Yes, I learnt this technique when I went through an intensive 7-day “Smooth Speech” programme many, many years ago, run by the Speech Pathology department at a local university. Soft contact/onsets, stretched vowels and linked words. That’s the strategy they taught us at very slow speech rates and gradually increasing rate of speech over the course of the programme. The idea is to reprogram the brain to speak using these strategies, which eventually rewires the speech motor pathways. It works for a while if you maintain the strategy and practice daily. If you don’t, you relapse into old habits.