Do You Know What You're Inhaling?

(This blog was originally posted on May 26, 2016)

Image courtesy of Microsoft

When people contact me to help them stop smoking, one of the most common reasons to quit is to improve/preserve their health. Perhaps they have a persistent cough (emphysema), chest pain (angina), lower stamina, etc. They know that tobacco and smoking cigarettes is bad for them, but they don’t always know why. Following is a list of six toxic ingredients contained in filtered cigarette smoke:

·      Ammonia. This chemical is in toilet-bowl disinfectant.

·      Carbon Monoxide. This chemical is in your car’s exhaust.

·      Formaldehyde. Undertakers use this to embalm bodies before burial.

·     Hydrocyanic Acid. This chemical is the poison used to execute prisoners in the gas chamber. It is also used in combination with Nitric Acid (below) to melt gold.

·     Nitric Acid. Miners use this chemical to test gold.

·     Tars. Researchers use this product to create cancer in laboratory animals when testing the toxicity of cigarette smoke.

For more information about how quitting smoking will improve your health, I invite you to check out my blog titled Physiological Benefits to Quit Smoking.

Special Offer! Hypnosis Programs to Quit Smoking

·      Intensive Hypnosis to quit smoking: $275 (This session lasts 2 hours. You must be smoking 5 or fewer cigarettes per day to participate in this program.)

·      Hypnosis to Stop Smoking: $800 for six-week series. (This is a $100 savings!) The $200 fee for the first session will be included in this rate only when the package is purchased up front.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. In July 2019 she was voted the Best Hypnotherapist in Santa Clarita, California. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2020

New Year's Eve Resolutions

Photo courtesy of Microsoft Bing

 

On December 31 of every year, a lot of us make a New Year’s Eve resolution (or several). Lose weight. Stop smoking. Try something new or travel to another country. Find new love or reconcile differences with a current romantic partner. The list goes on. Many people achieve these goals; many do not. Does it matter whether these goals are actually achieved? That depends who you ask and what the resolution was.

People typically set their New Year’s Eve resolutions late at night, typically while drinking or after having imbibed alcohol. They may or may not have eaten solid, nutritious food during the evening. These factors, combined with excitement about the holiday plus the body naturally starting to get tired at that late hour, create a state of hyper-suggestibility. When we are so caught up in party revelry it is easy to over- or under-estimate what we can reasonable expect to accomplish the next day, let alone over the course of twelve months.

I do not mean to sound like I am disparaging New Year’s Resolutions, because I absolutely am not. New Year’s Eve resolutions are intended to motivate and inspire us to step out of our usual habits and improve ourselves in some way. However, more often than not they become a source of great anxiety and consternation. My greatest concern is the amount of distress, frustration and pressure they put on people during the course of the year can actually cause the individual to not only revert to but even exaggerate previous, unhealthy behaviors they wanted to change.

As we begin 2015, spend a few minutes taking stock of the goals and resolutions you have set for this year. Remember, many of the unwanted (“bad”) habits we want to change did not start overnight. If you have been smoking two packs of cigarettes each day for the past 25 years, your plan to quit smoking will likely be more effective if you gradually wean yourself off the tobacco. I offer a smoking-cessation program that enables people to gain more control over their smoking habit and overcome the addiction to tobacco over the course of six weeks, at which time they become a permanent non-smoker. If you want to take off some extra pounds, consider how long you have been at your current weight compared to your ideal weight. How long did it take to get where you are today? The safest and healthiest way to lose weight is gradually. It takes time to permanently change unhealthy eating habits, incorporate exercise into a regular routine and increase self-confidence about how you look and improve your body image at each stage of your weight-loss journey. The same is true about getting rid of just about any other negative behavior or habit/attitude that you want to change.

Patience, perseverance and an abiding belief in your ability to fulfill that New Year’s Eve resolution can bring you the success you desire. You just need to relax and remember that you can control and are in control of why (motivation), when (timing) and method of achieving it. For more information about how hypnotherapy and therapeutic-guided imagery can further facilitate this success, please visit my web-site at www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com or call (661) 433-9430.

Happy New Year!

 

 

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/.

Why Quitting Is So Hard to Do

 

                Your teenage daughter promises to stop procrastinating in completing her homework assignments, but “forgets” to turn in a final project on the last day of school. A colleague at work announces that he is on a new diet to lose a few more pounds while he nibbles a piece of pizza during a social at work. You sneak a quick drag on your friend’s cigarette even though you officially quit smoking eight months ago. You wonder what these behaviors are all about while that famous line from Brokeback Mountain reverberates in your mind: “I can’t quit you!”

                Yesterday I shared a link on my Facebook account that illustrates the benefits of quitting smoking. Several people indicated that “liked” the post. Seeing this response made me think about how much hard work and dedication it takes for a person to permanently change a behavior or give up a longtime habit. Nicotine, caffeine and alcohol are commercially available and are fairly easy to obtain; they are also habit-forming and addictive substances. It is also argued that some processed foods include ingredients that manufacturers hope will trigger consumers’ cravings to eat more and more of that product. But the adrenaline rush or high that we get when we participate in a favorite sport or the surge of endorphins we feel when we are in love occur naturally and these experiences can be equally addictive.

The challenge in trying to change or replace these behaviors is that we generally don’t want to stop doing something that feels good, even if the sensation of “pleasure” lasts for an even shorter duration every time we experience it. The motivation to stop doing something we enjoy or that makes us feel good drops even more if we associate specific ideas or outcomes with that behavior. For example, your belief that smoking prevents overeating may trump your desire to quit smoking in order to avoid gaining weight. Or, you may ignore your doctor’s advice to lose weight to prevent getting diabetes because you believe that your­ extra pounds will insulate you from intimacy or protect you from suffering another broken heart if the relationship doesn’t work out.

Regardless of your conscious motivation to change a belief or behavior, your subconscious mind is fighting even harder to continue to follow the mental scripts that have been directing those actions that you want to replace. Furthermore, the longer you have been doing whatever it is you can’t or don’t want to stop doing, the harder it is to replace that behavior with one that will help you achieve your vocational and avocational self-improvement goals. Whether you smoke, overeat, procrastinate/miss deadlines or constantly starting new relationships so you can re-experience the excitement of being in love, your subconscious mind follows that familiar mental script so you can continue to experience that familiar known (pleasure). Fortunately mental scripts can be rewritten and behaviors can be replaced; and hypnosis and hypnotherapy can help you make this change.

               

 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

 

Physiological Benefits to Quit Smoking

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

People have various reasons why they want to quit smoking.
Hypnotherapy can help you achieve this goal.

 

 

 

                People have various motivations to give up cigarettes when seek hypnotherapy to quit smoking. With increasingly tighter restrictions on the areas people can smoke in public, it is becoming 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. (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 benefits and improvement to your health that you will enjoy after 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 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 client to listen to in order to 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!

                 

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