(no music) #11 IRON BAR OR TWIG - STOP SMOKING Relaxation Hypnosis (Jason Newland) (5th June 2022)

Hello and welcome to Stop Smoking Relaxation Hypnosis. My name is Jason Newland and my website is jasonnewland.com where my recordings live. You can download and stream all of my recordings for free.

Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Now this recording is going to be focusing on that hold that cigarettes may have over you. That bond, that connection, that whatever you want to call it.

It could be, you know, there's a degree of strength that's there. Maybe it's a cord. Maybe it's something like a, it can maybe feel almost like an iron rod that is very difficult to remove.

It's very difficult to, well, may seem practically impossible to bend. And what you need to do is break it. Break that iron bar.

Now by just going and trying to bend it, it's going to be fruitless. It's going to be, you know, very difficult unless you're super, super duper strong. So what we're going to do, we're going to move around and play around with that bar, that iron bar that's currently iron.

So I'd like you to close your eyes and there may be background sounds, but it doesn't matter because this is not a sleep recording. This is a stop smoking or reducing your smoking relaxation session. So we're going to start by, as I said, closing your eyes, focusing on how you feel.

And I want you to focus, first of all, on the most stressed part of your body. Might seem like a weird thing to do, but focus on the most stressed part, the part of you that feels the most uncomfortable. Maybe you feel tension in your forehead, maybe the back of your neck, your lower back.

With me, I tend to feel it in my lower back because I've got arthritis in my lower back. So I tend to hold a bit of tension there, sometimes in my lower back, my neck, sometimes in my forehead, you know. So just focus on your body all the way from the top of your head down to your toes and just notice if there's a particular part of your body that feels the most tense.

And just do that little body scan and notice which part of you feels the most uncomfortable. And as you focus on that part, just that part, I want you to imagine that that's the iron bar that up till now may have seemed unbreakable, you know. So I want you to focus on that part and just imagine that's the iron bar that needs to be changed and snapped, broken in order for you to move on with your life and to make whatever choices, decisions you choose to make regarding living a non-smoke life, a smoking-free life, a healthy future.

So this is something that will give you the choice. This is your choice, this is your decision. No one's making it for you and no one ever will make it for you, even if a doctor or a loved one says you have to stop smoking.

They won't make that decision for you unless they literally lock you up and hide all cigarettes and don't allow you to have access. No one's going to be able to stop you except you. You're the one who's in control of what you do, your behavior.

So this seemingly unbreakable habit, which we all know it is breakable, just because maybe you've stopped in the past, also I imagine every single person watching this video or listening to the MP3 audio recording on the podcast knows somebody who has quit smoking, who's decided to just let it go, decided to stop doing that harm to yourself. So they've decided to do that and we all know someone like that.

They can be a bit annoying at times, you know, if they keep going on about it.

How easy it was for them, oh you should stop it, it's so easy, I did it, I stopped. It can be a bit annoying, especially when they almost start becoming almost religious about it, you know, like you can do it, I can do it, so you can do it. So we all know those annoying people, but they might be well-intentioned, so, you know, and also if someone's nagging you or moaning at you, complaining, wanting you to stop smoking, the chance is that they really care about you.

If a stranger does it, they probably, they don't get interested, but if someone that's your partner, your wife, your child, your parent, someone that genuinely cares about you and wants you to be around for a long time, and they love you, so they're coming from a good space. And some people have this idea, you can't, you can't stop smoking for someone else. Well, you can.

In all fairness, I mean, if you want to be alive to see your three-year-old daughter or son, maybe graduate from school, or you want to be alive to see them maybe get married or, you know, or have children themselves, then looking in the long term, looking at the 20 years ahead, you might decide that the joy of being able to be in the lives of that small child that you pretty much worship, you know, there's that little child, two-year-old child, six-month-old child, they're the most perfect little creature in the world to you, probably.

So you're going to want to be around for them. Also, most people have had people die, you know, and that's a horrible experience.

So to lose a parent or to lose someone that you, you know, really care about deeply. So the idea of having or putting your child through that, I'm not trying to put you on a guilt trip, I'm just saying that, you know, it's reality. So sometimes you can think that way and think, well, you know what? Yeah, I want to stop because I want to be not just being alive, but you want to be healthy.

I mean, you might, you know, we might all be alive in 30, 40 years time. I mean, I'll be 90 in 40 years to 92. Wow.

50, 60, 70, yeah, 92, 91 and a bit in 40 years. I don't know if that's going to happen. It's not really relevant to the recording, but I think if I was alive, I'd rather be able to breathe, you know, so stopping smoking, everyone's got their reason for deciding to stop.

And it might be because you've got a brain, the intelligence part of your brain is just like saying, come on. We've known for what, 70 years that cigarettes are bad for us. Before that, people didn't know.

Doctors were smoking in hospitals. They used to give people cigarettes if they had a bad cough to help with their throat and help with their chest. But they didn't know back then.

So, you know, we know now, there's not, ignorance isn't really available to us regarding cigarettes, but it's a choice. We live in a society where you can choose to smoke or to not smoke. It's your choice.

Just like I can choose to stop this recording and go and chase that pigeon in the garden and tell it to stop making so much noise. But I'm going to choose not to do that. So that metal bar, that like iron bar is almost the strength of the addiction, strength of the habit, the strength of the the want to do that particular thing, the connection.

So as you focus on that part again that was stressed before tense, just notice how that part of your body is feeling now, just as we've just been chatting for the last five minutes, 10 minutes or whatever.

Notice how different it feels, notice how it feels a bit more relaxed, that part of your body, because sometimes just taking a bit of time out from your day, taking a bit of a break, stepping back a little bit from the situation that you're listening to the recording for changes your perspective in maybe a really small way, yet maybe in a bigger way than you realized before you decided to listen to this recording.

How much of a dent there already was in that metal bar, because maybe that metal bar is already damaged, it's already weakened by years of maybe wanting to stop and you've been kind of trying to bend it for years and maybe it's what it actually is weak, you don't realize how weak it is because you're looking at it, it looks strong but maybe it isn't, maybe it's like a tree, you know you see a tree, it looks strong but it might be rotten, 98% of it might be rotten inside and actually you could push the thing down, you wouldn't think to push it down but on a windy day the thing just falls down because it's rotten inside.

So maybe there's a big crack all the way through this metal rod which you know we use as a representative of that smoking habit. So it felt strong before, how does it feel now? How does it feel right now? Focusing on that part of your body that was tense before, how is that part of your body feeling? Bearing in mind we've not really done anything, we're just chatting and how does that part of your body feel?

How relaxed do you feel? Because that sense of comfort just continues to grow and there's something about taking a break, just taking a step back because relaxation comfort is actually our natural position to be in, it's our natural state to feel comfortable, to feel calm, to feel relaxed, that's natural, there's nothing weird about feeling relaxed, nothing strange about feeling calm, it's actually our natural state.

So when you sit down after a hard day's work or you lie down on your bed at night or whenever you go to bed, your body naturally starts to relax because that's what happens when we lay down or when we sit down in a chair, our bodies start to relax and some people listening to this, you may have listened to previous videos or previous relaxation or sleep podcasts and there's that connection of listening to my boring voice and that connection of listening to my boring voice maybe triggers that sense of calmness and relaxation to spread through your body and your mind starts to become calmer,

more peaceful and then when you focus on that metal bar that represents the strength of the smoking habit, it starts to transform into something else, it doesn't feel the same anymore, why is that? I don't know, does it matter? I don't know, is it important? Why?

But something changes, it doesn't feel the same, it's practically impossible to have the same sense of almost powerlessness to this habit that maybe you used to feel you had in the past, I mean perhaps you just decided yourself that you're not going to allow something external to control you, you know, you decided that's not acceptable anymore, maybe though it's just happened naturally, you didn't plan to feel different, you didn't maybe even expect to feel different, maybe you didn't even want to feel different, yet feel different you do and that might seem weird,

might seem a bit strange, maybe slightly confusing as to why would you feel differently towards that thing that used to be strong but now is weak, too weak to control you or too weak to tell you what to do, and to the point where you may start to wonder like why, how this, why would, why would something that perhaps used to feel like it was controlling you suddenly after 20 minutes doesn't have the power anymore, it's lost that energy, it's lost what it was, it's now something different,

it's almost as if you've woken up to who you are and you've remembered your own strength, and you've remembered that you don't like being controlled, not only do you not like it, you refuse to allow it to happen, and with that energy of thinking, that definiteness of yourself, the reality that you will not allow yourself to be controlled by a habit, by an outside thing, or an outside person, you start to remember that you are in control of what you do, you're in control of what you say,

you're in control of your own behavior, you're not a puppet, you haven't got strings attached to your arms and your legs, and the puppeteers controlling you from above, that's not happening, or if you feel that way, cut those strings, cut them now, and that freedom that you always knew you had anyway, it's just, it's a reminder that you're free to do what you choose to do, but not to be controlled by something else, such as a habit, you're free to choose your own healthy behavior,

and there's a certain sense of accomplishment that you can gain from embracing this feeling that you can experience inside, as you focus on that metal bar and you realize that actually, it's not made of metal at all, all this time you thought it was made of metal, it's actually wood, it's heavy wood, so that's why you thought it was metal, and it's hard, and it's maybe been painted to look like metal, but it's just wood, and not only that, but inside it's rotten, 98% of that wood all the way through is rotten,

so that's not even a strong piece of wood, it's more like a twig, the strength of a twig, so you can pretty much just hold both ends and just snap it so easily without any effort or energy, but there's a certain feeling that you get when you do snap it, it's almost like just snapping a a KitKat, and you can't put it back together again either, it's not humpty-dumpty, this is you know it's gone, it's broken now, and as it breaks it just, you can drop it on the floor and it just starts to disintegrate,

it starts to just turn to dust, you know like the old vampire movies, the sun comes up and they just turn to dust, that can be what happens to this twig that's on the floor, realizing that it wasn't real, that maybe we were given too much emphasis to the the power that we thought that that twig had over us, when of course if we'd realized it was just a twig, we wouldn't have even given it any credit, what can a twig do?

I suppose if it's long enough you can scratch your back with it, and then as you focus on the rest of your body, noticing how much more relaxed you feel, because not just that part that you were focusing on before, that's calmed down and loosened, it's just not just your mind that's slowed down, and as you focus on my voice and the words that I say, maybe you find yourself drifting, perhaps just through boredom, maybe you find listening to me a bit boring, and you may find that you just want to fall asleep,

which of course is your choice, and that sense of comfort spreading through your body, a sense of peace continuing to grow, and there's that, that feeling, you know that feeling when you know that something's changed, you know it, you might not be able to pinpoint exactly what it is that's changed, in this case it's probably fairly easy, but you have that feeling that you know that from now on things are going to be different, things are going to be better, you're going to feel healthier, you're going to feel,

you've got more energy, you're going to feel more positive about the future, maybe start to make plans for a happy life, a healthy life, it's quite interesting really isn't it, how easily changes occur in our minds, how simple movement can transform the way that you feel.

Horace the Pigeon agrees, he's my biggest fan, whenever I make a recording, comes along, eats his popcorn, looks through the window, hey go on JJ, you tell him, that's the only time I actually hope that you can hear the background sound, you might not be able to hear it, but there's a pigeon on my windowsill, it's lovely, so you can enjoy the feeling of comfort that continues to spread through your body, your arms, your legs, your back, chest, stomach, your face, your jaw, your eyes, your forehead, hands, fingers, feet and toes,

relaxing and calm and just allow any new learnings or changes to continue to be absorbed into your mind and your body, allowing those changes to happen in their own time and you can enjoy feeling good, you can enjoy feeling relaxed and you can enjoy whatever changes you've decided to allow. And that brings us to the end of this recording, if you're listening with, to a longer version on the podcast, there are versions with music in the background and also a five hour and a ten hour version, so you can just maybe drift off to sleep.

So maybe if you're listening to that, enjoy feeling deeply, deeply relaxed.

Remember to be kind to yourself, because you deserve to be happy, be gentle and enjoy being you. Lots of love. Bye.