Quit smoking. Everyone knows about the dangers of cigarette smoking and tobacco use. Cigarette smoking causes cancer, and cancer can be fatal. With all the smoking cessation programs available, it should be easy to stop smoking, right? Wrong.

Most stop smoking programs have a success rate of less than 25 percent. This means that only one fourth of the people who try to quit smoking using these smoking cessation programs will succeed. Why is it so hard to learn how to stop smoking? The answer to this question is that most of these programs focus on the wrong methods to teach people how to quit smoking.

Only ten percent of a person's smoking addiction involves the conscious mind. This means that only one-tenth of being able to stop smoking involves a person's will or desire to break the habit. These include both nicotine replacement programs, such as those using lozenges, nicotine gum, or inhalers, as well as programs that use group therapy or behavior modification techniques. Unfortunately, most of the stop smoking programs available focus on a person's conscious desire to quit smoking.

These programs encourage such techniques as deliberately choosing other activities instead of smoking, using candy or gum to avoid putting a cigarette in one's mouth. Alternatively, they may encourage people to stay away from places that might make the desire to smoke much stronger. Of course, if the places that result in a stronger desire to smoke are work or home, this can be very problematic.

Another recently introduced technique for smoking cessation is laser therapy. People undergo laser treatments that are designed to help them stop smoking. The initial research on this technique, however, demonstrates that it appears to be no more effective than placebo. (Placebo involves doing nothing and telling people they are receiving a treatment.)

Most of these quit smoking programs fail to focus on the other 90 percent of a person's addiction to cigarette smoking. Of this remaining percent, half of the habit is linked to stress. Most smokers find a cigarette comforting in stressful situations. Furthermore, quitting smoking is stressful. Therefore, part of the ability to quit smoking involves finding alternative ways to cope with stress and to reduce the amount of stress in one's life.

Stop smoking hypnosis is one effective method of helping people to quit smoking. It focuses on coping with stress and helping people to relax. In comparison to non-hypnotic programs, "Traditional Hypnotherapy" (the use of direct post-hypnotic suggestions) offers a significantly higher success rate of about 35 percent. Unfortunately, this method does not work well unless a person is open to being told what to do. The majority of today's population, however, is people who are analytical thinkers, or who question everything. This group does not respond well to direct post-hypnotic suggestion. So they will not find traditional hypnotherapy for smoke cessation very successful.

Two of the more effective alternatives for these people involve Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. Through these approaches, trained consulting hypnotists are able to focus on the unconscious root of a person's stress and help them to eliminate it using techniques that bypass an individuals propensity to resist suggestions. It's important to note that NLP doesn't rely on suggestions at all. It relies on training the unconscious to utilize the same thought processes that are creating the stress, to eliminate it.

The remaining 45 percent of a person's smoking addiction is related to the association of the smoking behavior with a pleasurable situation, such as watching television or drinking coffee. Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and NLP are very successful in helping people to eliminate these conditioned associations between smoking and relaxing activities.

Unlike traditional programs, Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP offer a long-term success rate of as high as 70 percent for clients who strongly desire to stop smoking cigarettes. These programs are relatively inexpensive; in fact, they are much less expensive than nicotine replacement therapies, especially if these replacements are not covered by insurance. Furthermore, they are about three times more effective than conventional methods.

Treating a person's smoking addiction with nicotine, or even using consciously focused behavioral techniques to teach someone how to stop smoking through traditional methods does not appear to be nearly as effective as NLP or Ericksonian hypnotherapy. Why, then, would anyone want to waste their time, and their hard-earned money, on programs that offer only a 22 percent chance of success? This success rate contrasts starkly with the much higher quit rate, 65 percent, that is offered by NLP or Ericksonian hypnosis.

If you want to save money and be successful in learning how to quit smoking, learn more about NLP. This noninvasive method is pain-free and does not encourage using the very product people are trying to learn to quit: nicotine. Start saving money and quit smoking today!

Summary: Conventional programs offer, on average, only a 22 percent success rate for smoking cessation. Stop smoking traditional hypnosis is about 35 percent effective, while NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis offer success rate of up to 70 percent. NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis programs are economical and extremely effective in helping people learn how to stop smoking.

A list of the common uses of hypnosis.

Alan B. Densky, CH established his practice in 1978. He offers Neuro-VISION Video Quit Smoking Self Hypnosis Programs and Audio Quit Smoking Self Hypnosis CD's. Visit his library of original NLP & hypnosis articles or download FREE NLP & self hypnosis MP3's.