bear gebhardt

Author's posts

The Voyeur’s Guide to Quitting Smoking

7 Direct Observations that Lead to Quitting Smoking        “Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe             “Opportunities are often things you haven’t noticed the first time around.”—–Catherine Deneuve     “You can observe a lot just by watching.”— Yogi Berra             Might it be possible to …

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“How to Quit Smoking” = A Very Crummy Question!

“Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers.”—Pierre Marc-Caston If you have been asking, “how can I quit smoking ?” for many years, and you are still smoking, that may suggest that the question itself is to blame. That question apparently has no power; it’s keeping you going around in circles.            In his …

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How Our Heart Condition Affects the World

A sad, cranky, unkempt, fifty-something woman came to see me  as her stop smoking coach off and on over several years. She came more for the chocolates I kept on my desk, I suspected, and the contacts I had in local social services than for any wisdom I might inadvertently bestow regarding her addiction. So it …

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The Happiness Experiment

“People most often change their personal habits not because of health concerns or social pressure but rather because they are feeling good about themselves and want to feel still better.”  (Emphasis added.)       This was the conclusion from a Gallop Poll reported in American Health Magazine. The obvious implication is that people most often find …

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Nicotine Addiction Is a Lie!

       In my experience, the whole stop smoking industry, although with very good intentions by mostly very good people,  is doing a very louzy job helping people quit smoking, primarily because they (we) have been told that nicotine addiction is the problem. But nicotine is NOT the problem. How can we know? Because only …

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Quitting Smoking and Phantom Pain

     Was reading Donna Eden’s wonderful book, Energy Medicine, — Balancing Your Body’s Energies for Optimal Health, Joy and Vitality—and came across her discussiu9on of phantom pain. Most everybody’s familiar with the phenomenon: an amputee who has an “itchy” leg (that isn’t there), or the arm that is no longer there that nevertheless still …

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How to Bring Heaven to Earth

This is a little thought-experiment that just might change your life.

Everything We Think We Know About Addiction Is Wrong

A link to a very powerful short video on addiction

Freedom from “I Need A Smoke”

The thought, “I need a smoke,” is not as powerful as we tend to make it.

Quitting Smoking is Not the Goal

Smoking is an addiction of attention. To get free of smoking, we learn to master our attention.

WARNING: About E-Mail Coaching

Regardless of what your coach says, YOU are the “star,” out on the field. Good coach, bad coach, you can still win this game.

Confessions of Love from a Stop Smoking Coach

You’re going to love your mom, whether she smokes or doesn’t smoke. So relax. Get over it. It’s a great planet we’ve come to!

How to Stop Smoking: With or Without Chantix, Nicotine Patches, Hypnosis or Duct Tape

The tips, articles, essays, jokes, guffaws, double-dare ya wisdoms and insights that you will find on these pages come from thirty years of working with the smoking conundrum (smoking both tobacco and/or weed, marijuana.) The main tip: Relax, take a deep breath, let’s find a way to make this quitting biz a lot more fun, …

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How to Quit Smoking in 5 Easy Seconds with the Quick Love Practice (Prayer)

Step 1: Just be your ordinary self. Step 2: There is no step 2. So just repeat step one. Disciple: What is enlightenment? Zen Master Huang Po: “Your ordinary mind.” “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God [love, peace, beauty] he created them; male and female he created them.”  Genesis …

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Dying for a Quit Date

“I probably won’t quit until the day I die,” one old Marine guy grunted during one of our classes. We were talking about setting quit dates. The old guy had tried to quit a “hundred times,” he said, and was now trying it again. He was new to the class. “How do you know you’re …

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Your Smoking = Your Privacy?

One of the quirky challenges of helping people get free of the smoking habit is the intense privacy of this habit.  On occasion, at social gatherings, I’ve experienced a smoker’s immediate withdrawal and defensiveness if I’m introduced as a stop smoking coach, as if I had been introduced as a pick-pocket or tax collector.  My …

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I want to quit…don’t want to quit..want to quit…

In the “quitting season,” it’s useful to recognize that the mental and emotional energy for quitting–indeed, even interest in quitting–comes and goes, waxes and wanes. One day you’ll be very excited, passionate, determined to get the job done, to be free, sooner rather than later. The next day, or even the next hour, the interest, …

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How to Quit Smoking: The Basic Physics 101

If you are addicted to smoking you have what might be called a “charge,” like an electrical energy charge, infusing and surrounding your smoking identity. As with any electrical charge, the” smoking identity charge” maintains its presence through a continual balance of both positive and negative qualities, i.e., “I want a smoke, I don’t want …

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One Minute Quit Smoking

A recent essay in The New York Times told about a fellow’s journey to freedom from a two-pack a day smoking habit. His friend had told him about a stop smoking program where he learned to “count to 60” whenever he wanted to have a smoke. “That’s how long it takes for the craving to …

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How to Short Circuit the Smoking Habit

When we want to quit smoking, at root we’re hoping for a little more “well-being.” This is natural. This same hope for well-being rises up in all other areas of our lives. Some of us want to be movie stars, some of us would just like a job at the post office. We assume one …

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How to Stop Smoking in 15 Easy Years

Yay, it’s here! After threatening to write this book for many decades, How to Stop Smoking in 15 Easy Years— A Slacker’s Guide to Final Quitting arrived on my doorstep this week. Twenty copies! I’m tickled with this book. In all humility, I know it’s different, and easier and fresher and funner than any other …

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How to Quit Smoking: Three Secrets from a Stop Smoking Coach

Here’s secret number one: How you quit smoking doesn’t make a lot of difference and actually isn’t that important. Most smokers want to believe that there must be some specific, particular official way to quit, but there isn’t. Smokers have quit in every way imaginable. Smokers have quit by going cold turkey and they’ve quit …

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The Easiest Way to Quit Smoking

Okay folks, I’ve been away for a while— doing my day job (as a stop smoking coach!) I’m happy to report that I’ve recently cut back my hours there so I can spend more time here. Look for more regular, and more radical approaches to stepping away from the smokes. Here’s a warm-up: “Just Be …

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Addiction and Non-Duality: How and Why to Space Out

Here’s Why to Space Out: • Addiction is always an addiction of attention. • Freedom is a freedom of attention. • Attention is love. • Attention in its natural state is space-like. (Unbounded love.) • Attention short-circuited, is planet like. (bounded love) • Our education, our culture, our physical experience all lead toward short-circuiting of …

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The Secret for Freedom from Cravings

Is it possible that the Ahh of that first puff might be a Portal to Freedom? Let’s say you’ve been wanting to quit, and you’ve actually been doing pretty good. But now, doggone it, the craving is so strong that you’re really tempted, and in fact, you’re going to have a smoke. You tell yourself …

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