When John Ackroyd’s wife Valerie stopped smoking after a hypnotherapy session, he was intrigued.

“It worked for her straight away,” he recalls. “One morning she got up, and whereas usually she would make a pot of tea and have a cigarette, this time she made the tea but didn’t smoke.

“And when she came home from work she didn’t have one either. I didn’t know she had been to a hypnotherapist, then she told me about it.”

John was surprised but, as a heavy smoker himself, he remained sceptical. “I didn’t think it would work for me, although I did want to stop, particularly as Valerie had done. I didn’t like the idea of carrying on smoking after she had given up.”

A smoker for 40 years, it was not a big decision. “I started when I was 13,” says John, 53, of Tyersal. “I knocked about with a group of lads and there was a lot of peer pressure. During school dinner time we would all go to a shed to have a smoke.”

The textile worker had thought about giving up his 40-a-day habit many times, trying a range of methods including patches, tablets and gum.

“I smoked cigarettes for ten years, then went on to roll-ups as they were stronger.”

John had a major rethink after Valerie began to suffer ill-health. “She said she would give up, and did, but I didn’t. I didn’t want her breathing in smoke, and it got to the stage where I would stand outside the back door to have a cigarette.

“And we have nine grandchildren, and I didn’t want them to be around cigarettes.”

Two years passed before, in January, he finally made an appointment with Bingley-based hypnotherapist Patricia Jackson.

“I’ve no idea how she did it – I sat in the chair, I was not asleep, but I couldn’t open my eyes and I couldn’t move,” he recalls. “Patricia talked to me about all sorts of things – life in general. I felt completely at ease.”

After a session lasting an hour and 40 minutes, John’s life changed – he stopped smoking. The test came when John’s father Albert died unexpectedly. “It was so stressful, yet it didn’t cross my mind to have a cigarette. My brothers couldn’t believe it.”

He is thrilled, so is Valerie. “Aside from the money it is saving us, we lead a better quality of life. I feel different, much healthier.”

Being determined, he adds, helped him. “You must really want to stop, that is important.”

Says Patricia: “I ask people to imagine two roads – one long and one short. With the first I ask them to visualise a long, happy life as a non-smoker, being healthier and wealthier. They put themselves in the body of a non-smoker, being able to breathe more easily and having more money in their pocket.

“We work out how much they save in six months, a year, and ten years – it is thousands of pounds. I ask them to imagine what they could buy with that amount and visualise it. It could be a car, and if they visualise themselves in it, they can see the rewards of not smoking.”

With the short route, they imagine themselves possibly two years down the road, struggling for breath in a hospital bed, with their family around them. They know this could be the end, but the doctor tells them they can do something to save their life.”

The session is relaxing. “It is very gently done, it is like dreaming – I am re-educating their sub-conscious mind to understand the dangers of smoking, that is why I use the image of the hospital bed. Whatever you tell the sub-conscious mind in hypnosis, it believes – it is like a big sponge.”

Patricia stresses that the client has to want to stop. “That is vital,” she says. “You must really want to do it.”

She adds: “The problem with many people is that they started smoking as teenagers, and their subconscious mind is programmed to think the habit is grown-up and sophisticated. It is not because they like the taste, but because they see smoking as social. Not long ago it was acceptable, smokers were in the majority, now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

“Younger people don’t really take on board the possible implications of smoking, because to them the idea of dying is something associated with the distant future.”

For more information and fees call Patricia on (01274) 510773, e-mail hypnotherapyhelps@nevisinternet.com or visit hypnotherapyhelps.org