How Can Hypnotherapy Help People Quit Smoking?

Hypnotherapy is commonly known to be an effective aid to help people permanently quit smoking. This article will give you a bit of background as to what hypnosis is, and show you how it works to help people quit smoking.

The therapeutic use of hypnosis is known as hypnotherapy. It actually has little in common with stage hypnosis, which is the use of hypnosis for entertainment purposes. Hypnotherapy is a safe yet powerful therapeutic tool, and is great for helping people quit smoking, lose weight, remove phobias, and much more.

Hypnotherapy works through subconscious communication. The subconscious part of the mind is the part responsible for our more automatic functions, such as heartbeat, breathing, sweating, emotions, and our habits and urges. Our conscious part is the more logical and analytical part of the mind.
Since it is our subconscious mind that is responsible for our habits and urges, it is often not enough for a person to simply think that they should quit smoking on a conscious level.

They may want to quit as they understand on a conscious level that smoking is bad for them. However it is the subconscious mind that will keep nagging away at them. In fact it can be so powerful that a person can literally go to a shop, buy a cigarette, and light it up all without conscious thought. It’s almost like going on ‘autopilot’. Only during or after the cigarette the new ‘non smoker’ may suddenly realise, “What the hell am I doing?”
A person’s subconscious mind also understand that smoking has a negative influence in order to stop these subconscious urges and actions. One good way of achieving this is through hypnotherapy.

During a hypnosis session, a hypnotherapist will guide a person into a trance. This is not how it is portrayed in the media. A hypnotic trance is simply like a daydream or meditative state. The conscious mind in tuned down a little, allowing for easier access to the subconscious mind. This is usually achieved with various visualisation exercises, guided by a slow and calming voice.

Once the subject has achieved the trance state of mind, the hypnotherapist can then talk to the subconscious mind and tell it about the negative influences of smoking, and convince it to change. After just one session hypnotherapy is often known to make significant and lasting changes. Not only will the subject know on a conscious level the negative effects of smoking, they will now understand on a subconscious level to. This can significantly quell those subconscious urges to smoke, since the subconscious mind now knows it is a negative thing to do.

Often a person will want to quit smoking on a conscious level, but not on a subconscious level. Their subconscious mind is often unaware of the conscious desire to quit smoking. Usually the subconscious mind has been programmed from a young age to perceive smoking as a good thing. Many people start smoking as teenagers, wanting to be more adult like, and in with the ‘cool’ crowds. Of course this is no longer relevant as a person matures, yet the subconscious mind does not always know this. It has long been programmed by images of other ‘cool’ teenagers swaggering around with their ‘grown up’ cigarettes. What is sometimes needed is some re programming, which is what hypnotherapy can do so quickly and effectively.