Habits & Addictions
Hypnosis to stop smoking
Become a non-smoker, free of cravings, with breath that feels clean and full.
Smoking Cessation is a self-hypnosis session for anyone who smokes without thinking and wants their hands and breath back. It spends most of the time on the feeling of clean lungs and fingers that are free to rest.
You choose one of four ways for this to be said to you.
Most cigarettes are smoked without much thought, often while standing outside in the cold or waiting for the kettle to boil.
The day is then measured out in these small breaks, and the hands feel empty without the familiar motion. It is a routine that sits in the background of everything else you do.
What’s in it
Mornings feel cleaner, food tastes more like itself, and your hands are finally free.
Why do it
The body begins recovering within hours, so the session you do today is already working before tomorrow.
- Theme
- Habits & Addictions
- Delivery styles
- 4
- Lengths
- Quick ~10mStandard ~20mDeep ~45m
- Ends
- Calm and present
- Stages
- 4
- On this shelf
- 23 sessions
Timeline: Start to Finish
The build focuses on the feeling of clean breath and the freedom of your hands. The middle section repeats these images until the idea of being a non-smoker feels like the normal state.
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
Smoking Cessation — 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
A warm, all-round affirmation of freedom and clean breath. The default.
Craving removal
Watch each urge rise and pass on its own, returning weaker each time.
New identity
Step into being a non-smoker, not quitting, simply someone who doesn't smoke.
Future self
Meet your clean-breathing future self a week, a month, a year ahead.
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?
Breaking a physical pattern requires more than just deciding to stop, because the habit has its own rhythm and timing.
This session spends its time on that rhythm, repeating the idea of clean breath and hands that are free to rest.
It does not remove the urge for you; it rehearses a different response to the moment when the urge arrives.
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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