Hi, I'm Lyane. I'm the founder of Hīrā, a centre for wellness in Russell, Ontario.
Not that long ago, my life looked completely different.
Before Hīrā, I was a professor at La Cité Collégiale and an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, where I taught pharmacy computer systems, simulations, and helped build curricula. On top of that, I was completing my doctorate of education at Athabasca University. I had the degrees, the titles, the trajectory, the whole picture of what I'd always been told success was supposed to look like.
I'd spent most of my adult life chasing that picture of perfection and success. Degrees were my trophies: a pharmacy diploma; a bachelor of health science; a micromasters in healthcare administration; and a master of education. The doctorate was supposed to be the final box to tick for me to be successful.
And then, in 2024, I did a 180 and quit it all.
I won't pretend it was a clean, confident decision. It came after a stretch where life knocked the wind out of me, and I found myself really questioning who I was. I'd carried anxiety for years and built my own strategies to keep it in check — but becoming a mom is when those strategies went up in flames. Learning to regulate myself and a tiny human at the same time was more than my old systems could hold. I was burnt out, running on the fumes of my anxiety, riding the high between being unstoppable and ignoring the part of me that was completely depleted. Although I was still producing, I was crashing in the background.
For years I'd tried to outrun that feeling with more: finish faster, take on more, be more impressive. What I slowly realized was that I was pouring everything into a version of success that didn't actually belong to me anymore.
So I redefined it. I decided I wanted to live inside my values and not just look impressive on paper.
Once I stopped white-knuckling the old plan, I let myself do something I hadn't done in a long time: dream.
I started wishing for a space that didn't exist yet, somewhere that could actually help with the burnout I was going through. Somewhere to rest, reset, and feel like a person again. I kept looking for it around me and couldn't find it. So I decided to build it. As one does.
That's where Hīrā came from. Honestly, it started as a bit of a passion project, born out of a need to see something different in our community.
In all honesty, at the core of my being, I just want people to have access to wellness.
Not the kind you have to drive an hour into the city traffic for. Not the kind that costs so much it feels like a luxury you have to justify. I want as many people as possible to be able to access some form of wellness, at whatever price point they can actually afford, because I believe everyone should be able to.
Hīrā still has a lot to learn from this community, and I'm genuinely paying attention to how I can help. That's the whole point. The tagline I built it on is "for every version of you," and I mean every version, the burnt-out one, the hopeful one, the one just trying to get through the week.
This space is where I'll be honest about all of it: building a business without losing myself, what I'm learning as a founder, what I believe about wellness, and the real, unfiltered process behind Hīrā.
I'm not here to look impressive. I'm here to build something that aligns for me first, and then, hopefully, for you.
So: hi. I'm Lyane. I'm really glad you're here.
If you've read my story, you know I spent years chasing a version of success that wasn't mine — collecting degrees like trophies, running on the high of being unstoppable while quietly running on empty. Burnout, postpartum anxiety, and eventually walking away from academia taught me more than any credential ever did.
What it taught me, mostly, is what I actually believe. So here it is, as honestly as I can put it.
I believe wellness is reflection, regulation, reconnection, and alignment — not a candle, a green juice, or a perfectly aesthetic morning routine. It's the slow work of coming back to yourself.
I also believe it shouldn't be gatekept. You shouldn't have to drive an hour into the city or spend money you don't have just to feel like a person again. As someone with ADHD who is also autistic, I know what it's like when a space — or a whole system — wasn't built with you in mind. I spent years trying to make education more accessible for neurodivergent learners, and somewhere in there, I lost access to myself. Accessibility isn't a marketing term to me. It's personal. Everyone deserves a way in.
I sit at a strange and wonderful intersection: health science, healthcare administration, and education — and also Reiki, Ikigai, Human Design, and a slow spiritual awakening I'm still very much in the middle of.
For a long time I thought I had to pick a side: the rigorous, evidence-based professional, or the intuitive, spiritual one. I don't believe that anymore. I believe you can be evidence-informed and heart-led at the same time. Two things can be true at once, right? The science gives me grounding; the spirit gives me meaning. I want both — and I built Hīrā on both.
Here's a belief I learned the hard way: balance does not mean everything in your life is equal. That's a fantasy that sells planners.
A balanced life is one where no single part is quietly paying for another. When I poured everything into my doctorate, my relationships and my health footed the bill — I just didn't see the invoice until it arrived. I think of a life as a system with a handful of core pillars, all wired together, and the real question is never "am I doing enough?" It's "what's quietly funding the part that looks fine?"
I've built a whole reflection framework around this idea — six pillars, and a way to notice where you're aligned and where your capacity is stretched thin. I'll walk through it properly in its own post (it's called STĀBYL, and yes, it's meant to sound like stable). For now, just know this: catching the system before it tips is the whole game.
I used to measure success by how impressive I looked on paper. Now I measure it by how aligned I feel in my actual life.
My two core values are resourcefulness and holism. Resourcefulness is the part of me that, when a space I needed didn't exist, decided to build it. Holism is the part that refuses to treat people — clients, staff, myself — as a single problem to be fixed, when we're all whole, complicated systems. Almost every hard decision I've made — leaving academia, resigning my pharmacy licence after nearly a decade, ending a partnership that didn't align with the heart of Hīrā — came down to one question: is this true to my values, or just to someone else's expectations?
I am not a doctor or a psychologist, and I'll never pretend to be. What I am is someone who has studied her own life like a research subject — more than a hundred hours of therapy (EMDR, CBT, schema work), nervous-system regulation I've practiced since 2019, and a daily gratitude practice I haven't missed since June 2022.
I believe in doing the work, not bypassing it. For years I braced for people to take advantage of me, until therapy helped me set that filter down and lead with trust instead of fear. That one shift changed how I run my business and how I move through the world. I don't believe healing is a destination you arrive at. It's a practice you keep returning to.
Especially for the people the system forgot to design for. The neurodivergent. The burnt-out. The women who've never had a space where they could drop the armour and just be.
That belief is the thread running through all of it — Hīrā, this blog, the frameworks, the workshops. I'm not here to look impressive. I'm here to build something honest and aligned, for every version of you.
And for every version of me, too.
I didn't set out to build a wellness centre. I set out to *find* one — somewhere I could actually rest, reset, and feel like myself again — and when I couldn't find it, I built it.
That's the short version of how Hīrā came to be. Here's what it actually is, and where it's going.
Hīrā is a boutique wellness centre in Russell, Ontario. It started as a half-joke — a mind map I made and called "Holistic Haven" — and somewhere along the way the joke turned into a house, the house turned into a business, and the business turned into the thing I now pour my whole heart into.
Everything happens under one roof, which was always the point. I didn't want people to have to stitch their wellness together from five different places across the city. So Hīrā holds three things at once. There's esthetics and skin health — the care that helps you feel good in your own skin. There's thermal cycling and somatic therapies — hot, cold, breath, and the kind of nervous-system reset I wish I'd had access to during my own burnout. And there are retreats, events, and transformational experiences — the slower, deeper work of reconnecting, in community.
Three branches, one idea: whole-person wellness, for every version of you.
If you've read what I believe, you already know the principles. Hīrā is really just those beliefs made physical.
It's built on access — I want as many people as possible to be able to walk through the door, at a price point they can actually afford, without an hour of city traffic first. It's built on dignity — for clients who get to come exactly as they are, and for a team I pay living wages and genuinely trust. It's built on safety — small groups, no overwhelm, a space where you're allowed to be imperfect. And it's built on the both/and I keep coming back to: evidence-informed and heart-led, science and spirit, under the same roof.
Underneath all of it runs the same six-pillar wellness framework I use to read my own life. Hīrā isn't separate from that life project — it's the most tangible expression of it.
What you see now is just the beginning. I'm a builder, so there's always a next thing taking shape in my head (and usually on a 5 notebooks somewhere).
I'm working toward finishing up a dedicated workshop studio (only esthetic mods left!) — a space for women's circles, journaling rituals, educational classes, and the kind of gentle, hands-on self-development I love to teach. I'm dreaming up an artisan apothecary of hand-crafted botanical goods. There are retreats I haven't run yet, and a whole educational side of my work — including the reflection framework I'll share more about soon — that Hīrā gives a home to.
I'm building deliberately, in phases, because I'd rather grow something sustainable than something impressive. I've done impressive. It burned me out.
And then there's the dream underneath the dream.
If I'm being fully honest, Hīrā is one chapter of something larger. I dream of safe havens — spaces where they can drop the armour and be truly vulnerable, seen, and held. Further out, I picture land, a more communal way of living, gatherings that are sometimes free and sometimes a small exchange, all grounded in connection, nature, and belonging.
That might sound like a lot for a wellness centre in a small Ontario town. But everything I've built so far started as something that sounded like too much — right up until it existed.
So that's what I'm building: a place, a practice, and eventually a kind of community — for the burnt-out, the neurodivergent, the humans who've never had a space that felt like theirs, and honestly, for the version of me who went looking for all of this and couldn't find it.
For every version of you. I really do mean every version.
Hi, I'm Lyane.