Meet the Women Behind Journey to Exhale
We’re Sepi and Monica! Reiki Masters, retreat hosts, and content creators with a shared love of adventure, healing, and human connection.
Journey to Exhale brings those passions together. We create wellness experiences that offer a sacred space to breathe, release and reconnect to yourself.
Sepi also lead the travel content side of Journey to Exhale. As a travel writer and creator, she works with hotels, airlines and travel product brands to tell stories that help people picture their next trip, from where they will stay to what they will pack.
Whether you’re joining us for a retreat or inviting us to tell your brand’s story, we bring warmth, creativity, and care to everything we do.
Meet Monica Sanchez | Co-Founder
Monica is a Reiki Master, sound healer, ordained minister, photographer, and passionate community builder whose personal healing journey spans more than 25 years.
With a professional background in property management and a love for art, travel, and human connection, Monica brings a unique blend of creativity, compassion, and lived experience to her work.
In 2022, she founded Experience Meditation, creating intentional spaces for wellness and community connection. From 2022 to 2024, she operated her own meditation studio at Southern California’s beautiful Channel Islands Harbor, bringing people together through meditation, sound healing, and shared experiences. She continues to serve her community and globally, bringing wellness retreats and practices to corporate spaces as well as private homes and locations.
As co-founder of Journey to Exhale, Monica blends her passion for wellness, travel, photography, and storytelling to curate meaningful retreat experiences and authentic creative collaborations.
She believes travel is more than discovering new destinations—it’s an invitation to reconnect with ourselves, embrace new perspectives, and rediscover the beauty of simply being.
Meet Sepi Shyne | Co-Founder
Sepi Shyne is a Reiki Master, spiritual guide, travel, content creator, attorney, and former Mayor of West Hollywood. Born in Iran and raised in the United States, she has built a life around connecting people, advocating for others, and helping people find their own light.
Through her practice, Soulillume, Sepi offers energetic healing, spiritual guidance, ancestral clearing, and Reiki education to clients in West Hollywood and around the world. Her approach brings together the mystical and the practical, creating space for reflection, healing, and personal growth.
Named one of Los Angeles’ best alternative healers by DailyCandy, Sepi has shared her work on radio and television, including E!’s Giuliana and Bill and Associated Press Television News.
Her creative work also includes travel writing and content creation. Her travels have deepened her appreciation for the ways a place can invite us to slow down, connect, and see life differently.
Through Journey to Exhale, which she co-founded with Monica Sanchez, Sepi brings her wellness experience and storytelling perspective to retreats and travel content inspired by the places and experiences she discovers.
Whether guiding a connection circle or sharing a memorable stay, her purpose remains the same: to illuminate.
