Stop Smoking

From Mike:
Breath is life. Smoking hooks up breathing to a death wish. When I quit smoking after 14 years of a pack and a half a day of unfiltered Camels, I said yes to living.

There were no smoking cessation medications or programs when I quit. The only option I had was to withdraw from nicotine cold turkey or...I chose the "or" and it happened to be marijuana. What a tradeoff. So now I had to get off marijuana AND cigarettes.

I turned to breathing techniques to help me quit smoking both of them. By rebalancing my breathing, I soon realized that breathing better not only gave me peace, it made me feel alive and energetic as well. A lot of the reason I smoked was to relax or energize. When experiencing the tremendous impact that breathing has on our psychological well-being in addition to our physical health. There it was, right under my nose all along!

Air is the primary food for our body's health. Without it, we can suffer permanent brain damage within a few minutes, or die within a few minutes more. Breathing is the most readily available source of vital energy we have. And once we learn how to maximize it, it's FREE.

In other cultures, the word for breath has been synonymous with life, spirit and soul. The connection between breathing and our physical and psychological state of well-being has been taught for many thousands of years in Eastern teachings. Recently, the connection has also been "discovered" by Western science. Breathing skills are being used with childbirth, pain control, stress management, high blood pressure, some world class athletics, and classical voice

Most smokers are not aware that they breathe poorly and the way they breathe can affect their feelings and their state of mind. If we are born without serious pre, or postnatal trauma most of our breathing is deep, rhythmic and effortless. As we grow, stress, cultural expectation or restrictions, anxieties and posture restrict our natural breathing pattern. We may have learned to hold in our bellies to look thinner or to breathe with only the top portion of our lungs when we are sitting. When we are surprised or stressed, we hold our breath. Poor breathing can cause chronic fatigue, constipation, headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and heart disease and uncontrollable cravings for almost anything from food to sexual relationships.

The stop smoking TV ads talk about smoking being the leading cause of impotence. Read on and learn how nicotine gives one the feeling of oxygen without the oxygen itself.

Natural breathing is made up of a relaxed and flowing inhalation, a relaxed and flowing exhalation and then an effortless pause before the next inhalation begins. The stomach and chest are relaxed, and they expand and contract easily as we fill and empty our lungs. As we inhale, air fills the bottom our lungs, expanding the abdomen and then when we need to take a larger deeper breath catching breath, expanding the rib cage and chest until our inhalation is complete. There is a pause as the body naturally rests and prepares for our next inhalation and then the whole process repeats itself.

By paying more attention to your breathing and allowing your body's natural breathing rhythm to occur, you can infuse more vitality into your life and increase the chances of successfully quitting smoking. Join the 50 million American smokers who have successfully quit smoking and affirmed living! Make natural breathing your new habit and enjoy a few hundred thousand breaths of fresh air!

You don't try to cure an alcoholic by giving them a small drink every day.

They need to completely eliminate the addictive substance and then you support them with nutrition, psychological reinforcement and proper breathing.

Still need more convincing?

You already know the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, smoking and emphysema, smoking and carcinogens.

This approach is a lot about smoking and breathing. Smoking addiction is beatable. Changing the way you breathe makes the entire quitting process easier.

You can end it simply and once and for all. Stop craving cigarettes and head the surgeon general's warning. Do it now.

BREATHING OVERVIEW

I have been studying the breath for twenty five years. When you compare smoking with breathing, you see many identical results.

What helps you:

• Deal with stress?
• Calm down when you were feeling tense?
• Peps you up when you are feeling lethargic?
• Helps you concentrate more effectively?
• Makes it easier to control unpleasant feelings?
• Produces a mild state of euphoria.?

ANSWER: NICOTINE

The good news is that you can get almost identical results from nicotine by just breathing in a special way. The question is HOW are you supposed to breathe and for how long? And does your body, chemistry, structure, tensions, postures, and unresolved emotions help or hinder a fully functional in and/or out breath?

Nicotine-free cigarettes are so unacceptable that researchers have sometimes been unable to use them for research purposes.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO KICK SMOKING WITH SOMETHING THAT JUST MAKES THEM BREATHE BETTER. THE ODDS FOR SUCCESS IMPROVE DRAMATICALLY WHEN YOU INTEGRATE CRAVING CONTROLS AND CLEANSING ELEMENTS TOGETHER WITH RELAXATION AND ATTITUDINAL APPROACHES.

SMOKING & BREATHING SIMILARITIES

• People smoke for POSITIVE BENEFITS, not because of fear of withdrawal: that comes much later. Nicotine temporarily improves brain chemistry by enhancing pleasure, decreasing anxiety, and stimulating an alert relaxation.

  Insight: If you want to feel energized you need to do a different breathing exercise than if you want to sleep or relax.

• Smoking also helps concentration, helps keep one from being bored, boring or confused (lighting a cig gives you time to collect your thoughts during conversation).

  So will specific ways of addressing how you breathe.

• Adrenaline and dopamine are influenced by nicotine. By selecting the desired nicotine dose, smokers can choose the state of mind or being most suited to an activity.

  So can the way you breathe. That is a key way actors create the mood and emotions they need for the parts they are playing. Their thoughts can guide their emotions that are expressed or limited by the way they breathe.

• Smoking helps maintain alertness for boring tasks.

  So will #130 Better Breathing Exercise #2. It produces a centered, energetic calm.

  Smoking helps you narrow your attention to the most important aspects of the task at hand.

  So will The Squeeze and Breathe.

• Smoking helps control anger and anxiety.

  That's because you have to breathe more deeply and in a specific way to inhale the smoke.

• Smoking helps deal with stress.

  So does optimal breathing.

• Smoking helps smokers deal with pain.

  So do our reflex development exercises

• Smoking gives smokers a sense of control.

  Breathing exercises have been used for thousands of years to develop mental focus.

Tom Ferguson, M.D.: "When you breathe in a lung-full of smoke the carbon monoxide passes immediately into your blood binding to the oxygen receptor sites and figuratively kicking the oxygen molecules out of your red blood cells. Hemoglobin that is bound to carbon monoxide is converted into carboxyhemoglobin, and is no longer able to transport oxygen."

Michael Grant White: Thus breathing in nicotine gives you the perception of having breathed in oxygen but without the actual oxygen.

Tom Ferguson, M.D.: If you continue to smoke for several weeks, your number of red cells begins to increase, as your body responds to chronic oxygen deprivation. This condition of an abnormally high concentration of red blood cells is called smoker's polycythemia*. Your blood clots more easily as well, increasing risk of heart attack or stroke.

Michael Grant White: Smokers bodies get less oxygen because carbon monoxide lowers their blood oxygen carrying capacity. But you get the perception of oxygen from the nicotine. The high concentration of carbon monoxide reduces the brain oxygen supply causing lethargy, confusion and muddled thinking. The nicotine brings many factors back into balance, synthetically. So does oxygen, naturally.

AFTER QUITTING

Those who quit reduce the risk of cancer almost immediately . Smoking will reduce functional lung volume by as much as 50% Framingham Study and weaken long term diaphragmatic strength Functional lung volume is different from real lung volume. Modern medicine seems to say that one cannot add lung volume.

I agree, I think. The way I see it and after studying the American College of Sports Medicine newest manual, it is not the volume that is increased but more lung tissue is engaged, even reactivated.

When the diaphragm increases its rise and the ribs increase their usual expansion, they allow more tissue to expand. Like blowing up a three-liter balloon in a one-liter bottle then getting a two -liter bottle that allows the balloon to expand more in the larger bottle. Cessation of smoking will arrest the deterioration, but you have to do specific exercises and techniques to increase the functional volume and regain what you lost.

EXERCISE

"The ones who participated in aerobic exercise were the ones most likely to quit." stated psychologist Olvide Pomerleau, director of Behavioral Medicine University of Michigan School of Medicine.

Regular physical activity induces biochemical changes within the body. Some of these changes are similar to those produced by nicotine. Exercise boosts catecholamines, producing increased mental alertness. And sustained exercise increases the brain's production of endorphins, which produce euphoria and a pleasant relaxed feeling.

Hundreds of letters came in telling how impossible cessation had been before beginning an exercise program. When smokers start exercising, they frequently find themselves quitting even without meaning to.

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WHEN WE BREATHE EASIER, WE FEEL MORE LIKE EXERCISING. And the exercising we do has more beneficial effects.

NUTRITION is included with BOSS Program.

SUPPORT. Those with social support were successful.

People whose breathing is blocked enough may be less likely to relate to or accept support from others. Abuse and trauma victims, including recent surgery recipients, the homeless and prison inmate populations are particularly vulnerable to this.

ACTIVITIES THAT ENCOURAGE SMOKING

• Drinking alcohol
• Driving a car or waiting for people ("doing time" included)
• Sitting in class
• Talking on the telephone
• Attending business meetings
• Not busy doing something with your hands
• Sitting at my desk at work
• After meals or with coffee
• In any relaxed situation such as watching TV or reading
• Socializing at parties.

You don't try to cure an alcoholic by giving them a small drink every day.

They need to completely eliminate the addictive substance and then you support them with nutrition, psychological reinforcement and proper breathing.

Both of those products try to wean you off slowly by providing small amounts of nicotine. Nicotine is more addictive than heroin, cocaine or alcohol.

STOP SMOKING

• Suppress your craving for smoking, AND Eating!
• Significant Smoking Reduction in just 48 hours!
• Your system becomes detoxified and Nicotine-Free!
• The Patch works only 22% of the time.
• The Gum Works only 6% of the time.
• If you smoke, you do not know how to breathe.

Go to our #700 Breathe Optimally & Stop Smoking™ Program

LONDON - Tobacco smoke is even more cancerous than previously thought, for both smokers and nonsmokers who breathe in the fumes, causing cancer in many more parts of the body than previously believed, an authoritative panel of experts has concluded.

The experts, convened by the U.N.'s cancer research agency, said Wednesday that they have determined that in types of cancer that they had already known are caused by smoking, the increased risk of tumors that smoking brings is even higher than previously noted. They are also now certain, for the first time, that second-hand smoke causes cancer.

The analysis for the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, is the first major examination of the accumulated research on tobacco smoke and cancer since 1986. A full report of the findings will be published later this year.

Several national governments and international bodies, as well as the World Health Organization, are considering, or are in the process of negotiating, new regulations on tobacco. WHO's cancer agency.

Millions of Americans smoke "low-tar," "mild," or "light" cigarettes, believing those cigarettes to be less harmful than other cigarettes. In a new monograph from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) titled Risks Associated with Smoking Cigarettes with Low Machine-Measured Yields of Tar and Nicotine, national scientific experts conclude that evidence does not indicate a benefit to public health from changes in cigarette design and manufacturing over the last 50 years.

Surveys have indicated that among the estimated 47 million adults who smoke in the United States, people who are most concerned about smoking risks or are most interested in quitting use brands labeled "light" or "ultra-light." Unfortunately, the monograph finds that choosing lower yield cigarettes is not likely to reduce tar intake and resulting disease risks. Furthermore, marketing and promotion of reduced yield products may delay genuine attempts to quit. There is no evidence that switching to light or ultra-light cigarettes actually assists smokers in quitting.

The original news release can be found at http://newscenter.cancer.gov/pressreleases/lowtar.html

Make sure you read the #710 YOU Are the Target. BIG Tobacco: Lies, Scams - Now the Truth book included in our #700 Breathe Optimally & Stop Smoking™ Program.