You might be wondering what on earth relaxation techniques have to do with smokers but actually, it is quite relative. This is because there are typically only a few reasons why people rely on drugs or turn to alcohol and this is because it is a form of release, a way of relinquishing the grip of tension or a way of hiding from the stresses and strains of the day.
So with this in mind, it makes sense that you make important changes to your life so that you feel happier and less inclined to smoke. Smoking doesn’t give you the happiness or stress relief that you think it does, it may mask your feelings at that time and give you a temporary sense of euphoria but the cold reality is that smoking is silently killing you. Irrespective of how strong your addiction is, you can beat your smoking habit. You just need to know how.
So, if you really want to kick the habit, spend some time working out why you feel the need to smoke, what is it in your life that makes you need a crutch by way of a drug to lean on? If your life is stressful, then he chances are that you are entering a cycle of needing an escape route, experiencing short-term relaxation and the need to keep rewarding yourself. So if you stop smoking right this second, imagine how bad the tension is going to get unless you can learn how to diffuse it at source.
Enter the need for relaxation techniques that actually work. You need to determine the triggers that make you want to light up and so it’s important in this instance to sit down and create a stop smoking journal. Within these pages you will be able to write down every emotion that you felt at the time when you reached for those cigarettes, whether you felt angry, tense or tearful. Equally it’s possible that you felt bored, tired or unhappy. Extremes of emotion can very quickly lead you straight back into your habit. Keep your stop smoking journal for at least a week including your weekends so that you can deliberate a true picture of how your smoking dominates your life?
You may find when you read back over you r journal that there are some surprises there. Seeing how smoking affects you in black and white is kind of hard to ignore. But hopefully it will help you to wise up to the fact that you have a problem and take serious steps to eradicate it.
Once you have established your triggers, you can then move onto how to counteract those triggers and start weaning yourself off of your cigarettes. Learning relaxation techniques take time. They are very easy to learn but letting go of the tension itself can take longer. You might find your attention wandering as one of the things that many smokers say in defence of their habit is that they have too little time to relax.
If you find yourself nodding when you read this, then consider just how much time you give to your smoking habit and then you will very quickly see that you do have time to not only learn but to practice relaxing. Simple breathing exercises will help you in the first instance and not only are they good for relaxation but they are excellent to help improve the damage to your lungs caused by smoking. Once you have learned basic breathing techniques, you can then move onto meditation which need only take about 20 minutes a day. Once learned, use these techniques to help you to counteract the urge to light up. Invest in some guided meditation CD’s, start walking more regularly and diffuse the need for cigarettes that way.
In addition to learning how to relax, if you don’t want to give up smoking in one foul swoop, consider electronic cigarettes because they give you the nicotine boost you need, although you are able to reduce this dramatically but e-cigarettes also do not contain any of the thousands of chemicals that traditional cigarettes do so you will find that they actually help you to face up to withdrawal symptoms easily whilst you still focus on learning how to relax.
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