By Josh Singer, C.H.
Director, Michigan Hypnosis Clinic · 23+ years of experience
Yes, self-hypnosis can help you stop smoking, and in the next five minutes you will learn a technique that changes what a craving feels like on the very first try. It comes from my own practice, it works with your eyes open, and it takes about two minutes.
I will also tell you honestly what this technique can reach and what it leaves untouched, because those are two different jobs, and the smokers who confuse them waste months.
First, Understand What an Urge Actually Is
An urge is a thought accompanied by a feeling in your body. That sounds obvious and it changes everything, because feelings in the body follow rules, and anything that follows rules can be worked with.
Most smokers respond to an urge in one of two ways. They obey it, which rewards it and guarantees it returns stronger. Or they fight it, which works exactly like holding a ball underwater: possible for a while, exhausting the whole time, and the moment your grip slips, the ball explodes to the surface and you smoke twice as much.
Fighting an urge is a form of taking it seriously, and taking it seriously feeds it.
There is a third response: let the urge be there, feel it fully, and obey nothing. An urge is a wave through the body, and a wave that gets neither fought nor fed expires on its own, typically within ten minutes and usually much faster.
Simply knowing this changes your relationship to the next urge: it arrives with an expiration date stamped on it.
The technique below goes one step further. Instead of waiting out the wave, you reach into it and change it.
The Backwards Spin: Step by Step
This is a technique from my client work. It comes from the field of NLP and works on a simple discovery: every feeling in your body has a structure, a location, a direction, a speed, a temperature, even a spin, and when you change the structure, the feeling changes with it. Read the steps through once, then use them on your next urge.
1. Find it. Close your eyes if it helps, though this works fine with them open. Notice where the urge lives in your body. Chest, throat, stomach, hands. If you can't tell, guess: if you did know where it was, where would it be?
2. Map its movement. Feelings move. Notice which direction this one travels: up toward your head, or down through your feet? How far does it go?
3. Map its qualities. Is it heavy or light? Moving fast or slow? Warm or cool? Give it a color, whatever color comes first.
4. Find the spin. This is the key step. The feeling is spinning, either clockwise or counterclockwise. Gesture with your hand and try both directions; one will feel familiar, an "oh yeah, that's it" recognition. That's the spin of the urge.
5. Change everything. Now take the controls. If it's heavy, make it light. If it's fast, slow it way down; if slow, speed it up. If it's warm, turn on the AC and cool it like plunging your hand into a bucket of iced drinks; if cold, make it a warm bath. Change the color to one you like much better.
6. Reverse the spin. Spin the feeling in the opposite direction, and spin it fast. Hold it spinning backward, in its new color. Add some sparkles to it. Yes, sparkles. Now notice how you feel.
Most people start laughing somewhere around step six, because the urge they were bracing against has turned into something ridiculous and weightless spinning backward in a color they enjoy. That laughter is the sound of a feeling losing its authority.
That technique is a small taste of how I work. The full method changes the belief that creates the urges in the first place. It starts with a free phone call.
Hear From People Who Quit Smoking With Hypnosis
Why a Two-Minute Eyes-Open Technique Counts as Hypnosis
Fair question, and it goes to the heart of how my practice differs from most.
What you just did was change a subconscious process using structured language and imagination, while fully awake. That discipline is called conversational hypnosis, a close cousin of the eyes-closed hypnosis everyone pictures.
All of it is hypnosis: hypnosis is reaching the subconscious layer where feelings and beliefs actually operate, and the doorway can be a deep eyes-closed trance or a precisely aimed two-minute conversation. The backwards spin is conversational hypnosis in miniature, and you just ran it on yourself.
This matters for a practical reason. Most hypnotists put you in a chair, have you close your eyes, and read a script at you. In my practice, the main work happens awake, in conversation, where I can see what lands and adjust in real time.
And while we work, I teach you the mechanics of what we're doing, the way this article just taught you the spin, so you walk out owning the tools instead of renting them from me. My goal is your independence.
What This Technique Reaches, and What It Leaves Standing
The backwards spin is urge management of the highest order. Use it and the wave of any given craving collapses in minutes. That is a genuinely useful skill, and for some smokers it is the difference between a rough first week and a smooth one.
Here is what it leaves untouched: the factory that manufactures the urges. Urges come from a belief, the quiet subconscious verdict that a cigarette is basically okay, still an option, still yours. In my practice the whole subject compresses to one line: it's not about addiction, it's all about belief. As long as that belief stands, the factory keeps shipping urges, and you keep spinning them. Manageable, and endless.
The deeper work changes the verdict itself, so the factory closes.
That work is the perception shift described in Quit Smoking Hypnosis: How It Ends the Relationship for Good, and it is what my two-session program does: the belief changes while we talk, you feel it change in your body, and the eyes-closed hypnosis at the end anchors a decision you have already made. You can read exactly what a session looks like before booking anything.
Use Both, in the Right Order
Come in for the belief work, keep the backwards spin as your field tool afterward. Clients who have both describe the same arc: in the first days a stray urge surfaces, they spin it flat in ninety seconds, and within a couple of weeks they notice the urges have simply stopped arriving. The factory is closed.
What remains is the most peaceful word in this whole subject: done.
Program details and lifetime support options are on the quit smoking hypnosis page.
Ready to see cigarettes differently?
Why Choose Michigan Hypnosis Clinic?
- 23+ years of clinical hypnotherapy experience helping clients address nicotine dependence, unwanted habits, and behavioral challenges.
- Personalized smoking cessation programs tailored to your smoking history, triggers, motivations, and long-term goals.
- Behavioral change-focused hypnosis designed to address the subconscious patterns and conditioned responses behind smoking.
- Serving clients across Novi, Northville, Brighton, Howell, Farmington Hills, Bloomfield Hills, and the greater Detroit metro area.
Here’s what to do next:
This process begins with you.