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Natural Health and Wellness, Quit Smoking Program. Reduce Anxiety and Release Your Need to Smoke.

How to Quit Smoking Question

I smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. I have tried to quit smoking but always return to smoking. Do you have anything to say that might help tobacco addicts?

How to Stop Smoking Holistic Psychology Answer

As addictions go, smoking is a fairly easy habit to transform. But as you know, quitting any addictive behavior is not easy. The reason it is hard to quit an addictive behavior is because the behavior is due to anxiety and unfulfilled emotional needs. Until you address these two issues you will return to smoking again and again.

Smoking is controlled by your unconscious. Otherwise, your willpower and self-control could easily help you succeed in not smoking anymore! Techniques and quick fixes do not permanent eliminate addictions such as smoking, eating, drugs or sex.

To create permanent change you need to deal with the reason you need to smoke in the first place.

This means you need to do go to the source cause of why you smoke. The rock bottom issues need to be addressed. Once you take a deep breath and acknowledge to yourself that your smoking is based on emotional and physical needs that are not being met, you can then proceed with confidence. I used to smoke myself, on and off during my twenties, so I speak from personal experience.

To quit with ease you must dive into your unconscious. Then you can deal with your anxiety and find real solutions.

Since smoking is an out of control, unconscious act, the first thing you need to do is to become more conscious of what you are doing. This means you need to become aware of your physical body. I know this is a lot to ask, but the rewards are well worth it.

Your body is right there with you wherever you go, so you can always decide to give your body and your lungs–the attention they deserve.

Notice your lungs and how they feel when you breathe. Experience how your body feels about smoking.

Take a moment now and take a deep breath. Notice how you feel when you breathe. Let your awareness enter your body. Drop into it. Feel it. Feel the reality of your body.

Each day as you breathe more and feel more, you will notice the physical pain caused by smoking. You will cough and cough and cough.

If you pay attention to your cough you will become conscious of you body and reality. Your lungs do not like the fact that you are filling them with dirty smoke. If you listen to your lungs, you will face the truth. You are hurting yourself. The trick is not to judge yourself about smoking, instead become aware of what you are really doing.

This is what exactly what happened to me. I had a coughing spell in the shower one night in January back in the early 80s. Instead of continuing to deny what I was doing to myself, I promised my body I would listen to what it was saying and what it wanted me to do.

Gradually, over six months I became conscious of how my body experienced smoking. My body and my lungs did not like the smoke. Even though my conscious mind kept trying to make smoking acceptable, my body was hurting and feeling the pain of the smoke. My throat hurt, the smell was awful, the taste was putrid.

As I listened to the feedback from my body, I gradually smoked less and less. I stopped smoking naturally and organically. I was not controlling myself or forcing anything. All I was doing was responding to my body’s needs and it was easy to smoke less and less.

“Do you really want to hurt yourself?”

When you are aware of your body and lungs, you have a choice to make.

You can start to love your physical body. Your body is telling you exactly what you need to know to become healthy and vibrant. Your job is to listen, love and care.

If you decide to listen to yourself rather than hurt yourself, you will discover the underlying reasons that you smoke. Your real emotional needs will become conscious and you can start to meet those needs in healthy ways instead of smoking. You discover your emotional needs by listening to your heart.

Smokers usually judge their emotional needs as bad, weak, sick, crazy. This means, if you are a smoker you need more nourishment and comfort. The audio series and ebook, “Opening the Heart” teaches you how to be more self accepting toward your emotional needs and feelings. Everyone’s oral needs need to be met for them to feel strong and secure.

Smoking is not a healthy way to meet your oral needs. You can learn many, many other healthy ways to meet your emotional needs!

In September, after that January coughing fit, I was going on vacation to the Outer Banks of my home state. I decided not to smoke on the trip. I didn’t and instead got into the deliciousness of other pleasures: food; love making; swimming; and delicious movements of the physical body.

This time when I quite smoking it was entirely different from all the other times I had tired to quit smoking. In the past, I quite smoking by controlling myself and I always started to smoke again. When any anxiety or stress occurred in my life, I picked up the Marlboro cigarette.

When I quite smoking by loving and listening to my body, it was easy. I experienced a pleasurable transition into greater awareness. I was in no way depriving myself of anything. I was loving my body and myself and directly meeting my oral and security needs in healthy ways, instead of by smoking cigarettes.

I realized that I smoked to help myself be more aware of myself. I was conditioned to take care of others and their needs, not my own. So smoking was actually a way to focus on myself and what I needed.

Smoking, strange as it seems, was a way to comfort and attend to myself. Once I comforted myself directly, smoking was not nearly as good as the direct hit!

This may not be the exact reason you smoke, but it doesn’t matter if it is or not. Just acknowledge what you do need and meet those needs directly in a healthy way. As you become conscious, you will notice why you have been smoking and your emotional needs will make complete sense to you.

When you decide to quit smoking because you love your physical body and care about what you are doing to yourself, it is a joy to quit smoking. You will do it out of love. Love for you is the start of love for others. Love for others is the start of a worldwide energy flow of love for all of us.

Before you know it, love is more important than smoking. Learn more about anxiety and how it makes you smoke.

When you decide to be conscious of your physical body and love it, everything improves. After all, your body is your direct link to Mother Earth. If you care for your body, you will take care for Hers.

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Copyright, 1999, Doris Jeanette ~ Revised, January, 2009.