Sophrology and smoking cessation: Words from Sophrologists

So that the relaxation therapy be effective, you have to start by finding the motivations that motivate the person to stop smoking, ask him what he expects in the sophronisation. It is important that the person decided to stop without being pushed by her entourage. In Fleischer’s rapid induction technique, the subject is standing in a sophisticated state, imagining himself in a future where he would already have stopped smoking. ” See how good you feel, how happy you are, how satisfied you are after you quit smoking “. Secondly, “Now think and say to yourself:” I am intelligent, I have common sense “. Whenever you say these words to yourself, you will feel this pleasant feeling of the future: “I am intelligent, I think of the future, I am so well in the future, I am intelligent”. Now face reality: cigarettes are poison; every muscle, every cell, every nerve in your body feels it; cigarettes are poison ”. Then we go to the next sentence “ I respect my body and I care about it, I respect my health and I have concern, I need my body to live “. Then we come back to ” I need my body to live, but cigarettes are poison “. “I am an intelligent being and I have common sense.” Just before leaving sophronization, the subject is projected into the future when he has completely stopped smoking. Addiction being a state that uses conditioned reflexes, like the sight of the bright diamond ” Tobacco “Which triggers the urge to smoke, it is by working on these automatic mechanisms that we will gradually succeed in replacing them with other more positive automatic mechanisms. It must above all be remembered that winning this fight will give such self-confidence that will spread over everything else, whether it be his professional, social or family life. And don’t forget the economic side, the money saved can be invested in more pleasant things to really have fun. The result is that you are better off with more money in your pocket, it must be recognized that it is still good. By having this phenomenological approach which allows us to suspend our judgment and let things go, just like this breathing which can be done quite naturally once we have exercised well, we let come these sensations which we listen to, just as we can listen someone else, and without making a judgment, the positive gradually settles down to elect domicile. This motivation, which we know is very difficult to find elsewhere, becomes very easily accessible and we are often surprised by the result. We quickly understand that this is not magic, it is just a behavioral correction vis-à-vis our automatisms which gives us very quickly access to the immense resource which is within our reach.

To quit smoking, an exercise in Doctor Raymond Abrezol (extract of Overcome by sophrology – Sun Edition):

After basic relaxation, add the following to your audio recording:
From today, I will only smoke cigarettes that make me really happy … Of the number of cigarettes I smoke, there are more than half that I smoke automatically, without even knowing it. I’m going to put my cigarette pack in a locked drawer, or in a hard-to-reach pocket, so that every time I want a cigarette, I have to think about getting it, because I will have to take the key from the drawer or open the zipper or the button in my pocket … Each time I will ask the question: ” Do I really want to? »… If the answer is no, I will stop my gesture and I will not smoke … I will immediately and considerably reduce my daily consumption of cigarettes … I will use this system at the end of this session, which I will repeat every day until I’m used to smoking only consciously … My exercise is over … I slowly start my recovery.
Then I can add: ” I will only smoke a certain number of cigarettes and decreasing this number at each session “.

Author: Iqbal JOOMRATTY, Sophrologist