Habits & Addictions
Hypnosis for the running habit
Lacing up on the days you would rather not.
The Running Habit is a session for the days when staying in bed feels like the only option. It spends most of the time on the first few difficult minutes, getting shoes on and stepping out the door.
You rehearse the start of the run until it feels like a normal part of the week.
The hardest part of running is never the mile itself. It is the five minutes before you leave the house, when the trainers sit by the door and the rain looks very real through the window.
Every runner knows the feeling of planning to go and then finding a very good reason not to, even when the plan was made by you yesterday.
What’s in it
Runs that keep happening, including the grey mornings when nothing in you wants to.
Why do it
Rehearsing the first ten minutes is what turns running from a plan into something your week is built around.
- Theme
- Habits & Addictions
- Delivery styles
- 3
- Lengths
- Quick ~10mStandard ~20mDeep ~45m
- Ends
- Calm and present
- Stages
- 4
- On this shelf
- 23 sessions
Timeline: Start to Finish
The standard build for this session spends most of its time on the grey mornings. It rehearsing the act of lacing up when you would rather not, so the first step is already familiar.
3 of the 4 stages are named techniques with a published origin, credited under each.
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InductionStage 16 min
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A classic head-to-toe relaxation. Tense and release, or simply soften, each muscle group in sequence.
After Edmund Jacobson PMR (1929); Dave Elman Hypnotherapy · what progressive muscle relaxation is
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DeepenerStage 23 min
Staircase Descent
Visualized stairs descending into a deeper level of trance. Each step takes you down.
After Ledochowski, Deep Trance Training Manual
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Suggestion ScriptStage 310 min
The Running Habit — Balanced
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AwakeningStage 42 min
Calm Alert Awakening
Awake and present, but calm rather than energized. Good for evening or pre-meeting use.
After Yapko, Trancework
Three ways to say it
The same goal, written three ways. You pick the one that sounds like something you would believe — and you can hear a different one tomorrow without rebuilding anything.
Balanced
Lacing up on the days you would rather not. The default.
Future self
Meet the version of you who is a runner, on the ordinary days as much as the good ones.
New identity
Step into being a runner, on the ordinary days as much as the good ones, starting now.
Where it sits
The things you keep doing, and stopping doing them.
Before you press play
Hypnosis is not for everyone. If you have epilepsy, a psychotic illness, or you are under psychiatric care, talk to your clinician before using this — here or anywhere.
Why this works — and what the research actually says
Group-level, not session-level: no study has tested this exact session, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every source below was opened and read on 2026-08-25 before it was quoted.
Why do it as hypnosis?
You cannot argue yourself into lacing up when the sofa is right there. What you can do is rehearse the decision beforehand, when the sofa is not in front of you.
This runs through the first ten minutes in advance, turning the moment you step out into something familiar rather than something new. It is a rehearsal of the start, not a promise about the finish.
Quitting smoking: the honest answer is that nobody knows yet
Cochrane grades medical evidence for a living. It reviewed 14 trials of hypnotherapy for quitting smoking, covering 1,926 people followed for at least six months.
Its verdict was not that it works, and not that it fails — it was that there is not enough good evidence to tell. If there is a benefit, they say it is small at most.
- 14 randomised trials, 1,926 people, followed six months or more
- Verdict: insufficient evidence either way
- Only 1 of the 14 trials was judged at low risk of bias
Worth knowing: The review rates its own evidence as ranging "from low to very low certainty, as there was not enough information and many of the studies had issues with their designs".
One study was judged at low risk of bias overall, ten at high risk and three unclear. On safety, most studies did not report whether adverse events were even collected.
The exact wording and figures
A Cochrane review pooled 14 randomised controlled trials with 1,926 participants.
Its conclusion: "There is insufficient evidence to determine whether hypnotherapy is more effective for smoking cessation than other forms of behavioural support or unassisted quitting.
If a benefit is present, current evidence suggests the benefit is small at most."
We sell sessions for this. We are showing you the review that declines to endorse them, because you should know what the evidence says before you decide.
Barnes J, McRobbie H, Dong CY, Walker N, Hartmann-Boyce J (2019). Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, CD001008.
plain-language summary free to read
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