How does hypnosis help one stop smoking? Smoking, more than anything else, is a psychological addiction. People have learned to subconsciously associate smoking with relaxation, something to do when you are bored, a little treat throughout the day.
The best thing about the American culture is that we all love a product that gives results. Hypnosis is treatment with many scientific questions still to be answered, but even with the uncertainty of how hypnosis works, we can not deny the proof that it works.
Hypnosis has been around for hundreds of years and has always been used as way to help cure and solve a multitude of human problems using the subconscious mind as a means of connecting to the problem. What a hypnotist does when attempting to help someone solve or cure a problem is to connect to that part of the brain that plays the biggest role in the problem.
One of the biggest problems that many clients visit the hypnotist is for help in stopping to smoke. Larry Volz is a former magician who took up hypnosis 15 years ago. He is the executive director for the American Hypnosis Clinic and has held this position for almost four years now. Volz said that the more people come to him for help to stop smoking than any other possible problem.
"Smoking, more than anything else, is a psychological addiction," Volz said. "People have learned to subconsciously associate smoking with relaxation, something to do when you are bored, a little treat throughout the day. What a good hypnotherapist does first is find out what your reasons for smoking are. Once you are in a deeply relaxed state and in a hypnotic trance where your mind is open to suggestions, the hypnotist will make a plan with you and give you suggestions that meet those needs in a different way."
Just as the hypnotist will have a hypnosis script slated specifically for each individual, the treatment and process it takes to get someone to stop smoking will also vary. Volz said that sometimes the process works immediately and sometimes it takes a little while longer for the hypnotic stage to set in.
"All the time I see people walk right out of my office and throw their cigarettes away and never pick them up again," he said. "They don't even have withdrawal symptoms. We see a success rate anywhere from 70-90 percent when it comes to smoking. When people don't do well with hypnosis it's usually because the hypnotist is using a generic pre-written script instead of customizing it to the individual. Your mind has to agree with the suggestions the hypnotist provides and the suggestions have to fulfill your needs for why you smoke."
"For example, one woman was given the posthypnotic suggestion that whenever she smoked the cigarette would taste like liver," he said. "She said the suggestion worked for about an hour or so. But then her subconscious kicked it out because it didn't deal with the fact that smoking was a way for her to relax from stress."
Hypnosis is proven to work for anyone who wants to be help. Experts will agree that if someone doesn't really want to stop smoking, hypnosis will not be able to work past their subconscious mind.
