Hypnosis is one of the most successful ways to stop smoking and research indicates it has up to a 60 per cent success rate in helping people quit their nicotine addiction. This article investigates different ways to stop smoking and explains the effectiveness of listening to hypnosis audio.
Smoking is the biggest single preventable cause of death in most western countries and a major cause of heart attack, stroke and vascular disease. The National Heart Foundation says that by the year 2025 – if the existing smoking trends continue – the world will see about 10 million deaths annually from tobacco, 3 million in developed and 7 million in developing countries. To put that in perspective, that’s about three times the population of New Zealand, or half the population of Australia.
The good news is that by stopping smoking, a person can halve their chance of suffering a heart attack – the act of quitting nicotine is the most fundamental thing a smoker can do to dramatically improve their health.
It’s not your fault if you are a smoker – nicotine is a highly addictive substance. It has a grip on you both physically and psychologically. Some say that giving up smoking is harder than giving up heroin.
An analysis by New Scientist Magazine back in 1992, found that hypnosis, in one session, had a success rate of up to 60 per cent in helping people stop smoking. Acupuncture came in second at 24 per cent, followed by nicotine replacement therapy (10 per cent) and pure willpower alone; ‘cold turkey’ (6 per cent).
Research by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine has found that, on average, less than seven per cent of smokers who attempt to quit smoking on their own, are successful in being nicotine-free a year later. A massive 93 per cent fail, because they only used their conscious mind in their efforts and were therefore not ‘fully committed’.
What this means is that while a smoker may say to himself that he, or she, wants to quit, this is only the conscious mind thinking. If the subconscious already has an ingrained belief that ‘I can never give up smoking because I’ve tried before and it is just too hard’ then this will override any conscious thinking to the contrary.
Hypnotism can help convince your subconscious mind to install a new belief that you are really a non-smoker and to then to guide you to live your life that way.
Under a hypnotic trance your subconscious can be convinced that you have a strong aversion to the taste, smell and sight of cigarettes. You need both conscious and subconscious will-power to kick the nicotine addiction and hypnosis can strengthen your motivation and help you sustain this will power. Under hypnosis you can overcome fears of gaining weight and change your habitual reaction to situations when you automatically reach for a cigarette.
Hypnosis can be used to discover the underlying needs that smoking attempts to satisfy for an individual, such as to justify taking a break or as a reward.
It can be used to reinforce someone’s motivation to quit, to strengthen their resolve to make healthier lifestyle choices, to lessen feelings of anxiety, to reduce cravings, or to enable them to be less affected when around others who are smoking.
Hypnotism is no ‘quick fix’ and many experts advise that it should only be one tool from the toolbox – including diet, exercise and developing a more positive outlook – that a smoker needs to use to quit the habit. The number of hypnotherapy sessions needed depends on the individual, their personal history and current situation. Some believe that quitting smoking with the use of hypnosis requires two to five sessions, and the cost can be allayed by using hypnosis CDs or tapes, with recordings of the hypno-therapist’s voice.
