Sassi Ochoa combines 15 years of successful experience in the insurance sales industry with 5 years of holistic leadership experience, spanning both professional and personal domains.
Committed to providing Latin people with the same transformative educational opportunities she has experienced translated Stanford University's prestigious CIJ Clarity Catalyst program into Spanish during the 2020 pandemic, facilitating it in her community's mother language since then. Additionally, she created the virtual workshop "Leadership is written with H", designed to connect managers and collaborators with their commitment, emotional competences, and the significance of teamwork.
Sassi Ochoa, Mindfulness & Transformational Coach
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
Sassi Ochoa was born in Ecuador and has lived in Florida, United States, for six years.
Her vision is to co-create an authentic, free, and loving world. She aims to inspire individuals to take meaningful action toward a balanced and purposeful life. Her passion lies in sharing transformative experiences, fostering healing, and learning alongside others.
Sassi embraces her purpose of living in service to others. She is devoted to facilitating experiential education through online and in-person workshops and ceremonies. Her work supports individuals in overcoming personal barriers, embarking on journeys of internal leadership, deeply connecting with their purpose, and healing past traumas.
Her journey began when she discovered her innate talent for articulating ideas, empathetic listening, and public speaking. At just 12 years old, she won her first short story contest, which sparked her interest in communication. This passion led her to pursue a degree in Social Communication at university, followed by a master's in Communication and Marketing. However, early motherhood shifted her career path, leading her to the insurance industry in 2003.
Over 15 years in the insurance field, Sassi honed her communication skills, excelling as a salesperson and a trainer of sales teams. She consistently delivered outstanding results, achieving notable success across multiple companies in Ecuador.
After a life-altering divorce in 2012, Sassi relocated to a new city, leaving her personal and professional history behind. She couldn’t have foreseen that, just a few years later, her life would face another dramatic shift. In 2016, a literal and metaphorical earthquake transformed her reality. The natural disaster left her without a stable job, damaged her home, and plunged her into deep adversity and despair. Yet, this upheaval became the catalyst for her transformative journey.
By the end of 2019, she had moved to the United States with the clear intention of redefining her life through service. She embarked on a path of personal growth and preparation as a transformational and mindfulness coach, dedicating herself to helping others heal and thrive.
In early 2024, Sassi ventured into photography, uncovering a new dimension of herself. Through her lens, she finds ways to serve others by capturing not only smiles but also the silent wounds and unspoken emotions within. Her photography has become a healing tool, allowing individuals to reframe and re-signify their experiences through the power of imagery. Currently, she is working on a project called "Kintsugi."
In 2025, Sassi will leave the United States to embark on a transformative journey to the Philippines. This experience will allow her to deepen her self-knowledge, which has been a cornerstone of her personal growth and healing over the past decade.
Through her multifaceted roles as a coach, healer, blogger, entrepreneur, and photographer, Sassi exemplifies diverse forms of leadership. She inspires others to discover and embrace their unique paths to empowerment.
Who inspires you to be the best you can be?
Humanity. This includes me, my children, my friends, my colleagues, and my teachers.
What is your motto?
My inner peace is not negotiable.
How do you describe yourself?
I am a possibility of being, willing to flow through life’s experiences, knowing I am nothing but can become everything. I am a being learning how to be human.
I also like to compare myself to nature:
I am an onion. Life has peeled away layers of who I thought I was, leaving me feeling naked and vulnerable, yet renewed and powerful.
I am a wave, sometimes high and unpredictable, other times soft and gentle, yet always moving.
I am the moon, cyclical, and I don’t need to be full to shine.
What has been your greatest pain or wound?
Physical and emotional abuse, as well as abandonment.
Would you like to share a little more about these topics?
At the age of 3-4, I suffered abuse from my maternal grandfather. The trauma was so severe that I repressed the memory until recently, uncovering it through hypnotic regression. For decades, I carried unexplained pain in my throat, which resurfaced after a romantic breakup, triggering physical and emotional distress. Months of therapy revealed how silence had become a normalized response to abuse in my life. I realized I had been a victim of not only psychological and physical abuse in my marriage but also micro-abuse in work environments, particularly on an economic level.
Emotional abandonment began around the same time as the abuse. My parents divorced, and my father was physically distant, while my mother, consumed by her pain, was emotionally unavailable. Caregivers and constantly changing environments during my childhood further compounded this dynamic.
Your life was shaped by hard moments and traumas. What has been the common denominator in your decisions?
Pain and dissatisfaction. Pain has been a master, and dissatisfaction has been the genuine desire to break free from established paradigms and create my path.
What would be your key advice for overcoming pain?
Purge it, both literally and figuratively. The body and soul need to be released to prevent pain from becoming permanent suffering. This process doesn’t happen overnight; it can take years of therapy, self-reflection, and conscious effort to recognize and release our attachment to pain. But it’s never too late to find meaning in life through self-awareness and the will to rise above suffering.
Has your work been inspired by your experiences?
Absolutely. My experiences have shaped my maturity, transformation, and coaching practice. They’ve also influenced the spaces I create to serve and nourish myself and others.
How do you maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life?
There’s no universal formula for balance. It’s a personal responsibility to find what works for you. For me, balance right now means being more and doing less, though a decade ago, it was the opposite.
Mental and emotional health should never be overlooked. We are witnessing record levels of mental health challenges and suicide. Everyone, coaches included, needs therapy, spiritual mentorship, or a support system to manage these aspects of life.
What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business?
Coherence and comprehensive well-being. Coherence means living as a testimony to what I teach and practice. It’s an ongoing process, and there is always room for growth. Comprehensive well-being applies not only to all areas of my own life but also to the lives of those who collaborate with me.
And a community of individuals deeply connected to their intrinsic value, where this connection naturally gives rise to the long-awaited inner peace.
As a coach, what criteria do you have for working with clients?
There are many specialties in coaching, distinguished by fields of focus and the innate abilities coaches choose to develop. I am a transformational and mindfulness coach and a creator of experiences that engage the body and senses.
With so many services available, finding the right coach can be challenging, especially for those without experience. My approach emphasizes lived experience, academic preparation, and tangible results. Clients who seek to grow through introspection, sensory connection, and transformation often find alignment with my work.
The first thing to clarify is that a coach is not a therapist. A coach is a professional in their field who provides support, guidance, and accompaniment to help you achieve your desired results.
My promise:
Collaborate with you in creating parallel, sustained, and sustainable growth. By committing to my personal development, I become a stronger source of support and inspiration for you.
What makes your coaching unique?
My approach is based on connection and vulnerability. A deep, authentic bond is essential for transformational growth.
I focus on creating intimate and personalized coaching sessions where connection, emotional and sometimes physical depending on the context, is the foundation of our professional relationship and, more importantly, our human connection.
Once we have established a solid framework of confidence, we will explore the specific areas you want to focus on or be mentored in. Together, we will set clear goals and create a timeline to measure progress, typically within 4, 6, 8, or up to 12 weeks. This will ensure that the process remains effective and meaningful.
Tell us a little about your role as a healer and facilitator of ceremonies.
Even if my feet carry me to distant lands, the heart of my little town always travels with me. I never forget who I am because my roots are not external; they live within me. I was born in one of the most megadiverse countries in the world, where modernity coexists with ancestral practices, and traditions blend harmoniously with new generations.
My grandparents taught me to connect with plants and their healing power. Through my journey, I discovered that life in nature is profound medicine for the soul.
As a facilitator of experiences and healing, I combine two distinct yet complementary practices: Japan introduced Shinrin-Yoku (forest bathing) into its national health system in 1982. The essence of forest bathing is simple: walk, breathe deeply, immerse yourself in the sounds and serenity of the forest, and then conclude by enjoying a ceremonial cacao drink. The drink's therapeutic effects nurture both the body and the heart chakra.
These experiences in nature are my way of honoring my heritage and roots, detoxifying the mind and body from the noise of technology, and reconnecting individuals with Mother Earth's nurturing and healing power.
If you could change something about your industry, what would it be and why?
If I could change one thing, it would be to establish a more ethical market for services like these. Working with human beings is sacred and delicate. From our space and consciousness, the power we have to heal or empower individuals and positively impact entire families is immense.
Understanding the depth of this work is essential; it is akin to delicate emotional and mental “open-heart surgery.” This realization drives me to approach my services carefully and continuously educate myself beyond my formal academic training.
However, I am deeply concerned that pseudo-professionals in this field exaggerate their experience or fabricate qualifications, offering these sacred services without the proper training or intentions. Motivated solely by economic gain, they risk undermining people’s confidence in these transformative processes and may cause harm. Establishing stricter ethical standards would protect practitioners and the individuals who trust us to guide their journeys.
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