Restoring Communal Heat: A Conversation With Heatual Founder Lia Ottoni

How an ancient ritual, a modern access gap, and a regenerative partnership shaped a new model of community-centered wellness.

A Ritual, Rediscovered

Heatual began not as a business idea, but as a feeling a need for grounding, connection, and nervous-system repair in a world built on speed.
Founder Lia Ottoni experienced firsthand how heat therapy brought her presence, clarity, and community. But she also saw a truth few in wellness acknowledge:

• The people who need ritual most often have the least access to it.

To bring Heatual to life, Lia partnered with Netra CRB, a regenerative strategy studio that helps founders surface invisible cultural gaps and tell the deeper story their brand is meant to carry. What emerged was not a brand “created,” but a brand revealed a communal ritual restored to everyday life. In this conversation, Lia shares the vision, the cultural insight, and the regenerative approach that shaped Heatual from the inside out.

Q: What first inspired you to create Heatual?

Lia: Heatual began with a contradiction I couldn’t shake. Heat has been used around the world for centuries: Nordic saunas, Indigenous sweat lodges, Turkish hammams as communal healing spaces. But here, heat therapy lives behind wellness memberships, luxury spas, and individual performance culture. It didn’t feel aligned with its roots. It didn’t feel accessible. And it certainly didn’t feel communal.

Heatual came from wanting to return heat to the people to rebuild a ritual that should never have been exclusive in the first place.

Q: Your brand has a very clear identity rooted in belonging. How did that clarity come through?

Lia: Honestly, through a mix of intuition and reflection and through having partners who know how to listen deeply. Working with Netra CRB was pivotal because they didn’t try to “brand” me. They helped me name what was already there.

They asked questions that cut beneath aesthetics:

• What ritual are you restoring?

• Who has been historically excluded from it?

• What happens when heat becomes communal again instead of individual?

They reflected the cultural truth I was sensing that Heatual is about more than a sauna. It’s about reintroducing belonging into wellness.

That clarity shaped the entire identity.

Q: What does “communal heat” mean to you?

Lia: It means presence. It means being witnessed. It means sharing a moment where you’re just a human in a room with other humans — no performance, no optimization. When you enter a hot space together, you all soften. Your breath syncs. Your nervous system resets, and you feel less alone. There is something ancient and disarming about heat. Communal heat is simply returning to what heat has always been: a relational experience.

Q: Heatual is mobile by design. Why was that important?

Lia: Mobility is what turns heat from a luxury into a public good. A mobile sauna can go to communities who’ve never had access. It can show up at workplaces where burnout is normalized, at festivals where people need grounding, at neighborhoods where wellness infrastructure doesn’t exist. Netra helped me articulate this clearly: Heatual isn’t asking people to come to wellness it’s bringing wellness back to the people. Mobility restores the ritual to everyday life.

Q: What was the brand-building process like behind the scenes?

Lia: It felt regenerative. It didn’t feel like creating a brand from scratch, it felt like uncovering a story that already existed in the culture, the community, and my own experience. Netra’s process was grounded in insight, language, and cultural clarity. They helped me organize my intuition into a system the narrative, the values, the offering, the experience without losing the human spirit behind it. It was co-creation, not production.

Q: What impact are you seeing from Heatual so far?

Lia: People walk in strangers and walk out connected. Teams slow down. Stress dissolves. You see it in their breath, their faces, their posture. Community members tell me, “I didn’t know I needed this.” That sentence keeps me going. Heat has a way of bringing people back to themselves — and to each other.

Q: What do you hope Heatual becomes in the future?

Lia: I want Heatual to be a daily or weekly ritual for people, not a special occasion. A grounding point. A communal exhale.

We’re building toward:

• Corporate programs

• Community pop-ups

• Memberships

• A future fleet of mobile saunas

• A Heatual app

• And eventually, a network of “heat hubs” across cities

All accessible. All communal. All regenerative. Heatual is the beginning of restoring something human that culture drifted away from.

Q: If you had to describe Heatual in one line, what would it be?

Lia: “Heat that heals. Rituals that belong to everyone.”

Heatual represents a new kind of wellness brand one built not around performance, but around ritual, grounding, and community.
Netra CRB is honored to be part of its early formation, supporting Lia in articulating the cultural insight, regenerative narrative, and purpose that make Heatual not just a service, but a restoration.