Terri Cooper isn’t actually in the army but when you show up for her weekend smoking-cessation boot camps, you can call her ‘sergeant.’
She is a certified clinical hypnotherapist and a registered social worker and licensed master neuro linguistic programmer. With offices based out of St. Albert and Edmonton, she has seen hundreds of people who are trying to quit the tobacco habit but just haven’t been able to accomplish it by themselves. When they approach her, she says, often they are just looking for someone who can snap their fingers like a wizard and magically make them into non-smokers.
Cooper says that this is the greatest misconception about hypnosis: it’s not a quick fix. There is no swinging watch on a pendulum chain. You don’t fall asleep under the power of her suggestion. Instead she prefers to call it systematic conditioning.
“There will be a combination of people’s own private self-discovery even though it’s a group format where they will be asked some questions and they can do some writing,” she began. She has scheduled a series of five extended hypnosis sessions called the Quit Smoking Weekend Bootcamps.
“There will be several mini hypnosis sessions.”
In truth, she will be using several different psychological models to help people get free of cigarettes.
“There’s going to be a progression of a little bit of regression work — and regression isn’t about going back to a past life,” she laughed. “I mean regression going back to when you started smoking. When you started smoking you actually had to learn to smoke. This is all about relearning to move into being smoke free.”
Cooper says she understands what it takes to quit because she has been there herself. She calls smoking the most demanding and challenging habit to break but she quit because of all the health problems that it causes. She emphasized that you really have to want to stop in order for it to work.
“Some people consider their cigarette their best friend. It’s a very important part of their life. To suddenly not have that aspect in your life really leaves people feeling pretty barren, pretty hopeless … because it’s their crutch.
“That’s why people need to prepare to quit smoking. They need to get themselves ready for their start day. I like to call it their start day because it really is the start of a new life where you’re healthier and you’re more empowered and you’re ready for the next phase of your life.”
Cooper said her sessions would give people the tools that they can use on their own to become their own best hypnotherapist.
Each of the Quit Smoking Weekend Bootcamp sessions runs for a full Saturday and Sunday starting in late November. To learn more about the program or to sign up, please call Hypnosis for Life at 780-452-2055 or visit www.hypnosis-for-life.com.
