For a hypnotherapist helping people stop smoking is generally one of the most straightforward, yet rewarding, tasks. Occasionally there are deeper issues which may need longer, but generally one session is all that is needed.

Smoking is becoming more and more anti-social and it is a problem that smokers are quite unable to disguise due to the clinging and, to non-smokers, offensive smell. This, combined with the astronomical price of cigarettes is the main reason that younger people want to give up. In older people health tends to be the main motivation as they have usually begun to notice the beginnings of the terrible effects that smoking can have. Breathlessness and coughing are often the first symptoms of the many diseases that smoking causes or accelerates, such as emphysema and bronchitis and also heart disease as the arteries begin to clog up and cause the heart to work overtime in it’s efforts to circulate oxygen around the body.

Lung cancer is the disease that most people associate with smoking and it is true that both smoking and passive smoking are culprits in causing this terrible disease, but what is not generally known is that ALL types of cancer are more likely if you smoke, because there are so many poisons in each cigarette that the body is under constant pressure. Coping with the 4000 different chemical compounds in each cigarette leaves your immune system exposed to all sorts of diseases.

Of course, you will always hear the tale of somebody’s grandfather who smoked 40 cigarettes a day and lived to the age of 90 but then people have also survived jumping out of a plane without a parachute... Some people are just lucky!

People are sometimes afraid of giving up smoking, afraid of the terrible withdrawal symptoms they imagine will attack them when they stop!

There are two pieces of good news here:

1.	Hypnotherapy will make dealing with any withdrawal symptoms very, very easy
2.	Those withdrawal symptoms would only last about a week anyway and are not much worse than caffeine withdrawal. And who in the world is scared of giving up coffee?!

The main component of smoking that makes it difficult for people to give up is the HABIT component. If for 20 years you have lit a cigarette each time you sit down for a cup of tea or to make a phone call or after a meal or when you get in the car you are going to think there is something missing.

BUT if you want to give up and you have made your mind up. Then hypnotherapy will keep your mind doing what you want it do - relearning new habits and new ways of doing things i.e. becoming a non-smoker and enjoying the rest of your life as a non-smoker.

Hypnotherapy is one of the most successful ways of helping people to stop smoking because it works on the sub-conscious. The sub-conscious is where all habits dwell. Under hypnosis the sub-conscious is exposed and unwanted habits and behaviour patterns can be changed into what your conscious mind knows you really want! In this case, to stop smoking for ever. Freedom from smoking is easy!