Yoga to Help Quit Smoking*

You Can Break Free from Smoking! Just Follow the 7 Step Program

You can use the Yoga to Quit Smoking Program exclusively or combine it with the nicotine patch or some other aid, join a group or do it alone. It is important that you follow the Yoga Program’s full course to Help Quit Smoking (regardless of your progress – it’s like taking antibiotics). Remember: Your will to quit is the real key to success!

The Yoga to Help Quit Smoking Program: 7 Steps

This program will help you transform your negative smoking habit, in combination with day-by-day yoga exercise program. The seven steps, which will use to break the smoking habit, are:

1. Intention: Establish your intention/will to change the negative smoking habit aligns you with the energy of change;
2. Intensity: Commit to doing your daily yoga (asanas, breathing, and meditation) as well as following through with the whole program regardless of setbacks;
3. Slowing: Lengthening the time between impulse (wanting to smoke) and action (grabbing that cigarette or cigar) allows for greater reflection to look inward as to why you smoke;
4. Awareness: “What does this pattern of smoking have to tell me? Why does this habit paralyze me so I keep smoking?” ;
5. Fearlessness Changing bad habits requires fearlessness. You need to be fearless in stopping this self-destructive pattern;
6. Vision: Once you have examined reasons for why you smoke, it’s time to create a vision of your new self, a new pattern of behavior, and bring it to life
7. Practice: The more you practice your new pattern of yoga exercises, breathing and meditation, the stronger your new vision of your self, your new pattern of behavior becomes.

Benefits:

• A new and better way to enjoy life.
• Learn that withdrawal symptoms are only a temporary state and that you can get through it without pain.
• Helps you to exhale the nicotine from your body, leaving behind your mental dependence on the cigarettes full of nicotine, tars, etc.
• Rids body of nicotine naturally instead of relying on foreign and unhealthy substances.
• Relieve from depression, anger, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, restlessness, lack of concentration, and weight gain.
• Uplifting, general feeling of well-being.
• Yoga meditation focuses your mind on living life as you wish, far more than any craving or fixation on nicotine

Why Does the Yoga to Quit Smoking Work?

• Yoga works because it replaces one thing for another.
• Doing yoga pranayama (breathing exercises) helps you to quit smoking helps because it replaces your addictive behavior (nicotine breathing) with an alternative healthy habit (rejuvenating breaths).
• Meditating for a few minutes of meditation can be an opportunity for self-reflection that will help you find your inner self-worth, your true, inner Divine nature.
• Find you need not rely on any drug for support.
• Experience a sense of self-love, and you will develop a habit of inner self-reliance.
• You will be able to fight with addiction (which is both physical and mental) because Yoga is both physical and mental.
• You will be able to counter and conquer your habit
• You will be given specific steps to help you change the smoking habit.
• You will be given a day-by-day program of asanas (yoga exercises), pranayama (yoga breathing), medication and creative visualization to help you transform this negative habit.

Importance of Pranayama (Breath Control)

This following statement/finding has also been reported by The Foundation for a Smoke free America: “Perhaps the single most powerful and important technique is deep breathing, slowing exhaling, visualizing all tension leaving your body, draining out of your fingers and toes and just flow on out.”

• Medical sciences state that you are helped scientifically through the healing breath of yoga.
• Oxygen is critical in breathing and essential for quitting the smokers’ habit.
• Oxygen fuels the brain to think and it is rejuvenating for every cell in the body every time you inhale it.
• Flooding the body with oxygen results in the uplifting, general feeling of well-being.

Remember that the urge to smoke only lasts for a few minutes and then passes away and these urges gradually become farther and farther apart as the days go by.

There are three (3) parts of your Yoga to Quit Smoking program:

Part One: You will be given specific yoga warm-ups, asanas, pranayama, meditation and creative visualization techniques to start your Yoga to Quit Smoking Program. Practice these for 20 minutes ONCE a day for ONE month. In addition, you will be given the 10 minute “Stop the Craving” exercises and breathing to “delay” the craving, which is usually a short duration. Remember that the urge to smoke only lasts for a few minutes and then passes away and these urges gradually become farther and farther apart as the days go by.

Part Two: You will be given specific yoga warm-ups, asanas, pranayama, and meditation techniques to continue your Yoga to Quit Smoking Program. Practice these for 20 minutes TWICE a day for TWO months (once in the morning and once in the evening). In addition, use the 10 minute “Stop the Craving” exercises and breathing to “delay” the craving, which is usually a short duration.

Part Three: Evaluate your progress. If content with your progress, continue with Part One. If dissatisfied, continue with Part Two. In all cases, use the 10 minute “Stop the Craving” exercises and breathing to “delay” the craving, which is usually a short duration stage, if/when needed.

Regardless of your progress, stick with the whole program. Do not change or stop the program, even if you appear to have made no progress and are totally dissatisfied with yourself. You must continue for at least one month, regardless of the progress that you have made.

*Consult your doctor before starting Yoga, especially if you suffer from heart conditions, hypertension, or other serious illnesses. If you have back pain or other serious injuries, get a diagnosis from your doctor and get their okay before embarking on your Yoga journey.