Hypnosis has been used for many years as a method to relax, lose weight, reduce pain and even quit smoking. Hypnosis addresses the mental side of overcoming the smoking addiction, which is actually the largest part of quitting smoking. Nicotine addiction is only part of the smoking habit.

While hypnosis continues to help improve lives, there are still misconceptions about what it is and how it works. When people think of hypnosis, they often think of a hypnotist on stage who brings people up in front of a crowd and makes people do funny things such as barking like a dog or forgetting the number 6. These “parlor tricks” are amusing, but they really aren’t very impressive when you consider that the participants are willingly doing what they hypnotist tells them to do. There’s no magic trance that forces the person to act like a farm animal.

Hypnosis is about relaxation. It’s also about accessing the subconscious mind, while circumventing conscious thoughts and conscious evaluation of thoughts and ideas. By achieving an extremely relaxed state, a hypnotherapist (or yourself if performing self-hypnosis) can guide you to accept suggestions. The subconscious mind is “dumb” in that it accepts whatever you tell it. Tell it you are a smoker, it accepts that. Tell it you are a non-smoker, it accepts that just as easily. The problem is getting past the guard at the door, also known as your conscious mind.

By entering a relaxed, hypnotic state, you can begin accepting hypnotic suggestions directly in your subconscious. For example, think back to the last movie you watched. Did you find yourself “lost”, even for a brief moment, in the story? Did you actually cry or become emotional because of something that was happening to one of the characters? Your conscious mind knew this was only a movie. Nothing about it was real. Yet, you teared up. Why? You naturally turned off the process whereby your conscious mind stands guard, and you simply allowed the movie to “hypnotize” you into entering into the story. For a brief time, the movie was very real. Your subconscious mind was accepting what you saw as real and it affected you on an emotional (some would say “irrational”) level. You may have even left the theater or couch feeling empowered or sad or angry, all because you saw something you can now say was absolutely fake.

Essentially, hypnosis creates a movie that your mind follows and accepts as completely real. So, by running a movie of yourself as a non-smoker in your subconscious mind, quit smoking hypnosis makes it possible to change your patterns of thinking. You can change what your mind sees and what emotional response it has when you get a craving to smoke a cigarette. For example, you could change the response you get when you see a cigarette in your hand so that instead of sensing pleasure, you might now feel disgusted or even physically sick.

Critical to understanding how hypnosis can work is understanding that you take actions based on thoughts. It’s not nicotine that drives your smoking. Nicotine does have an affect on the brain, but if you have quit smoking for more than three or four days, your body has physically eliminated all the nicotine from your system. Yet you still have cravings. What’s going on? It’s your thoughts that keep you hooked and make you crazy! Logically, then, if you could change your thoughts, you could change your addiction, literally in an instant, at the speed of thought.

Hypnosis to quit smoking is an excellent way for you to tackle the mental aspect of quitting smoking. Your body will eliminate the nicotine, but you must control your mind and your thoughts. Unless you get your thoughts under control, you will have a difficult time remaining smoking free. So consider adding hypnosis to your quit smoking efforts.