How I Quit Smoking Using Auto Hypnosis

this is written by Gloria D. Vyne

I read a book published back in the 60's, called "How to Quit Smoking", or something like that. I recently went to AbeBooks, but it was not listed in the 800+ books they had on quitting smoking, so I can't verify the title or even the author. The technique the book used was auto-hypnosis.

Prep

Before I discuss the technique I used to quit smoking, I want to talk about what I was doing when I was smoking, because I think it made it easier to quit. One thing I had been doing for several years before I started this was rolling my own cigarettes. I smoked Drum tobacco, sometimes Top tobacco. One reason these are better than store-bought cigarettes is that they don't have chemicals that keep the cigarette burning if you put it down.

If I were to smoke now, I would smoke organic tobacco. The only brand I know that has organic tobacco is American Spirit. There are over 700 chemicals added to cigarettes; some to make the tobacco more addictive, some to keep it burning. If you switch to just tobacco, without all those chemicals, I think it will be easier to quit. I suspect some the addiction is to the additives, and if you switch to hand-rolled cigarettes, you will break the addictions to the chemicals without also having to deal with the tobacco withdrawal at the same time.

Plus, if you roll your own, the cigarettes are smaller, and the ritual of rolling your cigarette means that you spend less time smoking. My consumption of tobacco fell quite a bit when I smoked roll-your-own cigarettes. Plus, after a few years, I could hardly tolerate the chemicals in regular cigarettes.

Clearing your lungs

This has nothing to do with quitting smoking, but I think it's important for cigarette smokers, whether they are quitting or not, to do lung-clearing exercises every morning. It's just a matter of doing deep coughing, to clear the phlegm out of your lungs and nasal passages. Lean back and take a deep breath, and then use the force of your body as you bend forward and cough as hard as you can, without doing any damage. Don't cough so much you rasp your throat, but do a deep and thorough three or four coughs like this.

Also clear your nasal passages. You can get a neti pot, but I just put luke-warm water in a saucer with a bit of salt and snorted it up my nostrils, until I felt it in the back of my throat, and then spit it out my mouth, and blow it out my nose. As long as the salinity is normal, and it's body temperature, it feels fine.

Back to the story.

The first thing the book instructs the reader to do is write down all the reasons you can think of to quit smoking. I did not do this part, and I think its is one of the reasons it took me six tries to finally quit. It's possible I might have quit the first time if I had done this step.

Some reasons might be:

* The smell - not only on you, but on all your stuff
* The cost, in time and money
* The inconvenience
* Health consequences, both to you yourself, and to family members who share your air
* Social pariah factor
* Danger of accidental fire
* Bad example for children
* The feeling of self-abnegation when you realize how morally weak you feel, not being able to quit.
* Moral objection to strengthening corporate greedsters' wealth

Don't put in a time limit.

I remember this was the most striking thing about the program to me. He just said to trust to Spirit, that on the right day, you will wake up and not want to smoke. Don't say, "By next Friday" or "By my wedding day" or any time limits at all. And it was true - that's just what happened!

Visualize not smoking.

This is the key.

How do you visualize a negative?

Watch what happens in your mind's eye when I tell you, "Don't think about your left foot" You think about your left foot!

We are dealing with our subconscious here, which does not understand "NOT".

When you are instructing young children, tell them what to do, not what not to do.

Say, "Walk quietly.", instead of "Don't run".

Say, "Shut the door carefully.", not "Don't slam that door!".

When you say, "Don't run!", what does the subconscious hear? "Run!"

When you say "Don't slam that door!", what does the subconscious see? A door slamming.

So…how to visualize not smoking?

People will have different ways to do this. I suggest thinking about what your life will be like as a non-smoker. What good images does the word,
"non-smoker" conjure up for you?

For me, I pictured myself walking briskly outdoors, walking with big strides, shoulders back, arms swinging, empty-handed, and wearing clothes with no pockets. As a smoker, I always had tobacco, papers, and matches with me. I never went anywhere without them. Plus, I could not breathe in deeply, and vigorously for more than a few breaths before I started hacking. So, that image of taking a long, brisk walk became my visualization.

You will have to come up with your own image, maybe being in a fragrant environment, with a favorite smell you haven't smelled in a long time. It has to be personal, and it has to be positive.

Maybe you will visualize what you will do with the money you will have saved by not smoking. Whatever. Maybe you'll see yourself enjoying your friends in a restaurant after eating, rather than impatiently waiting to leave, so you can have a smoke.

Do the Relaxation Countdown

After you have your visualization, you can start the Relaxation Countdown. This is the core work you will be doing.

I did this at bedtime, in my bed. I went to bed earlier than usual, to make sure I didn't fall asleep.

I modified the approach described by the book - I was too high strung and nervous. Because this approach worked so amazingly well for me, I have to assume the author(s) had real success with this approach, even though I had to modify it, so I will describe the author's method, and then my own modification.

The book I was reading said to do a count-down from 10 to 1. That may work for you, it didn't for me. I had to use a more complicated system.

In the countdown, you are relaxed, either lying in bed (if you are well-rested and won't go to sleep) or sitting up in a chair or in a yoga asana position.

I didn't do the countdown from 10 to 1. Instead, I used my fingers to keep track of the breaths. The count-down is slow: one deep, slow breath per number - one exhale and one inhale. Make it as long and slow as is comfortable. The point is to be deeply relaxed. If you strain your breath, you defeat the purpose. At each breath, tell yourself you are going deeper into relaxation….deeper….deeper….more relaxed…more relaxed…. Don't think the numbers. The only thing to think is "deeper, slower, more relaxed" etc.

Press each of your ten fingers, one for each breath. With the first slow exhale, press your first finger and say silently to yourself, "More relaxed. Deeper into relaxation…..deeper… down deeper. . "

Say that the entire time you are exhaling and inhaling. Just keep telling yourself you are getting more and more relaxed. As you start each deep, slow exhale, press the next finger.

At the tenth finger, vividly picture the image you have previously developed of yourself as a non-smoker. Make it as real and detailed as possible.

I had to do a double-countdown, because I was too nervous. Before I got started, I told myself to do a relaxing count-down for each of my fingers. When I got to the last finger, that's when I would give myself the suggestion to do another count-down and finish with the visualization of myself striding briskly down the street, hands empty, no pockets, breathing deeeply. When I got to the last finger this second time, is when I would do the visualization.

That's it.

I modified the instructions from the book to suit my own peculiarities; you may want to do the same.

I did this maybe five nights a week. I would occasionally forget. I did not beat myself up if I forgot, I just did it the next night. The point is to deeply relax, and you can't do it if you're stressed out about missing a night.

Results

After a few weeks (maybe five, I can't remember now) I woke up one morning and did not want a cigarette. It was the damndest experience I had ever had, even to this day! I didn't want a cigarette! If it hadn't happened to me, I would not have believed it. It was like a gift from God. I went through all the withdrawal symptoms. My hands and arms felt big - not light or heavy, just big. My mouth felt funny, like it didn't know what to do, my whole blood chemistry was upset. It was very physiological. But it had nothing to do with cigarettes. I did not associate it with wanting a cigarette. I was disoriented. It was like having the flu - nothing to do but suffer through it until it ran its course.

My co-workers would ask me how it felt to not smoke, and I didn't really know what to say, because I was not associating these weird body feelings with nicotine withdrawal. When they asked me how I liked not smoking, I said I hated it.

Backsliding

After a few weeks, I was at a bar, and someone offered me a cigarette, and I took it, and that was it. All over. Bummer.

So, a few years later, I decided to try to quit again. I was so amazed that my subconscious had that much power. I never would have believed it if I hadn't experienced it myself. I wanted to see if it would happen again. It did. It was the most amazing thing. I just did not want a cigarette. After a few weeks of complaining about not smoking, I started again.

I really didn't think it would work a third time, but it did. And a fourth, and a fifth.

By this time, six years had passed since my first successful foray into the world of the subconscious.

Success

I re-read the book, and realized that one step that the author spent a fair amount of time on, I did not do. The author said you should write down all the reasons why you want to quit, so that after you quit, you will re-read that list. It's not enough to quit. You have to stay quit.

Of course! I was reprogramming myself to start! It was obvious, but I didn't get it the first five times.

So, I decided to quit once more, but this time, I would keep the auto-suggestions going. Every time anyone asked me about how I felt about quitting, I would say, "Great! I'm so glad I quit. It's the best thing I've ever done." And that worked! I haven't smoked since, and it's been over twenty years.

Every time I think about having a cigarette, I think, "I'm so glad I quit. It's the best thing I've ever done."

Am I still hooked?

One thing still to talk about, though - my dreams.

Six months after the last time I quit, I dreamed I took a puff on a cigarette. I could feel the tobacco going deep into my lungs. It felt so good. Then I was devastated. I remembered how difficult it had been to quit - it took me eight years. And I knew from experience that I could not take even a single puff without being re-addicted. I had started smoking again and I was grief-stricken over it. Then I awoke, and was so relieved to realize it was only a dream.

A few months later, I had another dream, only this time I finished the cigarette before that deep remorse set in. Again, I woke, and realized that I was still safe, it was only a dream.

In the next few years, every few months, I would have a dream about smoking. And in each dream, I became successively more of a smoker. After about six years, I remember one dream where I reached into my pocket for a cigarette about 3 pm, and the pack was empty. I distinctly remember that I had had three-quarters of a pack of cigarettes that morning, and I had smoked them all up. This was proof that I was becoming more and more addicted, and that I was lying about not being hooked on tobacco. Again, deep relief when I awoke.

But by that time, say between four and ten years after my last cigarette, my dreams took a weird twist. I remembered my dreams in my dreams,they had a continuity. I was living a parallel life in my dreams.

In my dreams, I was lying about the fact that I don't smoke. In my dreams, I'm saying that I'm not a smoker, but I am. It was like when I was a teenager. I started smoking at 16, but didn't buy my first pack of cigarettes until I was 19, I always bummed them. I figured as long as I don't buy them, I'm not a smoker.

In my dreams, I was living the same kind of schizy life, smoking, but trying to call myself a non-smoker. I even started beating myself up in my dreams for being self-deceptive.

I remember one dream, about eight years after I quit. Before bed that evening, I had been a little short of breath reading a bedtime story to my child. In my dream that evening, as I was arguing with myself about not smoking, my Smoking Self said, "See. You were out of breath, sitting on a bed reading a story. That's proof that you are still smoking."

My smoking dreams remember all my other smoking dreams, and I remember becoming addicted in my dreams.

I can't remember the last time I had one of those dreams, because they are a constant
alternative reality to me. I know when I am awake that I am awake, and not a smoker, and not dreaming, but when I am dreaming, I think I have a higher state of awareness, that maintains a history, as well. And time does not live in that dimension. When I forget my dream upon awakening, I forget to remind myself that it was only a dream, so when I comes back again, months or years later, it seems like a continuation.

So, now, I periodically have these dreams, and I don't know if it's been weeks or years since the last dream, but I am struggling in my dream world with the fact that I am a liar, and am sneaking smokes away from myself.

I have not a clue what this whole thing is about, but whenever I think about it, like now, when I'm writing this, I just keep saying, "I'm so glad I quit. It is a very powerful step to building a successful life. I'm so glad I quit. It was a great thing to do." And I repeat it over and over.

I've changed the part about "…best thing I ever did.." because in the intervening twenty-plus years, I'm really proud of some of my accomplishments, so I've changed my mantra.

But, I still have to reaffirm that intention. I can't let it slide. Although, I can't really think I would ever be tempted again. But, on the other hand, I wasn't addicted when I first started smoking, I was just curious, and I need to remind myself to keep my curiosity at bay in this one area.