The Practice, a first-of-its-kind,wellness destination founded by mental health professional Sara Jackson, has opened in The Annex at 360 Davenport Road.
As Torontonians increasingly seek wellness experiences that go deeper, The Practice offers a space where psychotherapy and sound healing share the same address, and where the experience of showing up for yourself has been completely reimagined, said Jackson. The Practice brings together psychotherapy, life and career coaching, chakra healing & embodiment work, red light therapy, yoga, meditation, breathwork, sound baths, lymphatic modalities, and vibrational therapy, and frequency healing- alongside a café, curated retail, dedicated event spaces, and a rooftop patio, she added.
“I spent decades in clinical settings that were deeply professional but lacked warmth, and rarely focused on what was possible,” said Jackson. “My own healing journey taught me that what we need most is not just a place to process pain, but a place to remember who we are beyond it. The Practice is everything I wished had existed when I needed it most.”
Spanning over 6,000 square feet across four floors, The Practice has been designed as an antidote to the traditional clinical setting. Rich tones & textures, warm light, and luxurious finishes set the tone. The space was designed to highlight the relationship between environment and emotional wellbeing, and the belief that colour and light are not decorative choices but therapeutic ones.
The space features:
- A full yoga studio offering multiple modalities including: red light yoga, sound baths, meditation, and breathwork classes
- Private treatment rooms for psychotherapy, coaching, chakra healing & frequency work, lymphatic modalities , and vibrational therapy beds
- Wellness café ft. coffee, matcha, herbal tea, ceremonial cacao, and nourishing smoothies
- A curated retail space featuring wellness essentials
- Dedicated event spaces for workshops, gatherings, and community programming
- A rooftop patio for connection, conversation, and open-air community
Jackson is also the author of The Whisper, a book exploring intuition, self-trust, and what becomes possible when you learn to hear your own voice above the noise.
In an interview with Retail Insider, Jackson spoke about the concept.
Question: What gap did you see in Toronto’s mental health & wellness landscape that led you to create The Practice, and why did you feel the traditional clinic model needed to be reimagined?
Answer: Traditional psychotherapy is incredibly valuable, and there are many times when a clinical model is exactly what someone needs. What I felt was missing was a truly integrative approach—one that sees our mental and emotional health as part of our overall wellness, and something we can actively invest in throughout our lives, not simply something we addresswhen something is wrong.
I also wanted to move away from the idea that healing begins with, “I have a problem, and I need an expert to fix it.” I do believe that we already know what we need; we just have to learn how to access that and trust it. Most of us have become disconnected from it through conditioning, relationships, trauma, expectations and our overall life experiences.
For me, healing isn’t simply about becoming symptom-free. It’s about understanding yourself more deeply, changing the way you speak to yourself, learning to trust yourself, and ultimately creating more joy, connection and meaning in your life. I wanted to build a place where all of those things could exist together.
Q: How did you approach designing The Practice as part of the therapeutic experience, and what role do the four floors, curated retail, café, event spaces and rooftop play in how people experience the space?
A: The design was incredibly deliberate because I believe our environment affects how we feel before a conversation even begins. I wanted someone walking into The Practice to immediately feel that something was different.
All five senses were considered. The colours, textures, lighting, music, scent and even the way people are greeted are part of the experience. There is an underlying message throughout the space: You deserve to be somewhere beautiful. You deserve to feel cared for. You deserve spaces that inspire you.
That matters particularly when someone may be coming in to do difficult emotional work. You might be processing grief or trauma upstairs, but you entered through a beautiful café where somebody knew your name. You can have a therapy session and then sit quietly with a coffee, take a yoga class, browse something beautiful in the retail space, attend an event or simply spend some time without immediately having to rush back into the world.
The four floors allow those experiences to coexist. The café and retail create connection and accessibility. The treatment and therapy spaces allow for privacy and deeper work. The movement and event spaces create community and shared experience. And the rooftop adds another place to gather, connect and simply be.
The jewel tones throughout the space are also personal to me. They draw from the beauty of the peacock and the idea of allowing ourselves to be fully expressed, to shine rather than tucking away or shrinking.
Q: What was the thinking behind bringing psychotherapy and life coaching together with modalities such as breathwork, meditation, sound baths, energy work and red light yoga under one roof ?
A: The idea actually came out of my own experience. During a significant period of change and healing in my life, I was seeing a therapist, working with a coach and exploring things like meditation, energy work and other wellness practices—and I was travelling all over the city to do it.
What became clear to me was that each experience was giving me something different, but they were all supporting the same human being.
That became fundamental to The Practice: meet people where they are.
There are days when you’re ready to sit across from somebody and talk about something difficult. There are other days when you don’t have words for it. You might need to breathe, move, meditate, lie on a vibration bed or simply allow your nervous system to settle.
I wanted people to have choices because healing isn’t linear, and our needs aren’t identical from one day to the next. At the same time, I didn’t want to create a wellness space that avoided the difficult work.
Psychotherapy is intentionally at the heart of The Practice because sometimes we do have to look at our history, our patterns, our relationships and the experiences that shaped us.
Then coaching can help take that understanding forward. Therapy may help us understand why. Coaching can begin asking, How do I make different choices to create a life full of awe? The other modalities support that process through the body and nervous system. Together, they create space for reflection and change.
Q: Building a 6,000-plus-square-foot wellness destination over three years is a significant undertaking—what were the biggest challenges in bringing your vision for The Practice to life?
A: The biggest challenge was learning how I had to protect the original vision. When an idea first comes to you, there can be this very clear moment where you simply know what you’re trying to create. Then you begin building it, and suddenly there are architects, designers, consultants, contractors, advisors, friends and people who genuinely want to help.
Everyone brings ideas, and most of those ideas are offered with the best intentions. Somewhere in all of that input, it becomes very easy to lose your own voice. And then there is your own doubt. Building something of this scale over three years gives you plenty of opportunities to question yourself: Is this too much? Will people understand it? Should I change this? Should I make it more conventional?
So the greatest challenge was continuing to return to that original knowing and continuously and consistently checking in with myself: Am I still listening to my inner knowing with every choice I am making?
In many ways, building The Practice required me to practice the very philosophy behind it: quiet some of the external noise, listen closely to what I knew, and have the courage to follow it.
Q: What does The Practice’s launch say about how Torontonians’ attitudes toward mental health, wellness and the spaces where they seek support are changing, and where do you see the concept going from here?
A: I think we’re moving toward a much broader understanding of what mental health actually means. For a long time, the conversation around mental health has understandably been centred around mental illness. But we are all mental and emotional beings. We all have histories, fears, patterns, relationships, uncertainty and moments when life doesn’t go according to plan. None of us has done this before and, really, none of us truly know what we are doing.
I think people are increasingly looking for places where they can explore those parts of themselves without feeling that they first need to identify something as being wrong.
At the same time, I think the wellness industry is evolving. There has been tremendous interest in meditation, breathwork, yoga, nervous-system regulation and other modalities, but sometimes the deeper psychological work has been left out of that conversation. I wanted The Practice to bring those worlds together rather than treating them as separate.
To me, wellness is ultimately about being human. It’s about connection, vulnerability, self-awareness, responsibility, compassion and learning to listen to ourselves beneath all of the noise telling us who we’re supposed to be.
I don’t believe any one modality—or that The Practice itself—has all the answers. That’s actually part of the philosophy. We’ve created a space where people can explore, experience different things and discover what genuinely resonates with them.
The response we’ve received tells me there is an appetite for that kind of approach. I would love to see The Practice continue to grow and evolve, and ultimately for this way of thinking about mental and emotional wellness to reach well beyond Toronto.
But the measure of success for me is still very human. If somebody walks through our doors and leaves understanding themselves a little better, trusting themselves a little more, feeling more connected, or seeing a possibility for their life that they couldn’t see before, then we’ve done something meaningful.
If we can change a few lives that way, that’s what The Practice was created to do.
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