Meditation will help you to stop vaping for many different reasons. For starters, it heightens self-awareness so you are more aware when you go to vape and therefore more able to stop yourself. It also reduces nicotine withdrawal symptoms. And it gives you the motivation to live a healthier life.
Yes, just like you can use meditation to quit smoking, you can use it for vaping too.
Let me show you the best meditation to quit vaping.
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Guided Meditation for Vapers
Practice this meditation for twenty minutes per day. It will help you to overcome cravings so that you can stop your addiction.
More Tips For Quitting Vaping
1: Start meditating for twenty minutes a day
I recommend meditating for twenty minutes each day. Try to meditate at the same time each day, because this will create a habit that you stick to.
You’ll want to start with simple breathing exercises. Just sit with your eyes closed and observe your breath moving around your body. This will help you to relax and also make you less reactive to your cravings, which in turn will help you to quit.
2: Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness is the practice of focusing the mind on the present moment in a non-judgmental way.
Throughout the day, try to be mindful of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. Why? Well, when you try to quit you will get grumpy and you’ll experience all sorts of thoughts and feelings. If you are mindful, those thoughts and feelings wont bother you so much.
3: Breathe
When you’re trying to quit vaping, it’s important to stay relaxed. The more relaxed you are, the less you will feel the need to vape and the less the withdrawal symptoms will bother you. And of course, meditation can help with this.
To stay relaxed, practice mindful breathing (otherwise called “Anapanasati”). Spend some time sitting with your eyes closed and meditating on the movement of your breath through your body. This will make you feel relaxed and calm—precisely how you want to feel when you’re trying to quit vaping.
4: Pause
Have you ever noticed how you want to vape more when you are stressed? That’s why it’s good to take breaks every so often to stop yourself from getting stressed.
Inevitably there will be moments of stress in your day. That’s just life, right? So there is no sense in trying to avoid stress. Instead, you need to know how to handle it effectively. And one of the best ways to do that is to just Pause.
Every hour take one to five minutes to do absolutely nothing but sit with your eyes closed breathing. This will help you to keep your stress levels low.
5: Practice being grateful for your body
When you are grateful for your body, when you love your body, you will be more motivated not to destroy it by vaping.
Take ten minutes to meditate on your body and to observe your physical form. Notice how miraculous your body is. Appreciate it. The more you appreciate your body, the more you will want to protect it.
Benefits of Meditation
Although there is little scientific research on the link between meditation and vaping, there is a lot of research on how meditation helps with other addictions like smoking and drinking.
Meditation gives you a natural high that can replace vaping.
In 2002, the American Journal Of Psychology researched the effects of addictions on the brain. They found that substances stimulated the prefrontal cortex to produce a temporary high.
Okay. So what does that have to do with meditation?
Well, in 2005, neuroscientist Dr. Sara Lazar at Harvard found that meditation increases activity in the prefrontal cortex. In other words, you get a similar natural high from meditation that you do from vaping. So instead of vaping, just meditate.
Meditation produces alpha and theta brainwaves.
These brainwaves help you quit vaping and other addictions largely because they promote relaxation. according to The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.
Reduces the effects of cravings
The key to controlling cravings is not to try to suppress them (which is actually not helpful). Instead, mindfully observe the sensations of cravings and do not react to them.
Mindfulness will let you do precisely that. This simple practice trains the mind to observe the present moment in a non-reactive way, so that you can experience cravings without caving into them.
It provides a healthy dopamine fix.
One of the main reasons vaping is addictive is because it makes you brain release dopamine, a pleasure chemical that produces a high. [2].
When vaping, and soon after, you experience a dopamine hit. The longer you go without vaping, the lower your dopamine levels descend, which makes you experience withdrawal symptoms.
Meditation, however, provides a natural release of dopamine and promotes dopamine stability even when you are not meditating. This helps to replace the high from vaping, so you are less dependent on your vape.
Meditation reduces stress.
Most addictions are affected by stress [3]. The more stressed you feel, the more you are inclined to vape. When using meditation to quit vaping the key is to stop the stress. Of course, there are many ways to do this, but one of the most effective ways is through meditation.
By spending twenty minutes doing breathing meditations, you will relax the mind and reduce stress, and that will help you to stay away from vapes.
Paul Harrison BSc is a qualified meditation teacher who believes in genuine, authentic meditation. He has more than 15 years experience in teaching meditation and mindfulness both to individuals and to corporations and is the author of four books on meditation. He has been featured in Psychology Today, Breathe Magazine, Healthline, Psych Central and Lion’s Roar.
Paul studied meditation in beautiful Oxford, UK, and Hamilton Ontario Canada, and earned his degree at Staffordshire University.
Paul’s biggest inspirations include Thich Nhat Hanh, Jon Kabat Zinn, and Jack Kornfield.
“My goal is to provide the most authentic meditation sessions so you can harness the power of your own mind for personal transformation” – Paul Harrison