If you have taken the long journey through this entire Breath Series, then you have understood by now that smoking is simply a stupid habit. Think about it. Look at this image
(left). It is my attempt to show you how the lungs of a smoker probably look. I remember when I was little and my father showed me a photograph of a smoker's lungs (after death). He told me to never smoke. I didn't listen to him, of course. It took a while for me to wake up.
Even if you are a smoker, you have to admit this is quite ugly to look at. This is how your lungs look if you smoke (even worse in reality). Cigarettes are an investment without anything in return, and they're an expensive one at that! Everyone who smokes stinks, and they don't even know it. Everyone who lives with a smoker has to deal with the smell in their own clothes, not to mention all around them. Smoking is a disgusting, expensive, dirty, and proven unhealthy habit. No one in their right mind could ever say that smoking is good for your health.
If someone asked you to run into a burning building and take a deep breath to get as much smoke out of it as possible, would you do it? I doubt it. And if they told you the smoke in the building was filled with poison, would you run in then? Smoking is all about inhaling the smoke of a chemically-treated plant that is on fire in your hand. Each time you take a puff, look at your hand and the fact that you are holding something that is on fire. Get that image in your mind at all times. This is good for starters:
to become conscious of what you are doing with your own body and mind.
It no longer holds true to say something as silly as “It's not that bad.” It is my hope that instead, once you begin to discover how your breath is the reason you live, your lifestyle habits will change and you will begin to share what you have learned with everyone else you know. The more people are aware of breath, the more they are also aware of protecting the atmosphere around the earth—our bubble of protection. If everything we do affects that bubble, then we should act accordingly. If not for ourselves, for future generations.
As far as I'm concerned, and I am tough about it ... anyone who smokes is contributing to the ill health of their families, colleagues and close friends. It's a really selfish thing to do, and self-destructive. Tell me one good thing about it ... other than you
think it calms you down.
Try to imagine how all the smoke from the cigarettes everyone puffs on affects our protective bubble. Not a pretty picture. There are many causes for pollution—and smoking is not the biggest—but it is one of the ingredients of the dirty chemical air that we breathe, daily. And there is only one way to end it. Quit smoking! If their are no smoking consumers, there are no smoking products either. Some facts that are not positive, but still need to be known:
(http://www.hpb.gov.sg/hpb/default.asp?pg_id=865&aid=105)
ETS...
Scientists call this type of air pollution “Environmental Tobacco Smoke” (or ETS for short). But you and I know it better as the smoke from other people's cigarettes.
There is actually a name for it. If you're interested, go to this site to learn more. We need to stop people from smoking at outside restaurants, too. Now non-smokers are delegated to sit indoors to get away from the yucky smells and pollution. It's not fair to the children, the earth, or to one another.
The bottom line is: If you can't control what you do to yourself, who will? The link above also contains this information: “
Why is ETS dangerous? Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 different chemicals, of which at least 400 are poisonous to man and about 40 can cause cancer.” Do you really WANT cancer? If you do, continue smoking, but think about everyone else around you. They didn't ask to get cancer, and you could give it to them, your loved ones. Is that what you want?
So, here we go with links to some of the most important techniques in this Breath Series that are specifically helpful to smokers. If you practice all of these breathing techniques, you will begin to be sickened by your own habit of smoking.
It might have looked glamorous in the good old days, when nobody knew how deadly it was. Smoking is no longer glamorous. Smoking is ridiculous, and anyone who smokes in this day and age just seems stupid or totally out of control with their own nasty habits. It is not unusual to find that smokers are the very same people who don't really care about their environment either. Smoking seems to go hand-in-hand with alcohol, another addictive and unhealthy habit. So, here are the breathing techniques you need to learn if you really want to quit smoking. Sorry to be so tough about this, but sometimes the truth is hard to take.
BREATH TECHNIQUES TO HELP YOU QUIT SMOKING
If you really practice all of these (print the pages out to make it easier), you will quit smoking. I have used these techniques with hundreds of people and they all quit suddenly one day, without any anxiety or withdrawal symptoms. It was easy. You don't have to spend a lot of money on drugs, hypnosis, patches...whatever. This will do it, if you practice every day. All you have to do is USE your HEAD and visualize that you have already quit the nasty habit without any bad feelings.
If you follow all of the breath techniques that are provided in this series, I hope that you will find it much easier to quit. Not only because it is not healthy for you, but because it is money wasted on unnecessary self-indulgence. Please don't say you care about millions of babies and children starving and losing their parents to war and disease .. while you pay a lot of money to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, or take drugs. With all the money people spend for these three items, we could feed the world! It has nothing to do with religious so-called values either. Consciousness is a powerful thing! It has to do with reality. Give it up. Donate the money to some organization you trust.
