A Vision Born from Longing, Not a Business Plan

Thirteen years ago, that instinct turned into a business Edmonton had never seen before. The idea for Bliss Yoga Spa didn’t begin with spreadsheets or strategy decks. It began during years spent traveling for her husband Mike’s work in the grocery industry. They kept discovering the same thing: warm, luxurious wellness spaces where people could breathe deeply, soften, and feel human again.

“Nothing really jumped out at us,” Traci remembers.

Where others saw a gap, she saw a door. Mike was stepping away from the grocery business after decades of family legacy. Traci saw a chance to build something entirely new. A place that combined yoga and spa under one roof, not as separate services but as a single experience of care. At the time, a yoga spa didn’t exist anywhere in Canada. She and Mike were inventing the category at the same time they were building the business.

A Business That Quietly Saves Lives

Every leader has a moment that answers the question: Was this worth it? For Traci, it came when a client pulled her aside and said, “Thank you for building Bliss. It saved my life.” The woman had suffered a devastating family loss and found in Bliss the one place where she could breathe again. Traci has heard versions of that story many times over the years. People who walk in carrying grief, stress, burnout, or exhaustion — and leave feeling human again.

“Success was always based on the financials,” she says. “But what keeps me going are the stories.”

A Leader Who Chooses Courage Over Comfort

Risk threads through Traci’s entire story. Her first leap was moving from Calgary to Edmonton in 2002 to marry Mike and help raise his two boys. Her second was opening a luxury wellness model no one in the market had ever seen. Her third came during COVID, when group classes declined and Bliss needed to evolve fast.

Rather than wait for the world to return to normal, Traci rebuilt. Bliss expanded into primary care, nurse practitioners, IV therapy, acupuncture, reiki, and a full wellness integration model. It was expensive, exhausting, and emotionally heavy. It was also exactly what her community needed next.

A City That Returned the Love

Traci jokes that she didn’t choose Edmonton — Edmonton chose her. But she has chosen the city back for more than twenty years. “The ripple starts here,” she says. “Our team embodies the vision, and it goes outward everywhere.” Today, Bliss employs fifty staff who carry the culture forward in every room, every interaction, every moment when a client needs to feel grounded.

She credits the Edmonton Chamber for opening doors, expanding her network, and amplifying Bliss’s voice across the business community. It is a partnership rooted in advocacy, connection, and shared belief in Edmonton’s potential.

A Leadership Style Built on Empathy

Traci leads the way she wished someone had led her at fourteen. With empathy. With compassion. With vision. With the belief that no one should ever feel alone or unseen. She hopes people remember that she built Bliss to be the space she never had — a place to land softly, to reset, to breathe.

To exhale.