A new study shows that visual imagery helps smokers who want to give up.Guided imagery has already been proven to help cancer patients and after surgery. Now a team of nursing researchers at The University of Akron, Ohio, reveals that visual imagery can help people quit smoking.

They worked with 71 smokers, assigning some to an intervention group, others to a control group. The intervention group was taught guided imagery which they practised daily with the aid of an audio tape. Twenty four months on, the quit rate in the intervention group was 26 per cent and in the control group it was only 12 per cent. Although 26 per cent may seem low, it's quite good as far as smoking cessation goes. Maybe guided imagery can be even better if given in combination with other forms of smoking cessation therapy.

Source
Journal of Nursing Scholarship 20th December 2005