Hi there, I’m Leah Butler-Smith.
Welcome to your Enhanced Life!
I’ve been a super fan of all things “Mental Health” since I was a teen and have a particular interest in what motivates or causes “behaviour”. The Good and The BAD!
I’ve always been curious. Learning what makes us tick is something of a passion and at times, a mission.
With a father who suffered with Depression, I wanted to understand if this was something that could happen to me. My father has been absent in my life more than he’s been present until the last few years. Early on, I took that as a painful rejection (and judgement of who I am and my worth) until my training in my late 20’s allowed me to see through a new lens, his own suffering and self rejection. I also learned how a series of Traumas underpinned the often irrational and unpredictable changes in his moods.
As a teen, life was very challenging for a number of reasons. Not just the usual teen stuff but a whole heap of traumas, rejections, anxieties and more. These had a significant impact on my ability to study and I began to lose my positive attitude towards education.
That said, my curiosity in learning how people, things, the world and my own head work, remained just as strong. I was determined to learn what lies beneath mental health challenges and what we can do to both prevent and recover from them.
After my first two children started school, I found myself back in the same roles in Accountancy that I’d been in before (yet I hated maths at school!). I had a hope that I could one day leave the accounting profession and retrain as a Therapist. Fortunately for me, a company I worked for moved location and opportunities for redundancy packages came up. I leapt at the chance to retrain and begin a journey into the world I’d always been fascinated by.
Now in my 50s I’ve spent over two decades dabbling in the deep minds of thousands of motivated clients as a Clinical Hypnotherapist & behaviour analyst. Whilst my original training was in Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy, the Advanced Hypnoanalysis was especially appealing and I continued my training with new tools, methods, philosophies and more.
We never stop learning
My first practice opened in the newly built office (thanks husband!) at the back of my then home in Chelmsford Essex. I was invited to write a weekly column in the county paper. A very popular newspaper, I had never written before, not for the public anyway … so I was delighted when they published my articles without any edits whatsoever!
My practice grew and grew simply because my words resonated with so many people.
I later moved my practice to Harley Street which then attracted clients from all over the world!
As time passed and new ways of working with people 1:1 developed, so my client base expanded to include those in New York, Dubai, Singapore and Europe. Clients could now join me for their sessions using Zoom and Skype from the comfort of their own home or office.
A Vision for Creating Enhanced Life Started in 2010!
One of my clients was an entrepreneur by nature who happened to be CEO of a large publishing company. I was talking casually about how I’d love to find a way to create audio and video examples of sessions, that these would be very helpful additions to the work I did with clients in person.
He thought it a fantastic idea and said he’d invest in the ‘license’ for every member of his many 100’s of staff as an employee benefit.
From the early seeds, a new vision began to grow. But in those years I had no idea how this would become a reality.
What I am in the process of creating is a suite of therapeutic tools and resources that can act as a ‘prescription’ for what I would do if working with someone 1:1: that will be affordable and accessible 24/7.
Strange as it may sound - I want some of these resources for myself!
I may ‘know’ how to change my mind, alleviate stressors, disconnect behaviours from beliefs and even rewrite beliefs but doing it ‘on’ yourself is still a challenge.
The tools I am building become a mirror of the ‘sessions’ with guided meditations, guided inner work, thought/belief changing exercises, inner child healing, trauma depotentiation (overcoming trauma) meridian therapy workouts and more!
In 2019 I finally began building the membership site and started adding meditations and hypnosis audios with a very affordable rate of investment.
The membership was due to be transformed into an easy to access app.
Then …
Times Changed
In 2020, as a behaviour analyst and a trainer in influence and persuasion techniques, I saw evidence of propaganda appearing in our media.
I was stunned and confused. I could see how this was affecting my clients and my family. I now know of many in my field and in the fields of psychology, behaviour etc - who were as aware and troubled as I. Few however, stood up early on and questioned the Government’s use of fear, guilt and shame to influence the public, as I did. My concerns were eventually aired on the BBC, ITV This Morning and Sky News.
Out of this concern, and as someone who’s used to researching medical journals, and examining health studies for many years, I began researching the Government and health service websites to learn what the truth was. NHS workers I spoke to, expressed their own concerns over the harms these ‘exaggerations’ in the press, were causing their patients.
When the Government then began to talk about shutting down society and cutting people off from their lives, family, work, education in an unprecedented manner, I knew something was off. If this opinion comes as a shock to you, it may be because you haven’t been made aware of the countries with very few to no measures or mandates, who fared much better and who do not have the very serious high rates of excess deaths of other causes we see in the heavily controlled, mandated countries.
There are entire countries and whole states in the US who have chosen not to lock their people down nor force through mandates, any non medical intervention nor any experimental treatments rolled out with an emergency use authorisation. Once again, these are live examples of how well following the previous pandemic model went. Which was to provide advice or guidance to those at risk and let the rest of the country continue to use their own wisdom as they do with all other similarly viral infections.
The virus itself had been downgraded on the UK Government website, from a high consequence infectious disease. Which for comparison is the same as flu. The chief science officers repeated the virus would only affect a small percentage of the very elderly (ave age of death 82.4yrs) then at the same time they reinforced the need to lock every citizen up. It made no sense.
I continued researching and as a result of my public questioning, NHS workers from every field of practice, scientists, lawyers and journalists began to connect with me privately to explain some of what they were seeing in their own worlds.
I learned then, there were MPs questioning what was happening and were fighting to restore normal democracy but were bamboozled by scientific language and unable to argue for the people’s rights.
I also did something few people did - I read the SAGE documentation and to my horror, realised they put in black and white the plan to use FEAR to “control the public”. This has since been publicly evidenced with the publications of the then health secretary’s whatsapp messages including the plan to “scare the pants of the public!”
Fear Damages Immune Function
In my profession, I understand the physiological impact on HEALTH of fear. Particularly chronic fear. Which is precisely what was deliberately perpetrated by Government via their funding of news channels throughout the pandemic era.
It was clear there was going to be a lot of damage done by these actions - the toughest thing though, was trying to show people what was true, what was exaggerated and what was a clear lie.
Despite the source of my knowledge being from official sources, often people chose not to look for themselves and seemed content to follow instructions from mainstream news channels. Yet they simply did not know (nor did I for some time!), the media were actually guarded by Ofcom who used threats to ensure no journalist would either interview or allow any interviewee to challenge the narrative, without being vilified.
Many of those same journalists are now confessing they believed without question the ‘narrative’ but only a tiny few will acknowledge the part they played in terrifying the public, vilifying anyone who didn’t concede and bullying people into taking actions they would never normally choose.
2020, will be a year I will remember for the rest of my life as one of the most distressing and shocking periods and that didn’t end there. I am working on tools to support my own healing and to help others through their healing needs.
A Year of Loss
In early 2021, my mother became very unwell as a direct result of lack of connection, activity, meaning and access to medical services. During the time of ‘trying to save her’, my entire business hub (via main server) was hacked beyond repair!
I also lost my father’s partner, my best friend since childhood, another school friend and my mother’s partner. The last funeral in 2021, was that of my beloved Aunt. A lot has been learned during the past few years about the way the world actually turns.
Many people have suffered challenges to their mental wellbeing like never before. Many young people have found themselves struggling for the first time in their lives. The reason for the scripting of the Free Meditation, is to reinstall hope in people’s minds. We must remain Hopeful for humanity to restore sanity and never again allow draconian measures to forestall their lives.
The Trauma that the unprecedented actions of many western Governments caused, remains palpable.
I’ve been working with a group of like minded people, who care deeply for humanity and have concerns over how things have been shaping up to create a world we don’t recognise. The largest area of my focus is on Health. Transforming the way we see health services and what kind of services we have access to.
My business brand is Enhanced Life.
I have a strong passion for helping people find ways to achieve just that to enhance life. Whether it’s discovering what drives their beliefs, their day to day thinking, their actions and even their inactions; or helping them directly with specific techniques proven to effectively help reset the mind.
The membership site which housed my growing list of meditations and hypnosis recordings was one of the victims of the major hack! In a funny sort of way … it forced me to rethink how my vision would come into being. That’s a lot of work!
To speed up providing a space for my Enhanced Life members, I realised a Substack would provide everything that we need for right now and more! Plus it’s fast becoming a very familiar and popular platform where subscribers find information and educational resources.
So here I am.
My subscribers support the important work I do in supporting campaigners for health truth and health freedom and provide me with the time to rebuild the app version that will host my growing library of professional Meditations, Hypnosis sessions and more.
I am also in very deep study on the subject of Trauma in the populations mentions above and am creating specific tools and resources to help people recover. Keep an eye on updates on this topic.
Why subscribe to Enhanced Life?
When you subscribe, you’ll get access to unique updates focusing on all things mental health and wellbeing PLUS the occasional useful tools. Never miss an update when you drop your most used email address in the subscribe box.
Stay up-to-date
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter, new audio recordings and coaching tools goes directly to your inbox. I’m also keen on Podcasting and am looking at two new shows, one a once weekly group conversation that will go out live to as many channels as I can work out the tech for! The other will be focused on Enhancing Life focusing on the field of Health. Substack also hosts podcasts.
Join the membership
Become part of the community when you sign up as a paid member, and get full access to the audios and coaching materials I create.
Free subs
You’ll be notified of a new article when it’s published.
Paid subscriptions (just $5 a month - approx £4.50)
You’ll get some exclusive benefits:
Access to unique meditations via the ‘paywalled’ section. Plus you can listen to deep sleep hypnosis recordings to aid restful sleep whilst your mind absorbs positive life enhancing guidance.
Coaching Tools
Knowing that you are supporting the rebuild of the app and helping me continue with my important work for humanity.
New meditations and hypnosis recordings will be published every month.
My goal is to reach 5,000 paid subscribers and support the enhancement of the tools I create for individual use, plus work on Podcasts that can reach and I sincerely hope, enhanced the lives of many thousands more!
Thanks for being here!
Best regards
Leah
