Did you know that smoking is responsible for one third of cancer fatalities and one fourth of deaths due to heart attacks? Recent research says that more than 15% deaths are caused due to smoking. By smoking one reduces about ten to fifteen years from one’s life. Smoking contributes to impotence and infertility. It makes the smoker look aged. Smokers are more likely to develop deeper wrinkles, go bald, prematurely gray and develop periodontal disease. Smoking contributes to a high number of heart attacks and deaths due to cancers. Smokers in their 30’s and 40’s are five times more susceptible to heart attacks. Smokers smoking a pack a day have double the chances of stroke. They also develop twice the chances of dementia and Alzheimer’s. They have a high risk of developing osteoporosis especially among women. Smokers also double their chances of cataracts, macular degeneration and hearing loss.

The best way is to Quit smoking naturally . A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, minerals, vitamins and herbs combined with proper exercise helps to reduce cravings for cigarettes. At the same time sugar, caffeine, alcohol and junk food should be avoided. Vitamin E is known to protect tissues and cell membranes. Selenium reduces the risk of cancer. Spirulina and Chlorella, low fat and high fiber foods help detoxification and increases energy. Vitamin A also helps reduce cancer risk and maintains tissue health. Zinc reduces toxicity in the body. Magnesium and calcium calms the nerves and reduces cravings. Vitamin C flushes out the toxins and builds healthy tissues. Massage therapy also help detoxification.

Jack Foriska:

Combine this with EFT and you have a winning combination in your struggle against a smoking addiction.

Yes.  And the first step is to admit that smoking is an addiction.  Smoking is not just a habit.  And no matter how good one's nutrition is for their body, if they are constantly being poisoned by unresolved emotions, they will not be able to quit the addiction.  And although part of the addiction is "physical", time after time after time, a heavy smoker becomes an ex-smoker in a session in front of me, no longer has cravings, and continues not to have cravings.  I would say that something happens on the "physical" side when the underlying emotions have been addressed.  To put it another way, quoting from the Stop Smoking E-Book: 

... some feel that an individual smokes because they are physically addicted to the nicotine.

So how come some individuals start smoking again years after they quit, when they were no longer physically addicted?

... EFT is in my opinion the best way to stop smoking because it can remove all the underlying reasons why a smoker smokes. When all the reasons for smoking no longer exist, there is simply no driver for smoking, no desire for it whatsoever, and smoking simply becomes a thing of the past. 

I've also been the witness of EFT working in very short order too I might add. In fact, a friend of mine that is still a smoker stays away from the subject of EFT and Smoking because he knows it will work and for whatever reason he's not ready to give up his addiction ... his best friend, the cigarette. We have done sessions in the past on other things and he has, as many have, been amazed at the results and what comes up and clears so he's pretty certain that EFT will snap him right out of this horrible habit / addiction so whenever I bring it up, he always seems to somehow change the subject or have something else to do.

Too bad but we can only be the vehicle ... there has to be a desire to heal in order for it to take place. I'm sure that one day he will find that place within him and I'll be there, ready to guide the journey :)

In Truth, Kathleen

Hi Suzanne,

I'm doing research around smoking addiction and just wondering, on average, how quick your clients tend to overcome their smoking addiction?

I know this is somewhat generalised in approach but I am looking at different methods of treating smoking addiction and am also curious as to what approaches an EFT therapist puts in place with regards to maintaining rapport with a nicotine addict over say, several sessions?

I ask because many smokers I have spoken to want the quick cure to their addiction and would only consider a quick-fix solution such as hypnotherapy or just sheer willpower.

(I am a firm believer willpower is a no-no as those I know who have followed this route carry the misery of addiction onwards, even if they stay off the ciggies)

Understandably there are those who are not familiar with EFT but perhaps it is these addicts that strengthens the case for this question about rapport?

I know some off this maybe a little off-topic but my questions are coming from my research. 

I did have an interesting conversation with one person regarding the Allen Carr method if you are familiar with that and that was his subject material is bang on the money but his method does nothing for reframing existing belief patterns which leads me to think perhaps a combination of his work and EFT but again, this is someone looking for the fast cure idiology.

Adi Tillett:

I'm doing research around smoking addiction and just wondering, on average, how quick your clients tend to overcome their smoking addiction?

When I was in the UK, most quit in one long session - 70%. 25% came back for 3-6 sessions on average, and 5% decided they could not face the issues behind their smoking and gave up on quitting for then.  For a small minority of smokers, I declined the smoking treatment, asking to work on more pressing issues first, such as anxiety, depression, overeating, or bulimia.

Now I am in South Africa, I am coming across a big cultural trauma caused by one of the most oppressive regimes in the history of mankind, and people, especially those who are 30+, can be still suffering this trauma. This trauma is why most South Africans need between 3-12 sessions to quit. Usually, they can do it in 3-6.  Quite a contrast to the figures in the UK.

Clients that I help in other countries over the phone or by Skype usually quit within 6 sessions. I think it is not just one because they come to me after struggling to quit elsewhere. In other words, they would be among the 25% in my first paragraph above.

By the way, figures usually quoted for smoking cessation are after one year, so thank you for pointing out the Allen Carr anomaly  ;-D

Hi Suzanne,

Thanks for your reply - I encountered what I call the vibration you speak about in SA - i've spent some time over on False bay in the past and there was a real unease for want of a better term.

I actually had a eureka moment on Saturday whilst doing some cursory tapping around smoking. Just nipping off a craving and next, i'm into a disassociation reframing thing and even devised a "mini-system" to "kill-off" any cravings.

Upshot is I haven't smoked since saturday and not once have I had the empty feeling in the stomach that smokers are all too familiar with.

This may sound all a bit Allen Carr-ish and perhaps reading his book recently helped for the focus but EFT finally (and I  really mean finally as I can work EFT on other people but never to great effect on myself until now) came through !

i'll see how this all pans out and hopefully i'll be able to put a new post up detailing what I did....

regards Adi

btw - the Allen Carr figure came from their franchise pack. 

Hi Adi,

That´s absolutely fantastic great wonderful news!!!!!

Hello Suzanne,

 I've been practicing EFT for over 11 years and I've been working with smokers for about five years now successfully.  What I've done is developed a package program in which I start with hypnosis giving basic suggestions to stop smoking and have a reinforcement track on my CD.  I then have the client follow up with 2 DVDs in which I have them address their daily habits and then their emotional triggers to smoke.  By eliminating those two basic factors, the entire smoking habit ends and its over once and for all.  If, for any reason, the client gets another urge to smoke again, they simply go to the DVD and tap along with the urge they feel as its addressed on the DVD and resolve it on the spot.

I also have a book that I wrote entitled "Stay Slim While You Quit Smoking" that contains 111 practical tips to keep them slim, together with EFT regimines and low carb, low fat recipes to keep them slim while they remain a Non-Smoker for Life.  Overall, its quite an effective package that obtains somewhere in the 90% effectiveness range.  I have it on my site at innerhealingpress.com.

 I maintain that smoking is not an addiction, but a habit that is overlaid with "addictive-looking" triggers that make it seem like an addiction, but the real truth is those triggers are emotional in nature which are very similar to the addictive emotional triggers.  Once those underlying emotional triggers are resolved, the entire smoking habit dissapates quite quickly and naturally.

 Sincerely,

Ted Robinson

Ted@Tedrobinson.com

Hi Ted,

Very interesting. 

I have recently been reading up on Habit versus Addiction and it seems that semantics are getting in the way. When I was in my early twenties, a long time ago, it was recognized that there was what was called ¨psychological addiction¨, in other words, the emotional need for a substance. Now, the psychologists do not like using the word ¨addiction¨ it seems unless there was a big ¨physical¨ withdrawal such as in the case of a heroin addict going cold turkey. Now I use the words ¨need¨ or ¨desire¨ to avoid making it just a habit. You see, what a psychologist calls a habit is not what the layman calls a habit. The originator of EFT expressed it very eloquently in one of his DVDs. He said if he had a habit of putting his right shoe on before his left shoe, then that is a habit, and all he needed to change it is put a note by his shoes reminding him to put the left shoe on first, and he would simply do it. But he asked members of the audience, if a smoker can simply stop smoking by leaving a note on their cigarettes reminding them not to smoke, and successfully quit the habit.The audience said no, and he explained that it is because there are emotional reasons why a smoker smokes.

But I am a holistic healer and a scientist and seriously challenge anyone to tell me exactly where the physical ends and the emotional begins or vice versa. The problem I find for the client with this arbitrary distinction between addiction and habit is that the client then tries to convince themselves that they need to change habits rather than address the emotional reasons why they smoke. That is, a habit as perceived in layman´s terms, not habit as psychologists call what a layman calls a ¨psychological addiction¨. So then one has to address overeating, and this is because the emotional reasons behind the smoking simply get transferred to another destructive activity, usually that of overeating. But hypnosis is very popular and lucrative, and no matter what we do to persuade the client to stop smoking from the root, they want the perceived magic of trance and are willing to pay more for it rather than face their emotions in the waking state and release them relatively faster with EFT. What to do? I mix the two when the client wants. But my heart is warmed every time someone quits smoking from the root and holistically changes their life for the better. Hence my preferred smoking solution is EFT and a bit of NLP plus some basic holistic health education. We did it at the London EFT clinic I was running, and very successfully - EFT-only for most people.

I also am finding the local culture has a lot to do with it. For example, in the UK where I started, people were educated by the government not to skip breakfast, and that if they waited till the afternoon to start eating, they would be ravenous and likely to overeat, as well as needing the breakfast to kick-start their metabolism. Here in South Africa, most people are totally ignorant of this and many force themselves to go without food till the evening. No prizes for guessing the favourite method of hunger control. Many people think the body does not need food during the day, and so they are ignorant of what hunger actually is, that they call hunger a need to smoke. They have never tried to give their bodies the nutrition it is so strongly asking for. Instead, when they get that feeling that other people call hunger, this type of smoker thinks that it means they have to have a cigarette. This is because cigarettes drug away the feeling of hunger. And this type of smoker is either underweight or is so used to eating one meal a day that they are used to packing it full of energy and do not realize they have to make changes to it when they start addressing the genuine need for eating.Those who were underweight are usually terrified when they start becoming a normal weight. They had been so used to being too thin that they identify as that person. so work needs to be done on the disordered eating, identity, and everything else around it.

This is why I find stop smoking treatment with EFT so satisfying. One holistically heals everything behind the smoking, and when it is all healed, the smoker then simply stops and feels no need to ever smoke again.

Anyway, I rant - I just love this treatment  :-)