The Warrior of Balance: Sasha Larkin on Strength, Service, and Self-Discovery

<p>Sasha Larkin knew she wanted to be a police officer from the time she was a kid watching CHiPs, and she never wanted anything else. She spent 26 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and retired as Assistant Sheriff. She is also a yoga teacher, a third degree black belt, and a mom of three teenagers.<br /><br />At year twenty-five, with the sheriff running for a second term and her pension topped out, she sat in meditation and asked for a sign. The next day LinkedIn suggested a job: Director of Intelligence for the FIFA World Cup 2026. She spent the next two years in Miami building an intelligence team and a communications network linking police departments across the US, Mexico, and Canada.<br /><br />We talk about why leaving a career you love can bring you to your knees even when every sign says go, why she thinks resilience is not armor but metabolism, and how yoga kept her steady through decades in law enforcement, including the program she built to teach it at the police academy. Sasha shares why change leadership is really grief leadership, why balance is something you fight for rather than find, and what it is like to finally do school drop-off and make dinner every night.<br /><br />Sasha is now building her speaking and consulting work on resilience, change leadership, and what she calls being a warrior of balance.<br /><br />Chapters<br />00:00 Meet Sasha Larkin: From Assistant Sheriff to FIFA World Cup Director of Intelligence<br />01:55 The Only Job She Ever Wanted: CHiPs, Camaraderie, and Community, Identity, Purpose<br />04:59 Year 25: When You Cannot Change the Culture From Where You Sit<br />06:29 Asking for a Sign: The LinkedIn Job Post That Changed Everything<br />09:36 Leaving a Career You Love: Fear, Heartbreak, and Trusting the Push<br />12:05 Resilience Is Not Armor, It Is Metabolism<br />13:39 From Ballet to Karate to Yoga: How a Back Injury Changed Her Practice<br />16:51 Warrior of Balance: Yoga Class, Then the Gun Belt, and Yoga at the Police Academy<br />20:02 Swimming Upstream: Learning to Hear the Answer You Asked For<br />22:55 Director of Intelligence: Building a Team for the FIFA World Cup 2026<br />32:05 Change Leadership Is Grief Leadership<br />35:48 Life After the World Cup: School Runs, Family Dinners, and a Speaking Career<br />44:36 The Sleep Gap: Why First Responders Need to Sleep Train Themselves<br />47:26 Knowing When to Take the Armor Off<br /><br /><b><strong>ABOUT SASHA LARKIN</strong></b>