igarette smoking provides an ideal gateway behaviour for drug taking (nicotene) without the apparent obvious consequences. It has all the necessary ingredients to both focus the smoker on their breath (because you can’t smoke without firstly breathing) and yet keeps you distracted from the usually ‘busy’ doing mind. This is why in times of intense stress or dealing with boredom, after work/workout, when having a drink, coping with shock or dealing with a traumatic life threatening event, for smokers an automatic response can be to ‘light up’.
Yet every reader knows about or through advertising has been exposed to the negative health consequences of smoking.
MMP knows the negative effects of something is not in itself a powerful enough deterrant to sustainably change behaviour.
Maybe smoking in a time of crisis does in fact appear to calm or quiten an individual’s mind down, perhaps changing it psychologically enabling an increased ability to cope. Following on from the importance of the breath could it be an almost unconscious acknowledgement of the fact that there is breath awareness? Breath awareness in disguise.
While the breath is contaminated with smoke, the act of smoking helps individuals to cope, almost silently meditating on the breath. For all former smokers of which the founder of MMP is one there was quite some satisfaction in breathing out the smoke, as well as lighting up, then breathing in the first breath and general awareness centered on the act of breathing. Although you cannot smoke if you don’t have some awareness of smoking, you can certainly smoke with little awareness of breathing.
It’s doing a behaviour without being aware that becomes imprinted causing brain changes (Schwartz and Begley, 2002) where autopilot lays the foundations for mindlessness. This enables dependent behaviours to continually get the oxygen they need to grow. And they do. We all do it sometimes. Breathing without awareness of breathing, taking drugs (alcohol, caffeine, medications) without awareness of taking drugs, drinking without awareness of drinking, smoking without awareness of smoking. In fact dependent behaviours can only thrive through a degree of low awareness, if you had high awareness you both wouldn’t do it as much and being ‘dependent’ on anything would be significantly reduced.
Mind Management Psychology places additional emphasis on slowing down, gaining awareness on what you’re actually doing for a part of each day. Through a daily short practice the likliehood of maintaining ‘smoking cessation’ is improved. You learn how to ‘smoke the breath’ instead! Even chain smoke it! As a result you begin to ‘train’ your mind giving you, once again, all the benefits.
Yet every reader knows about or through advertising has been exposed to the negative health consequences of smoking.
MMP knows the negative effects of something is not in itself a powerful enough deterrant to sustainably change behaviour.
Maybe smoking in a time of crisis does in fact appear to calm or quiten an individual’s mind down, perhaps changing it psychologically enabling an increased ability to cope. Following on from the importance of the breath could it be an almost unconscious acknowledgement of the fact that there is breath awareness? Breath awareness in disguise.
While the breath is contaminated with smoke, the act of smoking helps individuals to cope, almost silently meditating on the breath. For all former smokers of which the founder of MMP is one there was quite some satisfaction in breathing out the smoke, as well as lighting up, then breathing in the first breath and general awareness centered on the act of breathing. Although you cannot smoke if you don’t have some awareness of smoking, you can certainly smoke with little awareness of breathing.
It’s doing a behaviour without being aware that becomes imprinted causing brain changes (Schwartz and Begley, 2002) where autopilot lays the foundations for mindlessness. This enables dependent behaviours to continually get the oxygen they need to grow. And they do. We all do it sometimes. Breathing without awareness of breathing, taking drugs (alcohol, caffeine, medications) without awareness of taking drugs, drinking without awareness of drinking, smoking without awareness of smoking. In fact dependent behaviours can only thrive through a degree of low awareness, if you had high awareness you both wouldn’t do it as much and being ‘dependent’ on anything would be significantly reduced.
Mind Management Psychology places additional emphasis on slowing down, gaining awareness on what you’re actually doing for a part of each day. Through a daily short practice the likliehood of maintaining ‘smoking cessation’ is improved. You learn how to ‘smoke the breath’ instead! Even chain smoke it! As a result you begin to ‘train’ your mind giving you, once again, all the benefits.