Years ago, during my second application of Walter’s Special Technique, I was working at Tim Horton’s and talking with coworkers about how the technique works. (Shortly after, I gave up smoking abruptly on the day I decided to, and it was something like 8 months before a combination of alcohol, social-anxiety and relationship-troubles put me into a position where it was easy to rationalize a cigarette or two, and before I knew it I had a pack of smokes in my pocket…)
Anyway, I was talking to a woman who sort of wanted to quit, but wasn’t as motivated as I was. She told me that she understood the validity of how the technique worked, but happened not to agree with a lot of the little ‘factoids’ I had written on my cards. Her apprehension was well-founded – I don’t think a technique like this could work if the one doesn’t believe the affirmations are true statements. I assured her that, in applying the technique, she’d be making her own list, of her own reasons.
The technique is as standardized for anyone to use as it can be. This is based on the similarities of the functioning of everyone’s brains – the particular subconscious associations with cigarettes as a pleasurable habit can be quite different for everyone, and the subliminal affirmations required to counter-act these strong associations must therefore be quite different as well.
I spoke with another co-worker at Timmie’s as well, something about the effects that smoking has on the health of one’s skin, and she replied that smoking damages the lungs, and doesn’t do a great deal of damage to other organs/systems in the body. Now, obviously she was wrong in making so conclusive a claim, but if she’d been applying the technique, her subconscious mind might very well not have responded to something as specific as a statement about the effects of smoking on the central nervous system, just for example…
I believe that smoking impairs brain-function. Without, as I’ve said, looking around online or elsewhere for research-data describing what some of the constituents of tobacco-smoke does in the brain, I can say from experience that my brain isn’t functioning as well as it should while smoking a cigarette, or for some time afterwards.
A common experience reported by heavy smokers is a high frequency of headaches. Everyone who’s smoked cigarettes before knows that they can cause dizziness, and often accompanying nausea.
For me, simply thinking about it a little seems to confirm the fact – Smoking Impairs Brain-Function. There’s benzene and formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide in tobacco-smoke, (at least if all the anti-smoking campaigns and their scare-tactic claims can be believed, and why should they be lying?) It’s totally unreasonable to say that these substances should be completely inert if they find their way to the brain, and one would have to have a very poor understanding of how the body works indeed in order to make the claim that these substances don’t end up in the brain when people smoke cigarettes…
Take, for example, my morning today:
I woke up a little late, (as usual), and put some coffee on. You know those coffee-makers that have the little spring-loaded drip-hole covering, allowing you to pour yourself a cup before it’s all done brewing? Well we’ve got a fairly cheap one of those here… I neglected to secure the plastic lid, resulting in the removable basket not being pushed down enough for the carafe underneath to open that little drip-hole… Some minutes later, the unusual sounds of it had me turning the thing off, pressing down that lid and waiting for the pool of grinds-filled coffee to drip down enough to throw out the wasted coffee, cleaning the loose grinds out of the whole machine, and starting anew – this time being careful to make sure it was all in order before turning it on.
The result was that I didn’t have my morning cigarette until some 40-minutes after waking up. A small achievement, I know, but that’s not the point I’m driving at.
I’ve found in the past that smoking a cigarette immediately upon waking causes a much more unpleasant head-rush than when I wait awhile until I’m more fully awake – but the cigarette I had this morning caused a kind of dizzy head-fuzziness which more than outweighed any enjoyment of smoking. As I’ve said before, I’ve been progressing enough with this technique that my continued smoking is more out of simple habit than from the compulsive need that a tobacco-addict normally experiences. But I wonder at what’s changing (either in my physiology, my psychology, or both), to make my immediate experience of smoking so different than usual…
Is it just that I’m becoming more consciously aware of particular sensations and effects that have actually been happening all along without my knowing it? Or, as I’m more and more challenging and overcoming my subconscious urges to ‘get a fix’ with tobacco, am I actually making myself more sensitive to its effects on my body?
I’m inclined to think that it’s more my becoming more consciously aware of what smoking is doing to my body every time I have a cigarette. I went through this stage both times before – pretty soon now I’ll feel little else but disgust every time I inhale, and that’s the point when simply smoking no more will feel as natural as lighting up did only two months ago.
The impairment of brain-function is, (I strongly suspect), ordinarily unperceived, or at least not consciously associated with smoking. As the technique works more and more, as my subconscious conviction that smoking cigarettes provides a great deal more problems than apparent benefits, I believe I’m simply in an increasingly better position to observe the immediate effects on my body – a valuable support to my growing attitude-change to cigarettes!
But as I’ve said, this is a very personally customized technique – my experiences with it working for me might be altogether different for others. When my brother quit smoking, years ago, (and subsequently started up again, but then quit again - smoke-free for well over a year now), he told me that he’d just been having his morning smoke in the bathroom, and in a flash found himself disgusted with the filthy habit, tossed his unfinished butt into the toilet, and didn’t smoke again for months. And that’s the sort of effect Walter’s Special Technique deliberately causes – one constantly reminds oneself on a subconscious level that there’s really no benefit to be had by smoking cigarettes, until one’s sub-consciousness finally exerts great enough influence on one’s conscious awareness that the determination not to smoke another cigarette is an easy one to follow-through on.
 |
| Jram23 |
No comments:
Post a Comment