Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD, is a long-term health condition that develops because of injury to lung tissue. This term is utilized to describe three lung problems categorized as COPD. These are emphysema, asthma, and chronic bronchitis.

Asthma starts when the body sees something in the environment, like pet dander, cigarette smoke, or dust, as hazardous. The immune system begins to release biochemicals called histamines. Histamines produce inflammation in lung tissues to help the body ward off invaders. This stiffens lung tissues and weakens breathing.

People can be diagnosed with asthma at any stage of life. A key way family members or friends can assist a person with asthma is to quit smoking cigarettes, since secondhand smoke kills. If someone newly diagnosed with asthma does smoke, he or she should quit smoking as soon as possible.

Physicians also classify chronic bronchitis as a type of COPD. This condition develops when a person has smoked for a number of years. Tobacco smoke results in chemicals and bacteria becoming trapped in the lungs. This bacteria result in recurrent infections in the bronchi, or airway passages, of the lungs.

This disease scars and stiffens the lungs. Persons who have this condition find deep breathing and exercise difficult. Since their lung tissues are damaged and scarred, they become short of breath with even a little exertion. Sometimes, if they quit smoking, many of their symptoms will decrease.

The third lung disease categorized as COPD is emphysema. The lungs have air sacs at the end of the bronchi. These sacs, also known as alveoli, expand and contract as an individual breathes in and out. Patients who have emphysema become short of breath and are unable to breathe deeply or exhale entirely since air stays trapped in the sacs. If they are able to learn ways to stop smoking, these difficulties sometimes get better.

Medicines and lung exercises may help people who have COPD. Despite these approaches, however, such people continue to demonstrate high anxiety levels. Having COPD is akin to trying to breathe underwater. Even though you want to stay underwater longer, you need to breathe – immediately! Therefore, you swim toward the surface and breathe deeply. Unfortunately, people with COPD cannot just surface and breathe deeply.

Several stop smoking programs assist clients who have COPD. The majority of COPD patients understand that smoking increases their breathing problems. The majority have smoked for many years, however, which often makes consciously quitting very difficult.

Numerous stop smoking programs are available. The majority help clients to utilize the conscious mind to quit smoking. Since the habit of smoking is etched strongly in an individual’s subconscious, few people who quit smoking through these programs stay quit without making changes at the unconscious level. Additionally, most of these techniques center on a smoker’s physical addiction to smoking, which comprises approximately one-tenth of the addictive behavior.

Many stop smoking programs advertise that they assist persons to relax better. The best use Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. Polarity responses usually occur with conventional hypnotherapy and direct post-hypnotic suggestions.

Ericksonian hypnosis employs metaphors, which relay suggestions that promote tranquility to the subconscious to assist clients to conquer the tendency to do the opposite of what is suggested. Often, individuals who are able to become calmer through the use of the NLP Flash method can decrease anxiety and panic attacks better. Therefore, they breathe better.

Ericksonian Hypnosis provides an exciting different strategy for helping individuals learn how to quit smoking. Professionals who practice this understand that the problem is rooted in the subconscious. Therefore, they assist clients at this level, through stop smoking hypnosis. Contrary to the techniques used by conventional programs, hypnosis to quit smoking focuses on stress reduction, mental dependency, and habituation, which together total 90 percent of a person’s smoking addiction.

Through Ericksonian hypnosis and NLP, these patients are able to have a higher quality of life. These therapies coach those who have breathing problems to reduce anxiety. They also help remove subconscious connections between cigarettes and the environment. This extinguishes nicotine addiction. These treatments offer hope for persons who have COPD.

Summary: Three chronic lung conditions are categorized as COPD. These are asthma, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. Reducing anxiety related to breathing and finding ways to quit smoking are probably the most effective methods of helping individuals who have COPD experience a higher quality of life. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP approaches help people to reduce their anxiety and quit smoking.

Alan B. Densky, CH is the developer of the best way to quit smoking cigarettes with hypnosis. He also offers a Quit Chewing Tobacco program. See more at Neuro-VISION self-hypnosis site where you can see Free hypnosis videos and articles.

http://www.neuro-vision.us/Products/NeuroVISIONSmokingDvd.htm

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Many intelligent children achieve school grades that really don’t appear to reflect their mental power. They finish their schoolwork, take part in class, but still get poor test grades. Parents typically perceive poor grades on tests as lack of study and preparation, but this frequently is not true. Often, test anxiety is a primary source of poor grades.

Young people who struggle with fears related to testing usually study in private until they know the information to be tested backwards and forwards. When they enter and begin to take the test, their thoughts freeze. They have difficulty recalling the concepts that, only a few moments before, was clear in their minds. They develop performance anxiety, and are able to focus on nothing but the possibility of failing.

Hypnosis to improve memory and recall works well in helping parents assist their children to overcome test anxiety. Traditional strategies, such as self-hypnosis memory improvement, may be very useful for older students who are not extremely analytical or complex thinkers. These programs, which may help them to improve memory and recall and reduce their fear of testing, are widely available.

Those children who are inquiring and intelligent, on the other hand, may have difficulty using standard kinds of hypnosis to improve memory and recall. This is because they question concepts and try to comprehend techniques such as self-hypnosis memory improvement. These clients will usually benefit much more from complex techniques including Ericksonian hypnotherapy or even Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP for test anxiety.

NLP for test anxiety employs a number of basic actions to help the mind to accomplish a complex job. One very useful NLP strategy learned by clients is a strategy known as anchoring. With anchoring, clients are instructed to remember a time when they perceived a sense of accomplishment and self-esteem. While they mentally re-create those emotions, they are instructed to touch two fingers together while remembering those emotions. This creates an anchor, or trigger for the emotions.

After the students have successfully installed an anchor for self-esteem, they are coached to imagine themselves during a test. As they make this mental picture, they are taught to trigger the self-esteem anchor through touching the two fingers together once more. The unconscious then relates the emotions of self-esteem and accomplishment to the act of taking a test.

The end result is that people feel a lot more optimistic about their capability to take tests, which helps them develop a high expectation of a successful outcome. This allows them to feel calm during the actual test, which helps them to easily remember facts.

Through this process, NLP and memory improvement techniques encourage clients to maximize their concentration even in tough circumstances like test-taking. NLP for test anxiety allows the student to calm down and concentrate on remembering the data they have absorbed. This allows them to remember the facts that they learned so completely.

An alternative strategy for using Neuro-Linguistic Programming for test anxiety is to use the “Flash” method. Young people learn this strategy to lessen anxiety and tension. Through coaching, they become able to instruct their thoughts to instantly trade stress-producing thoughts for calming ones.

Soon, individuals who utilize NLP for test anxiety understand that they find it very difficult to focus on anxiety-producing thoughts because their thoughts automatically flash them away for relaxing thoughts instead!

A combination of NLP and memory improvement techniques can be very beneficial in calming test anxiety, in addition to increasing mental recall. Employing NLP for test anxiety, in addition to mental recall, permits young people to capitalize on their capability to remember and soak up new facts. This can be critically important in today’s era of “information overload.”

As a society, our lives are assailed regularly with data from television, radio, websites, family, acquaintances, and other media sources. Sitting in a classroom throughout the day, students are even more likely to have this difficulty. Techniques like NLP for test anxiety may also be used to coach them to remain relaxed and manage this flood of information. NLP and memory improving techniques help them to center on critical data, and to remember it rather than the overflow of useless data that accompanies it.

Young people who prove successful in using NLP for test anxiety will also find these techniques to be useful for relieving stress and increasing concentration in several areas of their lives. For instance, NLP and memory techniques can aid clients to remember names or important dates or occasions.

Often, older kids who use Neuro-Linguistic Programming for test anxiety relay that these useful techniques significantly enchance the quality of their work and social lives as well.

Parents who are concerned regarding their child’s struggles with test grades and overall educational accomplishment should consider the effectiveness of NLP for test anxiety. These techniques have been demonstrated to be very successful for most intelligent young people who suffer from this problem.

Additionally, concerned parents can utilize NLP and memory improvement techniques to help their children prepare more effectively to launch new careers.

Summary: Neuro-Linguistic Programming for test anxiety allows students to increase their concentration and improve test grades. NLP and memory improvement methods also help people in several other areas of life, such as career and social situations.

One approach is to look for a nearby Certified NLP expert who is able to assist your child with Neuro-Linguistic Programming for test anxiety. It can, however, be significantly less expensive and just as useful to buy one of the excellent NLP and hypnosis programs currently available on CD.

Alan B. Densky, CH has specialized in the practice of hypnosis since 1978. He offers self-hypnosis CD’s to improve memory and recall. Visit his Neuro-VISION Hypnotherapy site for free MP3’s, and his Hypnosis Blog for tips & tricks.

http://www.neuro-vision.us/Products/AudioMemoryHypnosisTapes.htm

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Sufferers of claustrophobia experience fears associated with small spaces or areas where it can be impossible to escape quickly, such as elevators, airplanes or trains. Some sufferers even get claustrophobic in MRI scanners.

Due to their anxiety, claustrophobic people often attempt to stay away from small places. They also try to linger near entrances or along the sides of a room, versus being in the center. Claustrophobic people typically have anxiety attacks when they begin to feel “stuck” or closed in. For many, being in a tight space is as frightening as the thought of being buried alive.

Having an anxiety attack in a confining area can be a frightening time for claustrophobic people and people surrounding them. When an individual’s claustrophobia is triggered, they will often experience anxiety attacks, shortness of breath, physical illness, fainting, and other, often dramatic, responses. One can develop claustrophobia at any time or because of a traumatic event, but it often starts at a young age.

The phobia can be activated by various situations, which may differ between individuals. For example, some people might only feel nervous while riding a lift, while others find large crowds aggravate their condition. In any event, claustrophobia and similar phobias tend to negatively affect people’s daily lives and happiness. People with phobias may become avoidant and suffer a decreased quality of life as they manage their lives around their fears.

For many sufferers, the fear of humiliation or embarrassment over their phobia is as debilitating as the phobia itself. Many phobia sufferers recognize that their fears are overblown and irrational, but can’t seem to stop themselves from losing self-control. The reason why is that phobias arise from deep within the unconscious, which no amount of conscious effort can be fully effective in controlling. This makes controlling phobias particularly challenging.

Claustrophobia is treated with anti-anxiety drugs or counseling. Hypnotherapy is an excellent, safe and non-invasive form of therapy with no side effects. It works by treating the root causes of fear in the unconscious mind to quickly eliminate a phobia. A system that contains Ericksonian hypnotic therapy techniques and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) can be used to treat a phobia. This innovative program uses numerous techniques to help people overcome their fears.

The initial stage in curing a phobia is helping the phobia sufferer become relaxed and stress-free. Hypnosis has traditionally been used as a type of relaxation therapy, to help people clear their minds and calm down.

Conventional hypnosis has made use of direct, post-hypnotic suggestions to help cure phobias. The disadvantage of the direct approach is that the mind tends to resist being simply “told” how to behave. So many people throw up mental barricades ignore suggestions. In today’s world, men and women are particularly prone to resist direct suggestions since we are largely independent thinkers who question authority.

Calm relaxation is the very essence of hypnotherapy. In the relaxed state, rather than using direct post-hypnotic suggestions, a better approach known as systematic desensitization can often help cure a phobia using visual cues.

Ericksonian hypnotherapy techniques use a more innovative approach than traditional techniques. It uses indirect suggestions masked in captivating metaphors and stories to interest the unconscious mind and convince it to follow a desirable, phobia-free line of thought. Since indirect suggestions are not required to be tailored for a specific phobia like direct post-hypnotic suggestions do, one good Ericksonian hypnotic therapy program will work to beat any phobia or even multiple phobias.

NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is a modern type of therapy that many well-trained hypnotherapists have begun to use. The best NLP technique for curing a phobia is known as the Visual – Kinesthetic Disassociation, also referred to as the V/K. The V/K is known as the single session phobia cure, and with good reason.

Irrational or anxiety reactions (attacks) occur because traumatic emotions are associated with and aggravated by mental imagery. With the V/K, the traumatic emotions are disassociated from the mental images – often in merely one session, and the fear is essentially eliminated.

Those fighting with claustrophobia can attain relief by using hypnosis. The use of Ericksonian hypnosis and NLP techniques will help all people overcome their fears. Hypnosis therapy has helped countless users feel safe and confident doing activities where before, they would’ve completely broken down. The techniques of hypnotherapy have provided phenomenal benefits for sufferers of phobias and continue to enhance lives each and every day.

http://www.neuro-vision.us/Products/AudioAgoraphobiaHypnosisTapes.htm

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If you’ve ever been afraid of getting on a plane, you aren’t alone. The fear of flying, called Aerophobia, is among the most common fears that people experience. This fear is often a crippling, overwhelming feeling. It can even prevent you from conducting business; traveling the globe, or visiting far-off loved ones. Overcoming such a phobia used to take years of therapy, but today there are hypnosis and NLP techniques to eliminate phobias for rapid, life-changing results.

Do you wonder what defines a phobia? Phobias are considered a type of anxiety disorder, and many people who have them will suffer from panic attacks and other undesirable symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, or an increased heart rate. Several sufferers report feeling unwell or losing their ability to control themselves, and organize their lives around their phobia to try to evade their fears.

For sufferers with Aerophobia, even the mere thought of boarding a plane might trigger symptoms of a panic attack. Other sufferers might feel only slightly nervous while the plane is grounded, but grow hysterical once the aircraft takes off.

Picture a scenario in which a lady suffering from Aerophobia is sitting on an airplane before takeoff. She begins to feel anxious and her heart begins to race. She knows it is safe to fly, but she is afraid nonetheless. When the airplane takes off, she cannot help but cry uncontrollably, and continues to sob throughout the trip until she can finally get off the airplane. Although it may sound extreme, this type of response is common to a very high amount of people.

Phobias are distinguished by extreme, illogical fear. Those with Aerophobia are afraid of flying even when they realize that flying is really a very safe form of transportation. They may feel ashamed when they react with crying, shaking, or having an anxiety attack, but feel unable to control themselves. For many people, this fear of losing control is as daunting as the fear of flying itself.

In actuality, phobia sufferers can’t control their behavior because their fears are based in the unconscious mind, which no amount of willpower or conscious effort can change. This is where hypnosis is effective. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques function at the unconscious level of the mind to effectively eliminate phobias.

A good hypnotherapy program for eliminating a phobia has several comprehensive steps. Step one uses hypnotherapy for stress-relief, relieving worries and anxieties. Once you feel relaxed and stress-free, hypnotherapy forms new thoughts in the unconscious mind to eliminate the phobia. NLP itself treats fears by exclusively targeting the thought process that causes a phobia.

Unlike conventional hypnosis, which utilizes direct post-hypnotic suggestions, Ericksonian hypnotherapy uses indirect suggestions hidden in discussion to persuade the unconscious mind to adopt a new, more reasonable line of thought. It works better than conventional hypnotherapy because people often ignore straightforward post-hypnotic hints, but find it difficult to resist indirect suggestions that are concealed in interesting stories and metaphors.

The exact phrasing of post-hypnotic inductions in conventional hypnotherapy means that several conventional hypnosis programs will only be effective to treat a particular given phobia. A notable feature of an Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP program is that it’s not phobia specific and will work on any phobia, in anyone. It works for most people because the system is made up of several different hypnosis techniques assembled for highest effectiveness.

The most effective phobia busting NLP technique that I have studied is called the Visual – Kinesthetic Disassociation. The V/K is often known as the “one session phobia cure,” and with excellent reason!

The combined Ericksonian hypnosis and NLP program is perfect for the independent thinker who wishes to beat an illogical phobia once and for all. People can go through the step-by-step process at their own individual pace, but are often surprised at the ease with which they finish the process and overcome their phobia. The results people see with hypnosis often seem simply phenomenal.

Hypnotherapy and NLP are life-changing tools for many people battling phobias. Ericksonian hypnosis and NLP have helped countless people overcome their fears. The techniques are remarkable for helping individuals who are afraid of flying to take pleasure in airplane travel and all of its perks. For a long time, hypnotherapy has been able to change lives all over the globe, and eliminating fears is just one of the ways in which it helps people.

Alan B. Densky, CH has been treating phobias 1978. He offers how to overcome fear hypnotherapy CDs plus a broad range of Self-Hypnosis CDs for stress & depression related symptoms. Visit his website for free hypnotism downloads.

http://www.neuro-vision.us/Products/AudioAgoraphobiaHypnosisTapes.htm

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Some individuals express their frustration with weighing more than they would like. Many have trouble with weight loss or finding the motivation to change their lifestyles to avoid the eventual outcomes of obesity. These misfortunate persons have to find ways to lose weight or experience severe medical problems.

Individuals who are overweight may choose from different strategies for weight loss and begin the road to self-improvement. In the most severe cases, physicians may find themselves medications to help people lose weight. Be warned, however, these medicines can result in serious or even deadly side effects.

Medicines prescribed to help people lose weight can harm a person’s heart or lungs. Some medicines have been outlawed, and numerous individuals have needed heart or lung transplants because they took these drugs. An alternative method by which individuals often attempt to lose weight is through crash dieting. These techniques say they permit persons to lose their extra weight over a short period of time. Individuals who are able to lose their extra pounds for a short time frequently put it back on quickly. Furthermore, some people who try these diets even acquire nutritional disorders because of these weight loss strategies.

Other persons attempt strenuous exercise as a method of losing weight. Unfortunately, strenuous exercise may be damaging to the body. Individuals who attempt extreme workouts typically exercise to endurance rather than fitness levels, and force their body metabolism to go into a mode known as anaerobic metabolism.

These words are a medical way to explain that one’s no longer burns calories normally once it enters this mode. Instead, an individual’s metabolism slows down to retain as much energy and fat as it can. Instead of helping an individual’s body to shed extra pounds, this person forces his or her body to hold onto those extra calories. The majority of professionals who advise about weight loss have agreed that the ideal approach to shedding extra pounds is decreasing the quantity of calories that an individual takes in each day. The majority of individuals who are obese actually do desire to shed those pounds, and these people do try to do this.

Most behavior modification methods for suppressing people’s appetites and losing weight encourage people to identify what makes them overeat. People try hard to control their desire for food by journaling, learning about nutritious foods, and discussing their conscious motivations for overeating.

Frequently, persons who weigh more than they should wrestle with subconscious issues centered on eating and their desires to overeat. Hypnotism to help people lose weight is an excellent approach to assisting an obese person to overcome appetite control issues. Skilled hypnotherapy professionals assist overweight persons to use self-hypnosis appetite suppression techniques to deal with subconscious issues that result in overeating. Weight loss through hypnosis is a very effective technique that allows people to lose weight without willpower – and to keep the weight off!

Traditional hypnosis experts often use post-hypnotic suggestions that healthy foods are tastier, or that one is full after consuming smaller meals or portions. They sometimes offer people the suggestion that foods that are high in calories and carbohydrates ruin one’s appetite or that they don’t taste good.

Whether they want to be or not, a number of individuals are resistant to this kind of direct hypnotic suggestion. For these people, Ericksonian hypnosis frequently provides an alternative technique and a better result. It eradicates the individual’s tendency to resist by camouflaging suggestions inside conversation or stories referred to as metaphors.

The best hypnotherapy weight loss methods help persons to overcome their appetites through coping with the underlying causes for the desires and compulsions that they encounter. Guided imagery can also be effectively used to encourage the essential needed to alter one’s habits and experience long-term weight loss.

Unlike other approaches developed to suppress an individual’s appetite, hypnotism for losing weight is fairly inexpensive. Perhaps the least expensive ways to reap the benefits of this strategy is to buy a self hypnosis CD program for weight loss.

Those who select weight loss hypnosis CDs may play them without leaving their homes, where temptations to eat excessively can be at their strongest. They create strongly related associations between their homes and the best strategies for losing weight. This optimizes the effectiveness of hypnosis weight loss techniques.

Summary: Ericksonian hypnotherapy for weight loss is one of the most useful strategies for weight loss through appetite control. This allows people to deal with subconscious issues at the center of their rationales for overeating and weight gain. This technique is most effective for use at home through the purchase of CDs and DVDs that focus on self-hypnosis for weight loss.

Alan B. Densky, CH, a specialist since 1978, has developed a powerful tool known as Neuro- VISION ultimate weight loss. He also offers several natural weight loss hypnosis and NLP programs. Visit his Free self improvement video library.

http://www.neuro-vision.us/Products/NeuroVISIONAppetiteDvd.htm

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Which personal issue troubles you most strongly? Do you work too hard? Are you compulsive about small issues, or do you overlook them without realizing it? Building a personal development plan will permit you to focus on those components of your personality that you long to alter.

Through personal development, people become knowledgeable about their own skills and shortcomings. They problem solve and improve relationships by maximizing strengths and avoiding weak points. To do this, a person must take a serious look at problematic aspects of his or her personality and consider by what process they can best be changed.

Devising a structured personal development plan requires integrity, perseverance, and plenty of energy. First, consider your strengths and weaknesses candidly. After that, identify which you are willing to alter. These hard decisions are part of personal values development. Next, you must be willing to make the effort to change those aspects of your character least attuned to your own unique values.

Building a personal development plan needs help from another, trusted individual around you. Find someone who understands you more fully than any other person. Ask that individual for his or her evaluation of your positive and negative attributes. Encourage this individual to help you in your search for personal development and self help.

Most self improvement books offer very general personal development techniques. While these are sometimes helpful, they do not always work in all instances. Additionally, it is almost impossible to construct a formal personal development plan without interaction and feedback from a trusted professional.

Alternate conventionally utilized strategies for self help consist of behavior therapy and support groups. These, however, just encourage people to center their attention on elements of negative beliefs and actions that they already see and understand. These approaches focus on the features, not the root, of the issue.

A more effective strategy for helping people deal with character issues and capitalize on their positive attributes is personal development hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapists can employ this therapy to help people to form a structured personal development plan. These practitioners help people to evaluate faults and devise creative methods for striving toward self improvement.

Often, people who are critical thinkers or find it difficult to accept directional suggestions find conventional forms of self improvement hypnotherapy less beneficial than do suggestible people. For these individuals, Ericksonian methods of personal development hypnotherapy, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), work much more effectively. These methods are very useful in assisting analytical people to work toward self improvement.

Persons with elevated anxiety levels often benefit from self improvement hypnotherapy. In the process of therapy, regression or increased recall strategies may encourage the individual to relate unconscious, pervasive causes of anxiety. After understanding what results in the individual’s anxiety, a trained hypnotherapy practitioner can suggest personal development directions that assist the client to eliminate life stresses. This single technique often motivates clients to resolve problems.

Those who are dependent on certain foods or nicotine frequently gain help from Ericksonian or conventional kinds of self improvement hypnotherapy as well. Using hypnotic suggestion, they become less dependent on food or nicotine to deliver sensations of peace and tranquility. Furthermore, hypnosis practitioners help clients to conquer subconscious connections between undesirable health habits and desirable activities such as reading or watching television.

Devising an effective personal development plan may require the help of a detached counselor. Identifying one’s strengths and utilizing them to overcome weaknesses is tough. Some people are unable even to admit their vulnerabilities to themselves; it is much harder to admit these weaknesses in behavioral or group counseling.

Self improvement hypnotherapy helps persons to treat these problems at the subconscious level, at their origination. Practitioners who work using this methodology assist individuals by giving concrete or indirect ideas for encouraging them to work toward personal development.

Summary: Most persons want to improve some element of their characters or actions. Conventional self help literature and counseling treatments work to help persons to form a personal development plan. These people are limited, however, by their inability to address negative actions in the subconscious, where behavioral difficulties develop. Personal development hypnotherapy using either conventional or Ericksonian methods is ideal for helping clients to conquer weaknesses by addressing the root of the difficulty.

Often persons are reluctant to admit their weaknesses to others, or they lack the requisite money to get the assistance of a counselor. Usually, custom hypnosis recordings created by a competent hypnotist proficient in Ericksonian Hypnosis and NLP are be very useful.

Alan B. Densky, CH is a pioneer in the use of NLP for self-development. He offers many NLP CD’s for self-help. Visit Neuro-VISION hypnosis for self-development and enjoy the Free hypnosis video library, a huge article library, and MP3 downloads.

http://www.neuro-vision.us/

States across the country have banned smokers from public areas. Hospitals have gone smoke-free, and are penalizing workers for smoking during work hours. Smokers stand out in the cold, wind or rain, and smoke away as quickly as possible so that they can return to their workplace.

In some communities, smoking has become as controversial as illegal drugs. Because they recognize these and other stop smoking benefits, many people are trying to find ways to quit smoking.

There are three components to a smoking habit:

1. People smoke for relaxation and pleasure. This makes up about 45% of the smoking habit.

2. People smoke because they have created an unconscious association between an activity or environment and a cigarette. Then, every time they get into that environment, they get a craving.

Example: If you watch TV and smoke, the smoking will become a conditioned response to watching TV. So each time you watch TV, you’ll feel an urge to smoke. This makes up about 45% of the habit.

3. People smoke because they develop a physical addiction to Nicotine. This makes up about 10% of the habit. If a person stops smoking, the body actually metabolizes all of the Nicotine in as little as three days!

A number of alternatives are available to help people find ways to stop smoking. One of the most inexpensive ways to quit smoking, covered by many insurance companies, is the nicotine patch. Easy to apply, each patch is worn for 24 hours and can be concealed underneath clothing.

Unfortunately, however, these patches are not very effective. Since patches only deal with the physical addiction, which makes up only about 10% of the habit, their success rate is only 7%.

The same success rate is characteristic of nicotine gum or lozenges. Less than one in ten persons who use these products succeeds with these ways to stop smoking for six months or more.

Worse, these products have side effects. Nicotine gum or lozenges can be irritating to the mouth and lips, while many people experience skin irritation under the patch. Again, these products only deal with the physical addiction, which only makes up about 10% of the habit.

Another alternative is the use of counseling and smoking cessation programs. These programs include behavior modification techniques and extensive education about the harmful effects of smoking. These programs are three times as effective as nicotine replacement therapies; the success rate is 22% at six months.

Many smokers have tried laser treatment programs to help stop smoking. This treatment is sometimes covered by insurance, although it is new. Clinical trials performed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, have found that the laser treatments are no more effective than placebo. (Placebo is when people believe they are receiving a treatment, but actually are not.)

One of the ways to stop smoking has shown a little more effectiveness than these previous methods. In one study, smokers have received shots to help them quit smoking by taking away the pleasurable effects of the nicotine rush. This method, in the preliminary stages of testing for effectiveness, so far appears to be effective for 15% of the people who tried it.

Hypnotherapy is another method of helping people to quit smoking. Hypnotherapy focuses on programming the unconscious mind to automatically substitute other behaviors to provide relaxation and pleasure, in place of the smoking addiction.

It can also be used to erase or “extinguish” conditioned responses like the connection between the TV and the cigarette in the above example, so the smoker loses the urge to smoke when in the environments that used to trigger it.

Men appear to be more amenable to stop smoking hypnosis than women do. One benefit of self hypnosis stop smoking, however, is that, unlike those who use nicotine replacement as ways to quit smoking, there are no irritating side effects.

Another benefit of hypnotherapy is that it works on the 90% part of the addiction that is psychological, versus the other methods that only attack the 10% part of the addiction that is physical.

These facts cause hypnosis to have a much greater success rate than the previously mentioned methods of smoke cessation. Traditional hypnosis techniques can deliver a 35% success rate, while Ericksonian hypnotherapy can deliver a 50% or higher success rate.

A newer, innovative, and far more effective method that helps people to obliterate a cigarette addiction is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. The NLP techniques are far more effective than traditional forms of quit smoking hypnosis because they do not rely on post-hypnotic suggestions at all.

Most people, especially those who tend to be analytical in nature, resist post-hypnotic suggestions. With NLP, the unconscious is trained to use the same exact thought processes that are creating the mental addiction to cigarettes, to eliminate it!

A well thought out NLP stop smoking program created by a certified NLP Practitioner can produce a success rate of up to 70% or more.

Summary: Most smoking cessation programs attempt to use nicotine replacement therapies as ways to quit smoking. Other programs, such as smoking cessation and cognitive or behavioral treatment programs, attempt to help the mind find ways to stop smoking.

Although hypnosis is more effective than other programs, particularly with male patients, it is not rated as the most effective way to quit smoking. NLP, which addresses the mental components of the smoking addiction, actually assists people to alter their thought processes so that they are able to quit most effectively.

Since 90% of a person’s addiction to cigarettes is psychological in nature, these treatments are much more effective than merely replacing the nicotine and dealing with the 10% part of the addiction that is physical.

Conclusion: Many smoking cessation programs, including nicotine replacement therapy and counseling are available. These programs often have a success rate of less than 20%.

In contrast, hypnotherapy offers a much higher rate of success. And NLP offers an even higher degree of effectiveness in helping people to successfully combat the psychological nature of their addiction and find much more success in their goal of becoming smoke-free.

Alan B. Densky, CH pioneered the use of Neuro-VISION video quit smoking NLP and received a U.S. Patent. He offers a list of stop smoking hypnosis CDs that offer efficient help. Visit him for Free stop smoking self-hypnosis videos and downloads. http://www.neuro-vision.us/SmokingCessation1.html