Most stop-smoking hypnosis attacks the cigarette. It tells you smoke tastes foul, that you will feel sick, that you no longer want it. The psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel thought that was a mistake. Fighting an urge keeps your attention on it.
His method, developed in New York from the 1960s, takes a different line. It is done in one session, it is built on three sentences, and it never tells you not to smoke.
The three points
Spiegel’s patients were taught to enter self-hypnosis and concentrate on these ideas.
- For my body, smoking is a poison.
- I need my body to live.
- I owe my body respect and protection.
Notice what they do.
- The first is specific: “for my body.” Not smoking in general. A fact about you.
- The second states a dependence. You cannot live without your body.
- The third states a commitment, and it is positive. You are not giving something up. You are looking after something.
Spiegel often compared it to caring for a child or a pet that depends on you entirely. You would not feed a baby poison because it wanted it. Your body is in the same position: it trusts you, and it cannot choose what you put into it.
Why frame it like this
Do not fight the urge. “Don’t think about a cigarette” guarantees you think of one. Spiegel’s instruction was to acknowledge the urge and at the same time turn towards the commitment: “I have an urge to smoke, and I respect my body.”
Be for something. Protecting your body is an aim you can hold indefinitely. Resisting cigarettes is a strain you eventually tire of.
It leaves the choice with you. There is no claim that you cannot smoke. You are free to. You are choosing to protect your body instead.
It widens. Respect for your body is not only about cigarettes. That may help with the worry about eating more after stopping.
The session
A typical appointment ran along these lines.
- History: smoking habits, reasons for stopping, earlier attempts
- A test of hypnotizability, using Spiegel’s own five-minute measure
- Teaching self-hypnosis, with his quick eye-roll method:
– Look up towards your eyebrows
– Slowly close your eyelids while still looking up, and take a deep breath
– Breathe out, let your eyes relax, and let your body float
– Let one hand float up, as a signal to yourself - The three points, considered in that floating state
- Coming out: counting backward from three, eyes opening, hand returning
- Instructions: repeat the exercise every one to two hours, taking about twenty seconds each time, and whenever an urge appears
That was all. The patient left with a skill to use many times a day.
What the follow-up found
In 1993, Herbert Spiegel, his son David Spiegel and colleagues reported on 226 smokers who had been treated consecutively with a single session of this kind and followed for two years.
- 52 per cent were completely abstinent one week after the session
- 23 per cent were still abstinent at two years
Two things predicted who succeeded.
- Hypnotizability. People who scored higher on the test were more likely to stop and stay stopped.
- Living with a partner. Those who lived with a significant other did better than those who lived alone.
How good is that?
Put in context:
- Unaided attempts to stop succeed for roughly one in twenty over a year.
- A single session that leaves around a quarter abstinent at two years is respectable for so little contact.
But there are important limits.
- There was no control group. It was a follow-up of patients, not a randomised trial. We cannot say how many would have stopped anyway.
- They were people who sought out and paid for treatment, so they were probably well motivated.
- Abstinence was self-reported.
Randomised trials of hypnosis for smoking, taken together, have not shown clearly that it beats other behavioural support. Reviews describe the evidence as insufficient.
So the honest claim is modest: this is a brief, sensible method with a decent track record in one clinic’s patients.
Use it alongside what works
The best-supported ways to stop are:
- Stop-smoking medicines and nicotine replacement
- Support from a trained adviser
Combining the two gives the highest success rates. In the UK, local stop smoking services are free. Nothing in Spiegel’s method conflicts with any of that.
Doing it yourself
Set up
- Choose a quit date.
- Write down your own reasons.
- Remove cigarettes, lighters and ashtrays.
- Arrange nicotine replacement or see a stop-smoking adviser.
The exercise, twenty seconds to a minute
- Sit down. Look up, close your eyes, breathe in.
- Breathe out and let your body float.
- Go through the three points slowly:
– For my body, smoking is a poison.
– I need my body to live.
– I owe my body respect and protection. - Take a moment to feel what it is to be the one who looks after this body.
- Count three, two, one, and open your eyes.
When to do it
- Every hour or two through the day for the first weeks
- Whenever an urge comes: acknowledge it, then do the exercise
- Before your usual trigger moments: coffee, the car, after meals, with a drink
When an urge comes
Do not argue with it. Say to yourself, “There’s the urge,” and turn to the three points. Most urges fade within a few minutes.
If you slip
One cigarette is a slip, not a verdict. Do the exercise, look at what set it off, and carry on. People who treat a lapse as failure tend to go back to smoking. People who treat it as information tend not to.
The bottom line
Spiegel’s method replaces “don’t smoke” with “protect your body,” and teaches a twenty-second exercise to use many times a day. In his clinic’s follow-up, about a quarter of patients were not smoking two years after a single session. It has not been proved in controlled trials, but it is quick, free and fits well with proper stop-smoking support.
Next in the series: The Magic Glove: A Simple Technique for Children’s Needles
This article is for general information and is not medical advice.