Freddy Jacquin’s clinic isn’t the first place you’d expect a world revolution to start. Tucked in the basement of his terraced Tunbridge Wells home, there isn’t even a plaque to advertise his trade to passers-by. Even once you step into the calm yellow room with its cream armchair and sofa, it hardly feels as though you’ve entered the nucleus of a new development that has the potential to change the lives of millions of people. But Jacquin, 54, is convinced he has the ability and the tool to free people around the world from their current problems, be they smoking, over-eating, phobias, pain or lack of motivation.

A hypnotherapist for more than 10 years, Jacquin says he has helped more than 25,000 people quit smoking and thousands of others lose weight and deal with other issues. But, with what claims to be the first website in the world to offer instant hypnosis online, he hopes to help hundreds of thousands more.

The idea came out of the group sessions he runs around the country for up to 200 people at a time. “To show people how powerful their mind is and how suggestible they can be I developed a quick induction of persuading them their hands were stuck together, but it was so powerful I was having to bring people out of that state. Most inductions are long and involve the words ‘sleep’ and ‘relaxation’, but it occurred to me that I’d developed a really rapid, visual induction that would work online with video-streaming. Other hypnosis websites exist, but you’ve got to send off for a CD or wait for the download. With mine you can do the session in 15 minutes during your lunch break and never crave a cigarette again. It’s easy. It’s painless.”

If you’ve struggled and failed to give up cigarettes or yo-yo dieted for decades, this may sound too good to be true. Gay Sutherland, a consultant clinical psychologist who runs an NHS smoking cessation clinic at the Maudsley Hospital in London, certainly thinks so.

“There are some smokers who - for reasons we don’t understand - manage to give up with great ease and wonder why they didn’t try before. But in a country like England, where there is a lot of information about the risks of smoking, most smokers have already tried to quit and failed. They are very unlikely to give up totally painlessly. They are likely to go through a range of symptoms, from feeling depressed or anxious to experiencing sleeping problems and loss of concentration, for several weeks.”

Jacquin insists it’s easy and painless to get people to quit because smoking isn’t really addictive. He gives convincing arguments: that smokers can go through the night without waking for a fag; they tend to smoke the same amount for years and don’t keep having to increase their intake; and that, unlike other addicts, they limit their habit to what they can afford or what is socially acceptable. But it’s an argument that is at direct odds with the established medical view, summarised by the Royal College of Physicians report Nicotine Addiction in Britain (2000) which concluded: “Tobacco dependence is a serious form of drug addiction which, on the whole, is second to no other.”

But as well as standing firm by his theories of tobacco dependence, Jacquin argues that smokers trying to quit by going cold turkey or using conventional treatments aren’t harnessing the power of their unconscious minds. “Our conscious mind is very limited - it can only manage to think of a few things at once - but our unconscious mind is unlimited. My job is to get the conscious mind with all its limitations out of the way and let the unconscious mind come to the fore and say ‘What do you want me to do?’. I just feed back to the unconscious mind in a positive way what the person wants to do - you will quit smoking, you will lose weight - and the unconscious mind takes that on board. When the conscious mind comes back the unconscious mind is working towards that goal and the need to comfort eat or smoke is gone.”

All this is done by surrendering to the hypnosis, or trance as Jacquin prefers to call it. It’s time to go online.

I quit my 30-a-day habit 14 years ago, so I opt instead for the “Get Motivated Now!” session. In the introductory video Jacquin tells me that I must have a compelling goal to pursue, something that’s going to “turn me on and get my juices flowing”. That’s easy: I’m suffering writer’s block with a children’s novel that I’m close to finishing. My juices suitably flowing, I click to proceed to the hypnotherapy session proper.

Before Jacquin became a hypnotherapist, he used to sell coffee machines, and coached boxing and football in his spare time. There’s more than a hint of both the ex-salesman and former boxer as he prepares me to go into a trance.

As he tells me to imagine my hands are magnetised and feel them drawing closer together, I’m convinced they won’t, and am bemused to find not only that they do but that my eyes close on cue as well. As he invites my unconscious mind to search through all my resources and skills and instructs my limiting thoughts to disappear “right here, right now”, I’m surprised to find I’m still aware of the noise of people rattling in the kitchen below. When Jacquin suggests it’s time for my hands to come unstuck I emerge strangely spaced out, unsure of quite what I’ve been through or if it’s worked.

The next morning I wake at 5.30am and write a chapter of my book. I am ecstatic! But will my experience translate to the more difficult arena of addiction?

Amanda Sandford, the research manager for Action on Smoking and Health, says there is little objective evidence one way or the other for complementary therapies. “There is such a huge range on offer that it is difficult to subject them to random trials. But there is anecdotal evidence that they do work for some people. But part of it may just be that in seeking help you are making a commitment to quitting.”

Sutherland is more dismissive: “There is no evidence that hypnotherapy is effective in helping people to give up smoking.”

They may both be interested to meet Leanne Rogers, 29. The daughter of two smokers, she was always strongly anti-smoking until she started working as a carer at a nursing home four years ago. With a culture of smoking among staff, she was soon on 15 to 20 a day. But now she wants to quit and agrees to give Jacquin’s website a go.

When I visit her two days later, I’m concerned to see her sitting outside with the smokers. “But I’m not smoking,” she insists. “I can sit quite comfortably next to someone with a fag and feel no desire to join in. In fact, the thought of it even makes me feel a bit sick. But what’s really bizarre is that I feel totally calm. Everyone thought I’d be really cranky but I feel more chilled out than ever.”

The website cost Jacquin around £15,000 to produce. In return he’s charging £20 to help people give up smoking, get motivated or tackle their phobias, £10 for weight loss, and £5 for de-stressing, with five hits for each session included in the price. “I was going to make the smoking session free, because I think just to help people give up would be fantastic. But the people I talked to thought if it was free no one would believe it was any good. If you smoke 20 a day and this works for you, you’ll save nearly £2,000 in the first year, so £20 seems a fair price.”

Without advertising, he’s had 150,000 hits so far. He accepts the online feedback is limited but says he’s had very few negative comments.

“People have their natural fears about hypnosis, and I can see they might worry that if they do it online they won’t be able to come out of it,” he says. “I also see that people don’t believe it can be that easy that they can do it in 15 minutes. After all, they make a big commitment to smoking - I’ve seen people who’ve lost their throat to it. If they accept that it’s easy to walk away from it, they’ve also got to accept that they’ve been mugged.”

But he’s convinced that if they overcome their prejudices, people across the globe could stop smoking. “I can’t think of a better epitaph: ‘Here lies Freddy Jacquin - he helped millions of people to quit smoking.’”

www.HypNetise.com