We were lucky to catch up with Daniela Spear recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Daniela, thanks for joining us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

For most of my life, I have lived under the umbrella of autoimmune disease. Even as a fitness professional, I defined myself as an autoimmune movement coach. This helped me to reach those in the autoimmune community and teach about the value of exercise and movement in managing autoimmune disease. I used to think my defining moment was when I was diagnosed with Lupus. The real defining moment however was when I decided to heal it.

After reaching a point of burnout in early 2022, I began to explore my beliefs, thoughts, and patterns that created autoimmune disease in the first place. Navigating my inner environment helped to reveal that I was the creator of my own life’s experience. If I could contribute to autoimmune disease manifesting in my body, that I could also create the healing environment I needed to live the life I desired – one of peace, joy, and freedom, no longer limited by disease.

My defining moment, choosing to embrace myself as a healer, rather than a victim of autoimmune disease, has shifted the work I do in the movement profession to focus on supporting the body’s healing pathways. While advocacy work and raising awareness for autoimmune diseases such as Lupus is incredibly important and necessary work, I have chosen to advocate in a different way. I want people to know that there is more to life than just managing symptoms. I want people to know what I wish I had known sooner – that healing from autoimmune disease and living a life free of symptoms and medication is possible when we come into a more loving and compassionate relationship with ourselves. And today, I teach and advocate that through movement.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am Daniela, Restorative Movement Coach, and owner of Remade Wellness, founded in 2016. I have been a lifelong lover of movement and student of the human body – I even wrote my seventh grade research paper on exercise. I grew up thinking I wanted to become a Physical Therapist. But Physics 101 has other plans for me. I realized that I really had a passion for coaching and the preventative side of things. So I became a Certified Personal Trainer and Health Coach. And later became a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, the gold standard in the movement profession.

After experiencing how much movement helped me to manage Lupus symptoms, I committed my career to teaching those with autoimmune disease how to safely and effectively implement exercise into their lives. This really motivated me to search even deeper into health-focused strategies that could help those living with autoimmune disease experience life beyond a diagnosis.

Along the search I was confronted with my own limiting beliefs about myself and my life. I wanted more for my life than just managing symptoms and living in between autoimmune flare-ups. In the depths of my own research I realized that healing could not just be getting enough exercise, eating the right foods, or micromanaging every unusual symptom with supplements and expensive ‘health solutions.’ Healing had more to do with the relationship I held with myself – the beliefs I held about myself formed from the experiences I lived. And there was a lot of healing to be done on the inside. The body reflects what the mind suppresses.

Now I educate my community and clients to see autoimmune and chronic symptoms as patterns of protection – the body is carrying the load of what is mentally and emotionally difficult for us to process. With this perspective, we learn to hold more compassion and self-love for our bodies. Autoimmune and chronic symptoms are our core needs being expressed in physical form and not problems to be fixed or silenced.

I teach my clients to embody healing through Restorative Bodywork Sessions. These 1:1 sessions use a variety of movement modalities and assessments to identify where the body is holding tension that is contributing to chronic symptoms such as pain, inflammation, and on-going fatigue. When we experience pain, it is often referred from elsewhere in the body. Restorative Bodywork Sessions aim to hold space for the body to communicate and be supported. We support the body’s healing pathways – the Breath, the Nervous System, the Lymphatic System, the 5 Defense Systems, and the Meridian – using movement and self-bodywork. When the body feels safe and supported, it will release tension held in the form of protection patterns. Sessions are available virtually and in-person.

What makes me a unique coach is that I believe in both my clients experiences with autoimmune disease, because I experienced them myself, and I also believe in their body’s ability to heal and be restored, because I also experienced that. I know so many people are searching for life with more meaning than just managing and getting through flare-ups. Restorative Bodywork Sessions are the place to shift from managing to healing, from just getting through the days to living joyfully.

I like to think of myself as the Joanna Gaines of the movement profession. Only I am not remodeling houses, I am remodeling immune systems and nervous systems in order for people to experience a home within their own bodies.

Remade Wellness, was founded on the idea that just like kintsugi art, something that is broken can be remade into something even more beautiful and valuable. And that’s what I want those with autoimmune and chronic symptoms to know. A diagnosis is simply a second chance at life, an invitation to a more loving and compassionate relationship with the self. When you feel the most broken, you have everything within you to heal and be remade into an even more beautiful and valuable work of art than you could have imagined.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

“I am not allowed to rest.” I used to pride myself on how busy I was and how much I could get done. I lived from burnout to burnout. And this was showing up in how I ran my business too. I would say yes to any opportunity that came my way, even if I didn’t want to do it. This pattern left me with little time to actually devote to my business or things that I enjoyed. I was supporting everyone else’s business more than I was supporting my own. I constantly felt like I was spinning my wheels because I didn’t know how to rest. Or at least I didn’t believe that I could. I thought that if I took a break, I’d get left behind because I would see other entrepreneurs launching products and services left and right. Yet somehow, no matter how much I worked, I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere.

When I started to pay attention to what my actions said about my beliefs, I realize that ‘I am not allowed to rest’ was at the root of my busy, burned out, and unfulfilled life. Learning to rest and approach my life and business with ease has been an on-going practice. It is something I have to intentionally choose. And trust that work + rest is the way forward. Rest is an essential part of me feeling my best and being able to give my clients my best work. It seems backwards, but doing less work now, saying no more often, and choosing to focus on only a few things has proven more productive than ever before. I am much happier and more fulfilled in my life, my relationships, and business because I have learned and continue to practice regular rest.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Sharing abundantly has proven the most effective strategy for growing my clientele. When you give people the opportunity to learn from you for free, they are more likely to pay you to teach them again and again. As entrepreneurs we want to keep our best strategies and content for the paying clients. The truth is, if you are transparent and generous with sharing your strategies and best kept secrets, it invites more people into your ecosystem, that later turn into paying clients. People want to see what works and learn about you and what you teach before they invest in you. This is part of building trust with your people before they become clients. Share and teach everything you have and watch your clientele grow. People will pay you to take the strategies you have already shared and apply it to their unique experiences. Abundance gives way to more abundance. So share abundantly.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.remadewellness.com
• Instagram: @daniela.spear
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@danielaspear

Image Credits
Siobhan Lorraine Photograph