Elizabeth Den Hollander built the kind of clinic she wished existed when she was starting out. At Painted Brick Wellness in Hamilton, Ontario, each practitioner runs their own business under one roof, with the freedom to work the way they want.

Doing the program twice

Elizabeth grew up around the work that shapes her career now. Her mother, Mary Jane, went to massage therapy school when Elizabeth was small and often brought her along to class, so the two of them used to joke that Elizabeth did the program twice. Mary Jane opened her own practice in 1998 and worked as a massage therapist for about 15 years. Elizabeth graduated in 2014 and went straight to work beside her mom. “Sometimes you don’t want to listen to your parent,” she says of finally taking her mom’s long-standing advice to give it a try. They had six months together before Mary Jane received a diagnosis that meant she had to retire, and Elizabeth took over her caseload. Her mom stayed close, usually on the other end of the phone, ending their daily calls when a client walked in. “I’d say, ‘client’s here, bye,’ and she’d go, ‘bye, love everybody,’ and hang up,” Elizabeth says. A place of her own

Elizabeth worked from home for nine years, building a steady practice largely on her own. Eventually, she wanted more room, and something that was fully hers. About two and a half years ago, she opened Painted Brick Wellness: a collective, where each practitioner runs their own business under one roof.

The practitioners Elizabeth brings in are looking for a shared space to run their own practices, and they tend to think about care the way she does. That shared instinct is what holds the place together.

A space that runs on care

The space itself does a lot of the work for making clients feel relaxed and cared for. Elizabeth kept it homey and cozy, and she believes that draws in clients who want the same. Since opening, clients have left more than 165 five-star reviews. “There’s nowhere to go but down,” she jokes.

Behind her clinic design choices and her approach to finding the right practitioners to join the Painted Brick team is a belief about how care works. “It’s a nervous system thing,” she says. “If someone can ease your nervous system, whatever they do is going to be so helpful.” To her, a good treatment is as much about a person’s nervous system as their muscles. The space, the way you greet someone, the conversation before you start, all of it decides whether a person can settle by the time the work begins. “How you make someone feel is enormous.” She looks for practitioners who work from those same values.

Sitting a little longer at the waterfall

The instinct to gather people hasn’t stayed inside the clinic either. Elizabeth loves one-on-one work as much as she loves gathering a group, and she’s happiest with people around her, so she’s always looking for more ways to bring people together.

About a year ago, Elizabeth and her friend Victoria started Outdoorsy Pals, a free women’s hiking group that heads out most weeks. She trained as a spiritual director, and folds that in, building pauses into the walks with a little breathwork. When the group reaches a waterfall, she resists the usual quick photo before moving on. “If we could actually just sit in it a bit longer,” she says, “and enjoy it in a different way.”

Room to grow with Jane

Keeping all of that running is its own kind of work, and Elizabeth learned it the slow way. In the early days, working from home, she handwrote receipts and notes and counted the receipt book by hand at year-end. She moved to an online system in 2017, and by the time she opened the clinic she needed more, especially with a growing group of practitioners and one who needed to see clients over video. She landed on Jane, and the switch she had been dreading turned out to be pretty smooth. “Jane made it quite easy,” she says. “We haven’t looked back since.” Running a collective means every practitioner has their own schedule, their own clients, and their own income. Jane has been flexible enough to work the same way. Online booking lets each practitioner run their own schedule, so Elizabeth is rarely on the phone, and payments can be deposited straight into each practitioner’s own account rather than routing through a central clinic account.

Ten rooms and a loft

That room to grow is happening as of fall 2026. Painted Brick is moving about a kilometre down the road from its current location, from five treatment rooms to 10, with a third-floor loft Elizabeth has plans for: group work, breathwork, sound bath sessions, even a one-day drop-in retreat for group activities and treatments. She’s growing her own work alongside the space. In March she’ll be travelling to Japan to train in Reiki and lean further into energy work, one more thing to bring back to the shared practice.

Resources

• Connect with Elizabeth and the Painted Brick Wellness team on Instagram
• Connect with Elizabeth and the team through the Painted Brick Wellness website

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