When I first meet Tristan Jenkin at Aika Spa—a sauna and cold plunge circuit quite literally in the middle of the woods in the Squamish Valley—he points out that “every tree from the valley is represented on this wall.” The wall he’s referring to is the “the wall of intention”: a functional, artfully designed stack of wood rounds—cedar, maple, fir and alder—that (but still most-definitely outdoor) circuit within.
Jenkin’s knowledge of trees, being able to point out each and every round by species, checks out for someone who’s built a business around holistic wellness: in this case, an experience that combines the Finnish practice of sauna therapy with forest bathing.
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But it’s also an echo of Jenkin’s past—one in which his career was much less holistic—as a corporate supply chain manager for a major Canadian railroad, where his work focused on designing, coordinating and managing the physical movement of goods—specifically forest products.
“I was always looking for something that was deeply aligned with purpose, something that made me feel alive,” he says.
After more than a decade managing accounts for large forest products customers on the West Coast—shipping lumber, plywood, OSB (oriented strand board), pulp and other industrial products—Jenkin found that his values and his life were starting to diverge. But it was a quiet question from his son in 2019 that led him to realize it was time to pivot.
Jenkin had been working 10-plus hours in his home office, “firing off” emails in the hundreds.
“I hadn’t seen the sun,” he says. “I’m locked in. My son walks into my office and says to me, ‘What are you doing, Daddy?’ And I turn around and I’m like, ‘I’m sending emails.’”
Suddenly, the banality of it all hit him.
“I’m not helping anyone connect with their loved ones or their friends; I’m not helping people find deeper levels of health and wellness; [not any of the things] that I [now] prioritize I’ll never forget, I walked away from that moment being like, ‘This is changing.’”
Then began the slow, conscious process that would lead from corporate rail to mobile saunas and, eventually, Aika, a name that borrows the Finnish word for “spending time.” He came up with his own strategy for the transition, through what he calls “the working severance.”
Instead of dramatically quitting his six‑figure job, he gave himself a fixed window to stay on salary while deliberately carving out time, energy and headspace to build the next chapter.
“It’s crazy. I was killing it. I was absolutely killing it,” he says of his time at the railway.
Whereas Jenkin’s corporate supply chain role still gave him steady income, a travel allowance and a sizable expense account, his passion project—which he was “running off the side of [his] desk”—gave him a sense of spiritual purpose.
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He started with a trailer and a wood‑fired stove, building a mobile sauna as a kind of “embodied experiment,” hauling it to mountainsides, rivers and private homes so small groups could gather, sweat and breathe in the forest air during COVID.
The business generated $120,000 in its first year, all of which was reinvested back into Aika. “We didn’t take a single dollar out of [it],” he says.
Initially charging around per day to set up the mobile sauna for private bookings, Jenkin soon learned that the price point was restricting his client base. So, he leaned on his corporate skills to reimagine the process.
“In supply chain management, if something takes too long, what are the levers you can pull to reduce the time? What’s the cost of doing something here? Where else can we do it? [I thought] we can’t just be setting up every single time we have a customer, so what can we do? That’s when we leased our place.”
It was 2021, and Jenkin had found a parcel of land up Squamish Valley Road. There, he set up a , a “relaxation tent,” two cold plunge troughs and a fire pit. Offering those exclusive, five-hour mobile experiences, Aika was now providing 90-minute introductions to hot and cold therapy, three-hour immersive experiences and six-hour private retreats for up to 20 people, all on-site.
“As soon as we did that, we were booked solid,” he says.
Securing the new property allowed Jenkin to adapt the business model while staying true to the ethos of his company. “We got to keep the nature. We got to keep true to what we are, because that’s part of the medicine,” Jenkin says.
It’s been a few years now since Jenkin was able to leave his corporate post to run his “forest sanctuary” retreat in the Squamish Valley—but he’s still quick to call out each species of tree represented on Aika’s wall of intention whenever his customers pass through.
