WHY SASHA BECAME A MIND COACH AND HYPNOTHERAPIST
A Hypnotherapist Finds Her Calling:
“After a childhood of trauma, local woman finds solace in hypnotherapy”
As printed on August 6th, 2009, in four different Los Angeles newspapers, including the LAX to L.A. Daily Breeze, Long Beach Telegram, Sun Gabriel Valley Tribune, and the San Bernardino Sun. Photo: Steve McCrank
“Sometimes it’s like being freed from a curse,” says hypnotherapist Sasha Carrion about the benefits of the treatment. Hypnosis can be an effective treatment for mild depression and anxiety disorders.
Sasha Carrion will tell you from firsthand experience: It takes a lot of strength to overcome a lifetime of trauma. But nearly 30 years after her mother disappeared — murdered, she believes, by her own father — the 32-year-old former Torrance resident has figured out a way to put the past behind her.
She did it through hypnosis. “My whole life was absolutely centered on getting justice for my mother’s murder,” said Carrion, who was so moved by her emotional transformation that she became a hypnotherapist. “It had consumed me.”
Hypnosis, a process by which a person enters a state of deep relaxation and heightened suggestibility, helped Carrion heal by allowing her to let go of her past.
It wasn’t an easy past to relinquish. Carrion’s life has been a series of struggles — tragic events that began 27 years ago when she awoke one day to find her mother, Rosa Maria Marquez, missing from their Bell Gardens home.
She was 5, and her parents were separated and in the process of getting a divorce. “I remember calling out to my mom and she didn’t say anything,” said Carrion, now a stunning woman with deep brown eyes and coffee-color hair. “The next thing I remember is the cops were there.”
Carrion’s father, Raphael Marquez, whom Carrion described as abusive and volatile, was questioned about the disappearance but never arrested. “The police were asking me questions,” said Carrion, who chose to take her mother’s maiden name. “My dad showed up and he quickly pushed me to the side and said, ‘Don’t tell them that I ever hit your mom or you.'”
Her father fled to Mexico shortly afterward, leaving Carrion and her 3-year-old sister in the care of their widowed grandmother. Because her mother’s body was never found, police never categorized her disappearance as a murder. Consequently, Carrion wrestled with the possibility that perhaps her mother had left them.
“I knew it was either A, my father had killed my mother, or B, she had abandoned us,” Carrion said. “You can’t win with that. Either way you lose.”
Sasha Carrion wearing the party hat celebrating her last birthday with her mother, sister and the grandmother that raised the two girls.
Finding family
When Carrion was 19 and ready to face her past, her paternal uncle agreed to take her to her father. They flew to Mexico, where had remarried and had two more children. Shortly after their reunion, Carrion asked her father: “Did you kill my mother?”
He said no. “He told me that she had left him for another man,” Carrion said. “I was so desperate for a family that I believed him.”
For almost a decade, she maintained a relationship with her father and his new family. She sent gifts. She visited often. Then one day, her uncle came to her with a confession.
“He told me, ‘I’m afraid if I die I’m going to have to face your mother on the other side,'” she said. “Then he tells me how my father killed my mother.”
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