ABOUT ME

Hello, I’m Josephine, although most people call me Jo! I’m the founder of Grace x Strength, a yoga therapist, mother of two boys, migraine advocate and postgraduate psychology student at UNSW. My main interests are trauma, psychology and migraine, particularly how our experiences can affect the brain and body over time.

I first came to yoga during my second pregnancy. My first pregnancy and birth had been traumatic and going into my second, I really wanted to find a better way to manage the experience. Yoga became a big part of that. My second labour was very different, and I ended up giving birth naturally without external analgesics. At the time, I was convinced I had found the answer to pain management.

Over the years that followed, I was juggling a corporate career, motherhood and teaching yoga, while my migraine was gradually getting worse. What had once been episodic migraine eventually became chronic and debilitating, despite the fact that I was still practising yoga regularly.

This was difficult for me to reconcile because I had experienced firsthand how helpful yoga could be, yet here I was practising and teaching it while becoming increasingly unwell. It made me question some of my own assumptions about yoga and pain. It was then that I became more interested in understanding what was happening from a neuroscience perspective. I wanted to understand the nervous system, why we respond differently to stress and pain, and why something that helps in one situation may not necessarily help in another.

That curiosity eventually led me back to university to study psychology.

These days, I’m particularly interested in how early life stress and childhood experiences can shape the brain and nervous system, and how this may relate to conditions such as migraine later in life. I’m also interested in emerging embodied treatments and what psychology and neuroscience can teach us about practices involving the body. As I continue my studies, I hope to bring some of what I’m learning back into my yoga teaching and share it here in a way that is practical and accessible.

Before studying psychology, I completed an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Marketing and spent more than 12 years working in global media and technology. I later founded Grace x Strength, an online yoga space offering accessible practices alongside Christian messages of peace and love.

I’ve completed more than 1,000 hours of yoga training and hold certifications in Yoga Therapy, Chair Yoga and Kids Yoga. I’m also a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-500) with Yoga Alliance and trained with my teacher, Briohny Smyth. For several years, I’ve also been involved with Migraine Australia, advocating for greater awareness and understanding of migraine.

I was honoured to become the first registered Christian Yoga Teacher with Yoga Australia, and over the years my work and story have been featured in Neuroscience & Yoga, Migraine Australia, Yoga Journal, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Salvation Army magazine (Warcry), Eternity News, Modern Witnesses, and Wesley Mission.

For several years, Instagram was one of the main places I shared yoga, migraine advocacy and everyday reflections. The account now holds a large archive of posts and videos from that chapter of my work.

My Christian faith continues to be an important part of my life and the way I approach yoga. Studying psychology has also made me more thoughtful about the difference between what I’ve experienced personally and what the evidence allows us to conclude more broadly. I’m still interested in where science, faith and yoga come together in my own life, but I’m also learning to appreciate the different questions each allows me to explore.

Outside of all of that, you’ll find at the ballet studio, tending to my plants, cheering my husband and boys on at sport or catching up with friends over coffee.

With Love,
Josephine xx

P.S.
If you’ve ever wondered where the name LoveJosephine came from, it actually started with this blog. I used to sign off my posts with “With Love, Josephine x” and somewhere along the way LoveJosephine became the name for this space.

There’s another meaning behind it, too. My Chinese name means “Sky Love”, which made the name feel even more fitting. And I suppose that’s why LoveJosephine has stuck… it gives me a place to share all the different parts of who I am and what I care about.