Since smoking is an out of control, unconscious act, the first thing you need to do is to become more conscious of what you are doing. You need to become more aware of your physical body. I know this is a lot to ask, but the rewards are well worth it. It is after all right there with you wherever you go, so you can always decide to give it the time of day by tuning into it.

Start immediately to notice your breathing. Notice your lungs and how they feel when you breathe. Experience how your body in reality feels about smoking. Take a moment and breathe right now. Let your awareness enter your body. Drop into it. Feel it. Feel the reality of your body. Each day as you breathe more and feel more, you will notice your pain. If you are lucky, you will feel both your physical and emotional pain. You will cough and cough and cough. Presto, you are now conscious of reality. WOW, what a trip!

Now you are face to face with the truth. You now know how much you are really hurting yourself. The trick is not to judge yourself but accept this reality.

I myself had a coughing spell in the shower one night in January back in the early 80s. I promised my body I would listen to what it was saying and what it wanted me to do. Gradually, over six months I became conscious of how my body experienced smoking. It did not like it, even though my conscious mind kept trying to make it acceptable. My body was hurting, like it or not. I gradually smoked less and less, as my body let me know how it felt about my smoking.

So you too can ask yourself, "Do you really want to hurt yourself this much?" Perhaps you will feel bad about hurting yourself. Hopefully you will recognize that you have a choice and that you do not have to hurt yourself. You could start to literally love your physical body rather than shutting out the information it is trying to communicate to you. Your body is trying to tell you exactly what you need to know to become healthy and vibrant.

If you decide to listen to yourself rather than hurt yourself, you will discover the underlying reasons that you smoke. Your real needs will become conscious and you can start to meet those needs rather than continuing to deny them. To learn more about your emotional needs and how to fulfill them read, study, listen to "Opening the Heart- Your Emotional Guide to Self Esteem."

Smokers usually judge their needs as bad, weak, sick, crazy. "Your Emotional Guide" offers concrete help in how to be more self accepting toward your real needs and real feelings. Smokers frequently need more nourishment.

Everyone's oral needs need to be met. Smoking is not the healthiest way to meet them. The smoke screen around you is literally keeping out love and all the other things necessary to actually meet your real needs, which are to feel safe and loved and accepted. As a smoker you are outside of yourself. You are not feeling what is going on inside of you. How much healthier it would be to think of yourself first and acknowledge what you need and want, rather than focusing on others and what they need and want.

In September, after that January coughing fit, I was going on vacation to the Outer Banks of my home state. I decided not to smoke on the trip. I didn't and instead got into the deliciousness of other pleasures: food; love making; swimming; and delicious movements of the physical body. It was entirely different from all the other times I had tired to quit smoking, there were many times I had quite smoking and then started to smoke again. It was an easy and pleasurable transition into greater awareness. I was in no way depriving myself of anything. I was loving my body and myself and directly meeting my oral and security needs.

I realized that I smoked to help myself be more aware of myself. I was conditioned to take care of others and their needs, not my own. So smoking was actually a way to focus on myself and what I needed. One of the first things I noticed was that I started to touch myself in comforting ways. Smoking, strange as it seems, was a way to comfort and attend to myself. Once I comforted myself directly, smoking was not nearly as good as the direct hit! This may not be the exact reason you smoke, but it doesn't matter. Just acknowledge what you do need and meet those needs directly in a healthy way. As you become conscious, you will notice why you have been smoking and it will make complete sense to you. Please let me know what happens! I love feedback and communication.

When you decide to quit smoking because you love your physical body and care about what you are doing to yourself, it is a joy to quit smoking. You will do it out of love. Love for you is the start of love for others. Love for others is the start of a worldwide energy flow of love for all of us. Before you know it, love is contagious and affects everything. Mother Earth feels better already, just imagining how she will be treated when we all decide to be conscious of our physical body and love it. Our body is our direct link to her and if we care for our body, we will care for Hers.