Hypnosis Techniques in a Quit Smoking Session

One of my favourite sessions is a quit smoking hypnosis session, because it is fast, easy and gives the client excellent value for money. Here I will outline some of the techniques and methods I use which have given me great success with smokers. First off is your intake or information gathering section. In this time you get to sell yourself and the power of hypnosis to help your client stop smoking. You will need to have a good pre-talk organised, either well practised or pre-recorded. I strongly recommend having a pre-recorded introduction even if you plan to explain the procedure in person. In your pre-talk you should be building expectation, alleviating any fears that the client may have about hypnosis or quitting smoking and encouraging compliance from your client for when you start your stop smoking session. (Also it goes without saying you need to have achieved good rapport, I find that simply parroting the client's metaphors during the session and matching and cross mirroring is usually enough).

Furthermore, in this time you should be teasing out any limiting beliefs that the client has (such as "it is not possible for me to quit smoking") and collapsing them as much as possible before the session actually starts, the last thing you want is a client going into a session with the belief "this will never work for me!". By the way I take 1 & 1/2 -2 hours for a stop smoking session. It normally takes 3/4 of an hour before I start the session. After you have got your basics right, it's time to begin the fun, hypnotizing them! Make sure they are in the right frame of mind and ready to comply to your directions without thinking. If you feel they are not quite there, you may need to remind them of the pain in their lives smoking causes, and get them to imagine what life would be like if they continued to smoke for another 5 years or 10 years. Usually this will be enough to get them to co-operate with your instructions when you start your stop smoking session. Then you begin your induction (you can do some suggestibility tests beforehand if you like), personally I like to use an instant induction with about 80% of my clients, but, if they seem nervous, I will use a variation of the Elman Induction. Either way you want to achieve somnambulism pretty quickly into the session, then deepen the trance. A good way of doing this is to get them forget some numbers a couple of times (or create amnesia a couple of times) in a row, then a simple 5-1 count. I would then typically emerge them from hypnosis and re-enter them into hypnosis deepening the trance a couple of times until I am happy they are in a highly suggestible state. (By the way this should take about 10-15 mins max once you get good at it). Next I would do some 'convincers', maybe an eye-lock or an arm raise and deepen some more. Then I would set up an ideo-motor signal to talk directly to the clients subconscious mind. Once I have that established I hand over control of the signal to the part of the person that wants to smoke. I elicit the benefits smoking achieves for the person, I remind that part the number 1 function of the subconscious mind is to preserve the body and that smoking is in direct conflict with this prime directive. I then ask it to come up with some solutions that could replace the smoking habit and get them to enjoy imagining in the future carrying out this different behaviour. I then re-enforce this with some strong direct suggestion and further future pacing living life as a non-smoker. As you can see it is more about the 'set-up' than about the techniques used, and that is really the key. The success of your session will be determined by everything you say and do up until and during your induction. A great hypnosis session is about doing many things well, not just one or two things excellently.