Wow, it’s the shortest Ask Havi question ever!
If only the answer could be just as short … hahahaha.
Okay, here it is.
“Um. How did you quit smoking?
(she asked quietly and sheepishly)
Actually, the subject header of this woman’s self-described quiet, sheepish email said “quick question”. Which gave me a good laugh, because there is just no way that how I quit smoking could be a quick question.
Gather round, guys. Pull up a chair. Because I have stuff to say.
Obviously there’s no room here for me to spill out the entire contents of the massive book in my head on the subject. Or even a chunk of the three hour workshop I used to teach about this.
But the name of that workshop should tell you something:
“Thank you for not making me hate myself: the yoga way to quit smoking”
Yes, I have … oh, non-traditional thoughts on the subject.
But back to my own process … here’s some of what I worked on:
1. Taking out the shoulds.
This is probably the most important one.
The first thing you want to do if you are thinking about quitting smoking is to stop telling yourself that you shouldn’t be smoking.
The damage you are inadvertently inflicting on your body and mind through constant inhalation and consumption of guilt and anger is just as bad (if not worse) than the smoking itself.
Do not guilt yourself into quitting — it just multiplies the self-loathing, self-destruction patterns. Bad cycle.
Instead practice actively releasing guilt from your life. How?
2. Cutting down slowly and consciously.
Don’t start with throwing it all away. It works great for some people but for most of us that requires crazy will-power, and it might just catapult you into a state of resistance and weakness.
Take on small challenges. If your first cigarette of the day is usually right when you wake up, see if you can wait until after breakfast.
New rules: no smoking while walking. No smoking while talking. No smoking while watching television.
You want to be devoting every fiber of your body to really enjoying everything that you think smoking is giving you: the taking a break part, the calm part, the reassurance part.
Practice being there with it. How?
3. Bringing conscious awareness to ALL of it.
Start learning about your patterns. Figure out what needs are being met when you smoke.
- What are you avoiding saying or thinking or doing when you smoke?
- What are your mechanisms for dealing with criticism (both external and internal)?
- How good are you at taking breaks when you need them?
- How do you process anger and hurt?
- What types of things trigger your need?
- What do you need to know about this habit in order to release it?
And of course: all of this without guilt. You’re not blaming yourself for being human and having stuckified patterns. You’re just noticing when and how they’re showing up.
Practice learning how your patterns work. How?
4. Using Dance of Shiva, of course!
This is the thing that helped me the most, by far. Dance of Shiva (Shiva Nata) is an extremely powerful, extremely weird and fairly obscure form of ancient yoga brain training.
Yes, at the moment I happen to be the number two world expert in it, but when I started I hated it like nothing else.
But three weeks after I’d started I was done smoking forever.
The insights and moments of “bing!” that Dance of Shiva gave me made my patterns so painfully obvious that they just stopped working for me.
They just broke.
Dance of Shiva is the bomb. If you don’t have my super-genius Starter Kit, for goodness sakes take care of that right now.
Other bits of wisdom?
Sure.
Celebrate all of it. You smoked one cigarette less? That is a big deal.
Bring more things into your life that are related to your goal of actually being able to be nice to yourself. Reminders. Signs. Phrases. Non-dorky affirmations.
Surround yourself with people who make you feel good. Stay away from anyone who criticises you, nags you or whose company results in feeling bad about yourself.
Give yourself breaks in which you have 100% permission to do nothing for ten minutes.
Breathe. Do yoga. Keep your fingers busy. Ask someone to buy you a copy of the emergency calming techniques package and listen to one of the audio clips whenever you feel like smoking.
Remind yourself that you are doing this because you’re working on being the kind of person who can be nice to you, and that it doesn’t matter how long this process takes — as long as you’re in it.
Okay, so I didn’t exactly answer the question.
How did I do it? How did I stop smoking? Or — more importantly — stop wanting to smoke? All of these things.
Practicing Dance of Shiva for ten-fifteen minutes almost every day. Lots of yoga. Lots of journaling.
Lots of consciously trying to stop guilting myself. Lots of allowing myself to be afraid to stop. Lots of acknowledging how hard it was.
Lots of acknowledging fears I had around stopping (What if I get fat? What will I do when I want to avoid making an uncomfortable phone call? How will I comfort myself? Who will I hang out with?)
Lots of noticing. Lots of asking myself for help. Lots of agreeing to let it be hard and frustrating for a while. Lots of forgiveness for not being the person I thought I should be.
And when I was done, I was done. It stopped being about struggle and started being about being about kindness. I haven’t wanted to smoke since.
Does that help?
I really do know how much it sucks right now…wish I could give you more but…HUG!
Can I state the obvious? Oh good, because I’m going to.
I know you guys are super smart so I probably don’t need to say this, but just in case:
Even if you’ve never gone near a cigarette in your entire life, there’s stuff in here that will help you do a little disentangling with whatever habit or any pattern that you’re working on.
Just saying. 🙂
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Have you read Alan Carr’s book? (The Easy Way to Stop Smoking). It worked for me, and I suspect, from this post that your way would have worked for me in pretty much the same way (although it looks like your way would have left me emotionally and physically fitter too). Anyhow, I’m really just asking because it seems like there would be a lot of complementary views there (re: awareness of your own reasons) and I’m interested in where you would think Alan Carr’s book has shortfalls.
For me, I think his going through what people think they get out of smoking, and then reasoning (without any scare tactics) why anything you think you get out of smoking is an illusion and, hey, couldn’t you just provide these things for yourself directly and they’d be more effective and nicer, made me really look forward to the post-smoking-being-more-effectively-good-to-myself lifestyle.
That ‘Consciousness’ shit is totally wild stuff.
Megans last blog post..Writerz blox
Havi, I wish I had known you (and your duck) back when I quit smoking. I went the drug route. As in Chantix, not weaning off cigs with crack. Crack is bad. It was incredibly hard, and I’m pretty sure I made it a lot harder than I needed it to be. But I did it, and I haven’t killed myself or anyone else yet. So that’s something. 🙂
I loved smoking way too much and had no real desire to quit, other than that I was about to die from my asthma attacks in the middle of the night. So I firmly believe that if I can quit, anyone can. Stress management has been a HUGE part of it. You totally have to relearn how to live, or at least I did, and learning to cope with stress was a major part of that. An ongoing work…
Amy Derbys last blog post..Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Conquering Stress Addiction
As I was reading, I was assuming these same techniques would work for eating habits (emotional eating and all that fun stuff). Well, I got to the end and you confirmed it for me.
Thanks Havi. 🙂
Wow! You people!
Not only did I just get a LOT of good, useful info from Havi’s posts, seeing these comments from people who’ve been through it is fabulous! Thanks to everyone! (she said quietly and sheepishly)
😉
All the best!
deb
Deb! Are you trying to quit?
I’m going to try Havi’s stuff on some other bad habits I’d like to break. But I quit the hardass way–threw down the pack, and pretty much never looked back. But then, I’m a too-much-or-nothing type, so “medium” has never been (yet) a useful setting for me.
However, even though I quit like THAT, the keeping-quitting, which is just as hard as the slowing or stopping quitting, required a few techniques.
My two faves were:
#1: A mantra! Specifically,
If I can make it a minute, I can make it an hour
If I can make it an hour, I can make it a day
If I can make it a day, I can make it a week
If I can make it a week, I can make it a month
If I can make it a month, I can make it a year
If I can make it a year, I can make it forever
You can substitute “3 minutes” for “minute” and that lets you do the three days/three weeks/three months humps that everyone always talks about being milestones.
I first used the mantra after The Man I Was Supposed to Marry broke up with me. I used it to NOT call him, to NOT “happen by” an area or place I thought he might be, etc. (This was pre-email, but that would also apply.) I think part of the reason it works is, for type-A types, it makes you slow down and think and feel clearly the way Havi’s body-mind techniques do. (Havi?)
#2: Cherry Halls Mentho-Lyptus cough drops.
Seriously. They got me over the hump.
communicatrixs last blog post..Staying Awake in Seattle, Days 16: PDX, PDQ–Part the second
Wow Havi — your blog post must be speaking to people in the language they need to hear because all these comments are about quitting smoking, when the blog was clearly about quitting sugar!
Your honest details of how you made it through your process to slow-down-to-scale-back-to-cut-out your habit-which-is-called-bad inspire me to try it with the dangerous white grains — although I’m a die-hard all-or-nothing girl, ala communicatrix (wish I coulda been there for biscuits!) Colleen’s mantra will help tremendously, I can tell.
Thanks!
PS: I may be a hyphen-addict as well. Hm. “If I can make it three words, I can make it three sentences…”
GirlPie is a GirlPie after my own heart, this is *so* about quitting sugar.
I got the Dance of Shiva starter pack thingummy, even though I have no time and no DVD player and feel too old & creaky to do something called the Dance of Shiva.
The DVD part I suppose I will have to actually solve in some concrete, practical fashion.
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Very eloquently written. I’ll be back tomorrow to read the whole thing again; Tomorrow I’m quitting smoking myself– for the third time. Ugh.
I’m going with the substitution method again. Last time I quit, I got through the early rough patches with lots of pushups, sunflower seeds and seltzer.
They say the third time is a charm! Thanks for the inspiring post, your timing couldn’t have been better.
Chriss last blog post..How To Make Your Wife Quit Smoking
Um – I think Havi’s approach would have driven me MAD. (MAD, I tell you, MAD.)
Suggested alternate theory #1: Cutting back puts you in a continuous state of withdrawal (just like those patches they want you to buy.) If you are going to have to go through withdrawal, why make it last LONGER? Gah! Cold turkey (which no one promotes because there is no $$ in it – sorry Havi) is the fastest route to breaking the physical addiction. Three to 10 days and the nicotine is out of your system.
Suggested alternate theory #2: Find your community. No one can help you like others in your boat. There is a free site http://www.quitnet.com that was enormously helpful to me. Lots of new, almost and long-time quitters, supporting each other. Amazing wisdom – and who know there was so much to say about cigarettes? My all-time favorite:
Quitting smoking is to life what removing all punctuation is to prose. (In other words, if I don’t smoke anymore, how do I know that I’m DONE?)
Suggested alternate theory #3: DECIDE to quit. When I attempted to quit, I failed. When I thought, well, maybe I won’t smoke anymore, I still did. When I learned NOPE (not one puff ever) I didn’t have to think about whether or not I was going to have that cigarette. Duh – I had become a non-smoker. And guess what? Non-smokers are distinguished by the fact that they DON’T SMOKE. No more questioning – this was just my new reality.
Best resources for future non-smokers:
The Easy Way to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr
http://www.quitnet.com
http://www.whyquit.com
Good Luck!
Colleen,
Yeah. I’m trying. AGAIN. (And so Chris? Dude. Please don’t beat yourself up on trying for the third time. This is like my 5th time trying to quit this year alone. That seems to be how we do it. We try until we get it right.)
😉
And Colleen? I totally have those posts of yours on quitting smoking bookmarked. Cuz they pretty much rocked. (As does Havi’s because I love that I get to forgive myself and stuff!)
Thanks guys!
All the best!
deb
I wanted to chime in on the tip about celebrating all of it. And I’ve never smoked so not really about the smoking but about any change you are trying to make. I’ve noticed that our culture has become some sort of extreme obesessed. “Oh, is that ALL you’re doing. Why bother, if you aren’t doing….” Even small changes are changes in the right direction. Beating yourself up for not changing more is just crazy. The important question is: are you on the right road? Are you moving in the right direction?
JoVEs last blog post..Lions, and cheetahs… nostalgia
Deb and Chris — Good luck. I know it’s not easy. Like hardest-thing-ever far from easy.
GirlPie — I’m SO with you on the hyphen addiction.
Havi — Do you have a Hyphens Anonymous program yet? 😉
Amy Derbys last blog post..Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Conquering Stress Addiction
Maybe I’m some sort of freak or something, but for me smoking wasn’t about the nicotine. I found the mental addiction to be far more challenging to overcome. What finally worked for me, along with pressure from my wife, was reframing my self-image as a non-smoker. I know, it sounds trite, but for me it really allowed me to step outside the mental addiction patterns. When I thought of having a smoke, I would just affirm “I’m a non-smoker. Non-smokers don’t smoke cigarettes.” to reinforce the reframing. I’ll bet Havi probably has some clever Yoga way to do that. I found that it was much easier to visualize myself as a non-smoker than as a deprived smoker who was being starved of tobacco bit by bit.
For whatever reason, the physical side didn’t really matter for me. And I was last smoking Camel Straights, so there was no lack of nicotine 🙂 The other thing that did help was pressure from my wife. That got me past putting it off – since I knew I could quit pretty much any time, that opened the door to pushing out the commitment to quit one day at a time – not good.
Bottom line, do whatever it takes to be a non-smoker. I don’t have to recite the reasons – you know them already. You can do it, so why wait?
For Deb, a piece of advice: don’t underestimate the power of the words you use. If you say you’re trying to quit, that implies that you might or might not be successful.
I like to just say that I quit. This seems to help me when I have the occasional craving, that I can combat it with a simple reminder that I quit.
Somebody asks me if I want to join them outside for a smoke? No thanks, I quit.
Here’s to just doing it!
Chriss last blog post..How To Make Your Wife Quit Smoking
I’m in full agreement with Megan!
Allen Carr’s book “The Easy Way to Quit Smoking” worked for me too. It is the best method I have come across. It’s not about willpower, or scare tactics. It’s about fully understanding why you smoke, and that you very honestly do not need it!
I am both happy and grateful to know that I will never smoke again, after quitting my 15 year old habit 2 years ago.
I absolutely use smoking as a way to take a break. I don’t smoke inside my house. I go outside to smoke. I think about what to do next with my day. I plan out blog posts or articles in my head. I soak up the sunshine. I relax.
Also, until I very recently found out that I am pregnant, it was probably the ONLY time I wasn’t guilting myself for one thing or another. It let me quietly sort out my thoughts.
So now…trying to cut down, quickly, and quit smoking for my own health and for that of the little person, I am feeling guilty each time I light one. I’m really struggling. I remembered this post and came back to it. I have bookmarked it.
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Linking to this post, immediately, Havi!
You’ve provided a different take on the “Quit” thing that I really appreciate. Thank you.
This life never stops to amaze me!
I just wrote my first post for a new born website and the subject was… Quit smoking.
You’ll say… “Great! You are in the right place, Amy!”
I’ll say… “What a coincidence (for whomever still believe in things like ‘coincidences’)! I am here not because I tried to find your article, but because I received today an email… nothing related with the smoking activity… but somehow step by step I landed on this page. And what I read? Exactly my method through which I succeeded quit smoking many years ago”.
If you are curious how I did it and what steps I had to follow… here’s my post:
http://mcsimonwrites.com/how-to-quit-smoking/
Havi is right! In the moment when you stop telling you to quit, only than you’ll succeed to do it.