About Joaquina Mascuch

I've spent my life studying what lives beneath the surface.

I'm Joaquina, founder of Breaking the Spell. I bring together more than 20 years of healing and shamanic practice with Chinese medicine, somatic work, and brand strategy to help women understand the patterns shaping their lives and businesses.

Maybe the life you built isn't wrong. It just no longer tells the whole truth about who you are.

Joaquina Mascuch — quiet, reflective portrait with talisman jewelry

The Journey

Every movement brought her here.

The Beginning

I didn't come to this work through curiosity. I came through loss.

I grew up inside a faith that gave me identity, structure, and belonging. When that world fell away, I lost much of what I understood about myself.

At 22, I gave birth to twin babies who never drew breath. I didn't fall apart. That would have been easier. I buried the grief and kept moving.

By 27, I was in an abusive relationship, running from myself, and living a life I barely recognized as mine.

I had lost my religion. I had lost my babies. I was losing myself.

The Turning Point

Something had to change.

I found myself in a Buddhist temple, on my knees, finally allowing years of grief to move through me.

Not long afterward, I met a Lakota medicine man who would become my teacher.

I apprenticed with him for eight years.

That relationship opened a path of spiritual study, ceremony, and healing that would eventually lead me into Chinese medicine, somatic work, and years of clinical practice.

I could no longer keep living as the person I had become in order to survive.

Joaquina Mascuch seated peacefully by fireplace with shells and ceremonial stones

The Work That Grew From It

I began looking beneath the surface.

Chinese medicine taught me to look for patterns rather than isolated symptoms. Shamanic practice taught me to listen for what could not always be explained intellectually.

Through years of clinical practice, I began noticing something.

Women could understand themselves beautifully and still find themselves repeating the same choices.

I became less interested in asking what was wrong and more interested in asking:

What instruction is still operating here?

Beneath the surfacei · ii · iii

i · The visible problem

ii · An older pattern

iii · The instruction

The Work

Understanding the pattern is only the beginning.

You may know why you learned to please others, silence your voice, or question your decisions.

But understanding the pattern doesn't always mean you can stop repeating it.

My work brings together the story, the body, and the deeper patterns shaping your choices — so you can begin responding differently in your relationships, your work, and the life you're building.

The Connection

Then I began seeing the same patterns in business.

My work eventually led me into design, branding, and business strategy.

At first, those worlds seemed unrelated.

But I began noticing something familiar.

The woman who struggled to set boundaries in her relationships might also struggle to price her work.

The woman who learned to keep the peace might struggle to take a clear position in her messaging.

And the woman who spent her life becoming what others needed might build a beautiful business she couldn't quite recognize as her own.

Different circumstances. The same underlying patterns.

Joaquina Mascuch seated thoughtfully in modern clay armchair

The Birth of Breaking the Spell

Breaking the Spell grew from recognizing that connection.

Today, my work brings together shamanic practice, Chinese medicine, somatic awareness, and business strategy to help women recognize the instructions shaping their lives and begin choosing differently.

Eventually we have to ask

"Does this still belong to me?"

Breaking the Spell grew from that question.

What twenty years of this work has taught me

A few things I've learned along the way.

Insight is not the same as change.

You can understand a pattern long before you're able to choose differently.

Healing should give you more life.

The goal isn't to spend the rest of your life endlessly working on yourself.

The sacred and the practical belong together.

Inner work matters when it changes how you live, choose, create, and build.

Joaquina Mascuch laughing with her embroidered feathered hat

A little more of what I'm about

A little more of what I'm about.

I'm for

Truth. Discernment. Beauty. Depth. Humor. Strong boundaries. Meaningful work. Spiritual practices with roots. Businesses that actually sound like the people behind them.

I'm done with

Endless fixing. Performative spirituality. People-pleasing dressed up as kindness. Borrowed identities. Generic coaching language. Building a life that looks right but feels wrong.

"Your body knows more than you think."

"Your business will reveal every code you haven't questioned yet."

"Becoming more yourself is usually a better strategy than becoming more polished."

"And I think life should still have some mystery, beauty, laughter, and a little mischief in it."

Experience

The work, in numbers — kept brief on purpose.

20+

Years in healing and shamanic practice

10,000+

Clinical treatments

15+

Years teaching and facilitating retreats

Hundreds

Of women supported

UX · Brand

Background in UX, branding + business

10+

Brands supported

Official Bio

For podcast hosts, speaking, publications, and media introductions.

Joaquina Mascuch is the founder of Breaking the Spell, a body of work devoted to helping women decode the inherited, cultural, personal, and spiritual patterns shaping who they believe they are — and build their lives and work from what is actually true.

Her approach draws on more than 20 years of shamanic and healing practice, a clinical background in Chinese medicine that includes more than 10,000 treatments, and 15 years of teaching and retreat work. Over the course of her career, she has supported hundreds of women through periods of healing, identity change, and personal transformation.

Joaquina also brings a background in UX, branding, and business, having supported more than 10 brands in translating identity and ideas into clear, meaningful expression.

At the heart of her work is a simple belief: the sacred and the practical belong together. Inner transformation matters most when it changes the way we live, choose, create, and build.

Begin Here

Ready to build from what is true?

Whether you're navigating a life transition or building a business that feels like your own, there's a place to begin.

See Ways to Work Together