Hypnosis to Quit Smoking: January 2017 Special Offer!

Photo by Rick Hustead

People have various motivations to give up smoking cigarettes. Increasing restrictions on the areas people can smoke in public makes it more difficult and uncomfortable to light up when they are out of the house. Some people hate the smell of smoke in their hair and on their skin and clothes. Others decide that the financial burden of purchasing cigarettes is no longer worth the enjoyment of smoking them. For example: A pack of cigarettes costs more than a gallon of gasoline in most locations in the United States; and health and life-insurance policies can be more expensive for people who smoke. But the primary motivation people quit smoking is to improve their health. Here is a list of the specific physiological/health benefits of quitting smoking and an estimated time frame in which these benefits are realized since smoking your last cigarette.

• 20 minutes: Blood pressure, pulse rate and body temperature return to normal/natural level.

• 8 hours: Carbon monoxide level drops to normal level; oxygen level in the blood increases to normal.

• 24 hours: Chance of heart attack decreases.

• 48 hours: Nerve endings start to re-grow, and ability to taste and smell improves.

• 72 hours: Lung capacity increases and bronchial tubes relax.

• 2 weeks-3 months: Improved circulation and increased lung function (up to 30%); it becomes easier to walk.

• 1 month-9 months: Decrease in coughing, sinus congestion, fatigue and shortness of breath. Also, cilia begin to grow back in the lungs, which increases their ability to clean, handle mucous and reduce infection in the lungs.

• 5 years: Decrease in lung-cancer death rate for the average smoker (one pack per day): from 137 per 100,000 people, to 72 per 100,000 people.

• 10 years: Decrease in lung-cancer death rate for the average smoker (one pack per day) to 12 per 100,000 people. This rate is almost the same as that for someone who has never smoked. Other benefits include replacement of pre-cancerous cilia and decrease risk of other cancers associated with smoking: bladder, esophagus, kidney, mouth and pancreas.

Hypnotherapy is an effective tool to help you achieve your goal of becoming a permanent non-smoker. This is because hypnosis enables you to communicate with your subconscious mind to reprogram your previous subconscious mental scripts about wanting and needing to smoke with ones that reinforce your decision, motivations and ability to stop smoking. I offer a 6-week, smoking-cessation hypnotherapy program that is good for people who smoke one or more pack of cigarettes a day. A two-hour intensive session is also available for people who smoke fewer than five cigarettes per day. During this time, you will learn how to resist the triggers of your psychological and physiological addiction to nicotine while you gradually stop smoking altogether. I also record and provide a customized stop-smoking track to listen to and reinforce this new behavior (lifestyle of a permanent non-smoker). If you are ready to quit smoking, I am here and ready to help you.

SPECIAL OFFER!

I am currently offering a 10 percent discount on all hypnotherapy for smoking-cessation sessions. This offer is good through January 31, 2017 and is not exchangeable for cash. For more information and to set up an appointment, please contact me at (661) 433-9430 or send an e-mail to calminsensehypnosis@yahoo.com. I look forward to hearing from—and working with—you soon!

                 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2017

Hypnotherapy for Health and Well-Being

(This blog was originally posted on January 5, 2014)

 

Image courtesy of Fotolia

Hypnotherapy incorporates the client's words to increase
motivation to follow healthy behavior and improve well-being.

One of the most common requests I receive is to help someone, through hypnotherapy, to live a healthy lifestyle. Each person will have a specific issue or area that he or she would like to address and/or focus on or improve or change. Hypnotherapy is such an effective tool to facilitate these health-related behavior changes because the hypnosis scripts incorporate the client’s own words and motivations to achieve those goals. I  reinforce these suggestions by creating suggestibility-specific scripts (e.g., physical or emotional suggestibility) with which my client's subconscious mind will identify, accept and understand so that he or she can easily and comfortably accomplish their objectives, including:

·         Lose weight or maintain weight lost

 

·         Stop smoking 

·         Improve quality/quantity of sleep 

·         Exercise/increase physical activity 

·         Reduce/manage stress 

·         Make healthy food choices 

·         Drink more water/increase hydration 

·         Improve/increase motivation to follow the new lifestyle regimen.

 

 Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

 

Reasons Why People Smoke

Photo courtesy of Microsoft Bing

                People smoke cigarettes for various reasons, but the addiction to nicotine is very real and extremely powerful. Depending on your “trigger” to smoke, techniques to help you quit may vary. Following is a list of the different reasons (motivations) why people smoke and strategies to help you quit.

·         Pleasure Seeker. You enjoy smoking cigarettes, particularly after finishing a meal or while drinking liquor. Therapeutic strategy: Find a pleasurable activity or substitute to replace cigarettes.

·         “I Need a Cigarette to Cope.” You smoke when you feel tense, nervous or stressed out. Therapeutic strategy: Learn new coping strategies to reduce stress and manage your life more effectively.

·         Habitual Smoker. You smoke in specific situations because this behavior has become a habit at those times (e.g., while talking on the phone, after a meal, while drinking alcohol). Therapeutic strategy: Desensitization to the “triggers” for your smoking habit and creating physical obstacles to limit access to cigarettes (e.g., limiting access to the cigarettes or only being allowed to smoke only in one specific location).

·         Stimulation Smoker. You need a cigarette first thing in the morning to wake up and you smoke throughout the day to remain alert/keep going. You enjoy the physiological stimulation that nicotine provides. Therapeutic strategy: Relaxation techniques, reduction of cigarettes in conjunction with replacement strategies that substitute smoking with activities that create a similar physical sensation. It may also be advised to wear a nicotine patch at the beginning of the therapy.

Hypnotherapy is an effective tool to help you achieve your goal of becoming a permanent non-smoker. This is because hypnosis enables you to communicate with your subconscious mind to reprogram your previous mental scripts about wanting and needing to smoke, with ones that reinforce your decision, motivations and ability to stop smoking. I offer a 6-week, smoking-cessation hypnotherapy program that is good for people who smoke one or more pack of cigarettes a day. During this time, you will learn how to resist the triggers of your psychological and physiological addiction to nicotine while you gradually stop smoking altogether. I also record and provide a customized stop-smoking track for you to listen to in order to reinforce this new behavior (lifestyle of a permanent non-smoker).

You can read about the benefits of becoming a permanent non-smoker in my blog titled Physiological benefits to quit smoking. When you are ready to quit smoking, I am here and ready to help you!

 

         

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

 

© 2015

With Your Permission and Only With Your Permission, Part 1

(This blog was originally posted on January 20, 2014)

 

                If you do not want to be hypnotized—whether you do not believe that hypnosis will work for you or resist being hypnotized because you are afraid—you won’t be. I repeat the statement, “with your permission and only your permission” throughout the session to remind my clients that they can choose to be hypnotized and actualize their desired behavior changes. I also use my clients’ own words to reinforce their emotions, reasons and motivations for making these changes. As a certified hypnotherapist, I use hypnosis is a tool to help you change behaviors that no longer work for you and replace them with behaviors, strategies, etc. that you want and believe will improve your quality of life. During hypnosis, you are completely aware of everything going on around you. If you wouldn’t say or do something when you are completely alert, you wouldn’t and could not be made to do anything in hypnosis that opposes your beliefs, morals and ethical principles.

                 Therefore, I tend to be very critical of how and why hypnosis is depicted on television and in movies: a protagonist is “commanded” to do something that is completely out of character; the hypnotist erases and then replaces a character’s memory with a new, fictitious personal history and personality; or a person is “hypnotized” to behave in a particular way simply to move the plot along. In these scenarios, the character is completely unaware that he has been hypnotized; he just carries out the hypnotist’s bidding and does whatever needs to be done to move the plot along. Imagine my surprise that I not only bought the hypnosis-ambush of a character in a popular detective series, but it made absolute sense why this scenario worked and was believable.

               

 

 

               

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014

And Your Handwriting Says...Part 2

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

The size and style of your letters, and the size and space between
your letters, words and lines of writing can reveal a lot about your personality.

            Handwriting is an ideomotor response that provides insight into the writer’s subconscious mind. I explained the role of handwriting analysis in my hypnotherapy practice and identified some specific traits I look at in each HWA in two of my previous blogs (Handwriting Analysis, February 5, 2014; And Your Handwriting Says, April 24, 2014.) Here, I will describe several other prominent handwriting characteristics I look at and what these traits say about the writer’s suggestibility (how we learn), subconscious behaviors and motivations.

Here are a few more handwriting characteristics that I look at:

 

·         Spacing (between letters): The size—or amount of space—between letters indicate the writer’s width or narrowness of thinking. The less space there is indicates that the writer has a narrow view and is less willing to take risks in his or her life.

·         Spacing (between words): The amount of space between words indicates social maturity. The less space there is between words suggests that the individual needs people and attention. However, this person is unlikely to be open to what others say or believe.

·         Spacing (between zones): A writer who leaves more space between lines of writing indicates that he or she tends to be generous, courageous and independent.

·         Size of letters: The size of each letter indicates the writer’s opinion of him- or herself. Small writing suggests that the person tends to be thrifty and may not have many friends; however, he or she is capable of deep concentration and extreme attention to detail. Average-size writing indicates someone who tends to conform to social expectations and exhibits normal caution and reserve. Someone who has large writing tends to be extroverted (social) and takes the initiative; he or she needs to be noticed. Someone who has very large writing may be aggressive and single-minded, possibly rebellious.

·         Variable size of writing: If the size of the writing increases, this suggests that the person’s communication style tends to be blunt. When the size of the writing decreases, the writer’s communication style tends to be diplomatic and conforming.

·         Fancy/ornate writing: This style is identified by many swirls and embellishments of the writing. The writer tends to be someone who “must” be at the center of attention; it may also indicate someone who possesses an artistic personality, or someone who is acting out or showing off.

 

For more information about handwriting analysis, or if you would like to request an in-depth analysis of your own writing, please contact me via my website at www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com.

 

 

 Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

 

© 2014

 

With Your Permission and Only With Your Permission, Part 1

                If you do not want to be hypnotized—whether you do not believe that hypnosis will work for you or you resist being hypnotized because you are afraid—you won’t be. I repeat the statement, “with your permission and only your permission” throughout the session to remind my clients that they can choose to be hypnotized and actualize their desired behavior changes. I also use my clients’ own words to reinforce their emotions, reasons and motivations for making these changes. As a certified hypnotherapist, I use hypnosis is a tool to help you change behaviors that no longer work for you and replace them with behaviors, strategies, etc. that you want and believe will improve your quality of life. During hypnosis, you are completely aware of everything going on around you. If you wouldn’t say or do something when you are completely alert, you wouldn’t and could not be made to do anything in hypnosis that opposes your beliefs, morals and ethical principles.

                 Therefore, I tend to be very critical of how and why hypnosis is depicted on television and in movies: a protagonist is “commanded” to do something that is completely out of character; the hypnotist erases and then replaces a character’s memory with a new, fictitious personal history and personality; or a person is “hypnotized” to behave in a particular way simply to move the plot along. In these scenarios, the character is completely unaware that he has been hypnotized; he just carries out the hypnotist’s bidding and does whatever needs to be done to move the plot along. Imagine my surprise that I not only bought the hypnosis-ambush of a character in a popular detective series, but it made absolute sense why this scenario worked and was believable.

                               

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2014