Bunbury resident goes from teacher to life coach

After sometimes seeing primary children struggle in school due to a perceived lack in emotional resources, Personal Coach Leah Bazely started Mind Equilibirum, a one-on-one therapeutic service for both children and adults.

Having begun the service in 2019, Ms Bazely said through her work at Mind Equilibirum, she highlights the importance of balancing the mind and body for optimum health.

"I have over 25 years teaching experience and I love it, but I took some time out to reassess what I could do to make a difference for these children."

Ms Bazely said the name comes from 'ME' and that the service created an awareness of not being okay physically, if things weren't okay in your mind.

"I'm very interested in looking into the unconscious mind because that's where we store our patterns of behaviour. When the behaviour of children or adults isn't working, they come to me and we have a look at how their behaviour is actually related to their thoughts and emotions," Ms Bazely said.

Ms Bazely said it was her husband's strong, mental state that enabled him to survive having a stroke last year.

Despite being physically fit and healthy, Ms Bazely said the stroke was full on and the same level of severity as people who can no longer function.

"We have a whole belief system about how powerful the mind is. My husband is okay now and do you know why? Because of how strong his mind is."

Ms Bazely said both her and her three, teenage daughters took time to care for her husband after his stroke.

She said her career change was a great example for her girls to see her step out of her comfort zone and challenge expectations within her family.

"I came from a family where you work as one thing for your whole life. I say to my girls that it's okay to do different things, your life is your life and you only get one chance at it."

Ms Bazely has qualifications in neuro-linguistic programming, hypnotherapy and meditation instructing, which she said enabled her to find the missing piece of the puzzle about how the mind works.

According to Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, as humans we each have an unconscious and conscious mind.

Ms Bazely said the unconscious mind makes up 90 per cent whereas our unconscious mind makes up just 10 per cent of our brains as a whole.

"Studies are proving that we are only consciously thinking between one and 5 per cent per day. The rest of the time we are running programs in the background. In here I look at the unconscious mind and get these two different parts of the brain together to make change."

"I love what I do and watching people change is the best feeling. I give parents and their children tools and strategies and we get curious about what's going on for them, their behaviour and why we think the way we do."

Ms Bazely said she was passionate about giving people the awareness to start questioning things in their lives.

She also revealed that the programming of the mind actually happens between the ages of zero and seven during the imprint phase.

"During this phase you don't have a part of your brain yet that helps distinguish between fantasy and reality. You're like a sponge, you absorb the behaviours, patterning and beliefs of all those in your environment."

At seven-years-old, humans develop a band in their brains that enables the separation of the unconscious and conscious mind, but patterns absorbed are already running.

This is where Ms Bazely uses hypnotherapy.

"I love it, it's so wierd and wonderful. We can give you new learnings and make change faster through tapping into the unconscious mind. It's about re-wiring new, neural pathways. And then about repeating that so it becomes your new way of being."

In regards to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms Bazely said people were screaming out for mental health support right now.

"Humans need to be connected and unfortunately now there are systems in place that that are taking away that connection. We all need to feel like we belong."

Ms Bazely confessed that her service isn't about her making changes, but rather about the empowerment of the client.

"I'd love to have a magic wand and just say ta-da, all better now. But I don't believe people are broken to start off with or that they need to be fixed. We all have the resources within us, we just have to bring them to the surface."

"Having a basic understanding of the brain can set you on a new pathway, and then look out world."