupuncture. The different sites activated are believed to help with the release of endorphins, appetite suppression and anxiety and therefore diminish the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

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