1) Hypnotherapy targets the unconscious mind, this is the part that stores all your memories, emotions and creates and maintains habits. This means that the memories you have of smoking, emotional attachment to smoking and the smoking habit pattern is dealt with by hypnotherapy.

2) Having hypnotherapy to give up smoking means you do not have to rely on willpower alone. This is good news, since using willpower is a conscious act. Habits are stored at an unconscious level. You are likely to be less successful using willpower alone, as you are not working with your unconscious mind.

3) Hypnotherapy is a wonderfully relaxing process, in which your unconscious mind is packed full of positive suggestions. In this way, Hypnotherapy can eliminate or reduce anxiety associated with stopping smoking so that you feel ready to stop.

4) Whilst hypnotherapy cannot make you stop if you really do not want to, it can help you identify and build your motivations for stopping. During a hypnotherapy your hypnotherapist should spend time helping you identify your reasons for stopping smoking.

5) Hypnotherapy can help install positive coping mechanisms, so that you will know what to do, to remain a non-smoker once the session has ended.

6) Hypnotherapy can help you to re-evaluate your unconscious beliefs related to smoking. During smoking cessation consultations at my hypnotherapy practice, Edinburgh, people regularly present with distorted beliefs that they have developed and held onto, to give themselves excuses for smoking.

7) Hypnotherapy can install positive beliefs. Whatever method you use to stop smoking, when you have that last cigarette it can be challenging to believe that you really are a non-smoker at first. This lack of belief in yourself as a non-smoker can make you feel vulnerable to smoking again. Your hypnotherapist, can work with you to install new beliefs that will help you feel like a non-smoker.

8) Hypnotherapy can help you develop new feelings, emotions and associations and help you break old negative associations such as that a cigarette goes hand in hand with your morning coffee.

9) Hypnotherapy can be used to create other positive changes at the same time as stopping smoking, such as suggestions that you will not increase eating once quitting.

10) Most hypnotherapists help people stop smoking in one intense therapy session. Hypnotherapy covers all the aspects related to your smoking habit discussed in this article. Once these are dealt with, you no longer feel the urge to smoke.