We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brit Guerin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brit below.

Brit, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?

Owning a business is so incredibly rewarding – and it’s pretty tough. This duality is important to recognize, and focusing on the rewarding aspects keeps me going. As the co-owner of a mission-driven wellness center, the reward comes from our client’s experiences and testimonials. Our mission is to activate inclusive wellness for mind, body, and community. In many cases, wellness can be an exclusive space as it can focus on appearance-related goals and weight loss. In contrast, Current Wellness aligns with Health at Every Size (TM) which aims to provide compassionate care for people of all sizes. The truth is, we can be healthy or unhealthy at any size, AND focusing on weight loss can actually lead to negative health impacts.

We are so grateful for our community who has rallied behind our mission to make our space safe and welcoming. A huge shoutout to one of our members, Annie F., who was willing to share her experience at Current Wellness. Check it out below:

“My experience ever since joining Current Wellness has been nothing but rewarding and beautiful. I have been a member of the Current for a little over a year, and honestly, I just cannot praise it enough. I was born with a few disabilities that affect my spine and legs, and have pretty bad gym trauma from earlier days, so going to a gym setting and moving my body was never joyful. Going to a gym setting or even moving my body at home to a video was(and still is!) very difficult, but ever since finding Current Wellness I have learned great alternatives to certain movements my disabilities prevent me from doing. Every instructor is Health At Every Size(TM) trained and they always have such great adaptations for every member who would like one.

I never got any happiness from movement until I found Current Wellness. The exercise was always about losing weight, never about getting stronger and more flexible. I never looked forward to exercising and I even cried most days I went to the gym. Now, I am excited to go to a class and move my body. I am exercising for strength and flexibility, not weight loss, and it makes the experience so much more enjoyable. When I took my first class, I was welcomed with open arms and warmth. Brit even knew my name before I ever came to a class, and that small detail showed me how much she cares for the community. I am so thankful to Current Wellness and every single person I’ve met through it. I found joy in something I loathed growing up, and that to me is worth everything.”

The sentiment is mutual between Annie and me. As much as she benefits from our classes and mission at Current Wellness, we benefit from her showing up and being a part of our community. We designed our classes with people like her in mind and it’s an honor to get to serve her. Thank you, Annie and our whole community!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started my career in fitness in 2007 as a group fitness instructor. I continued teaching classes, training clients, and training fitness professionals, and then in 2016, I decided to go back to school for clinical mental health. I never left the fitness industry, but added on a new lens of mental health. I began to see more clearly how the fitness industry can lead to shame, obsessive thoughts and behaviors, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.

I started my mental health private practice in 2019, and specialize in eating disorders, anxiety, and trauma. In 2020, I opened a wellness center called Current Wellness (a.k.a. the Current) with my partner, Nathan Williams. The Current aims to activate inclusive wellness for mind, body, and community, and has a particular focus on size inclusion. Instead of focusing on weight loss, we focus on promoting health behaviors and empowering individuals to feel their best – just as they are.

Current Wellness is an integrative wellness center in downtown Raleigh, NC. We offer fitness and yoga classes, personal training, cooking classes, reiki, massage, physical therapy, acupuncture, mental health therapy, nutrition counseling, and more.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

I learned within the first six months of opening Current Wellness that I needed to dedicate time and resources to personal sustainability. I was operating at a 11/10 and heading straight for burnout. Part of me knew that this was just a new small business phase, and another part of me knew that I needed to be deliberate about taking care of myself.

In the beginning, I was running the wellness center and my private practice, seeing my therapy clients, offering personal training, teaching fitness classes, and managing the team. We started without any staff employees, so all of the cleaning, marketing, operations, programming, you name it, fell on me and my partner. Needless to say, there were a lot of late nights cleaning our facility!

At my core, I knew that if I wasn’t getting enough rest and self-care, no one would benefit. Therefore, I had to make some difficult and scary decisions. The first thing I did was step away from personal training, and I trained other personal trainers in size inclusive programming. Next, we hired a cleaning company. Next, we hired an assistant manager to support operations. Decisions continued to add-up and support my sustainability.

Two years later, I have more spaciousness to not only take care of myself, but also think about the vision of our business.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my business partner (and life partner) at NC State University. I was running the Group Fitness program at the Wellness and Recreation Center, and he was running the Outdoor Adventure program. We were friends for about 2 years, and often commiserated about our dating lives, before we got out of the friend zone.

When I was finishing my degree in clinical mental health, I was planning to open my practice that also included fitness classes. He was trying to sneak in a kitchen to offer cooking classes, and so we knew we had something bigger to offer. One thing led to the next, and we wanted to create an integrative wellness center to collaborative with aligned wellness professionals.

It’s been a total dream to get to work with my partner in everything.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.currentwellnessraleigh.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/current_wellness/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/currentwellnessraleigh
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/current-wellness/
• Twitter: n/a
• Youtube: n/a
• Yelp: n/a

Image Credits
Anna Danielle Photography