JOSEPHINE LAU
FOUNDER, GRACE X STRENGTH
Josephine, known to most as “Jo”, is the Founder of Grace x Strength, a yoga teacher, mother of two boys and postgraduate psychology student at UNSW. Her work brings together Christian faith, yoga, lived experience with migraine and a growing academic interest in psychology and neuroscience.
Jo’s journey into yoga began during her second pregnancy, after a traumatic first birth left her looking for a different way to support her body through pregnancy and labour. Her second birth was very different from her first and the experience introduced her to yoga as a way of working with pain and anxiety. She went on to train as a yoga teacher and eventually founded Grace x Strength to share these practices with others from a Christian perspective.
Over the years, Jo’s understanding of yoga and wellbeing has continued to evolve. While balancing a corporate career, motherhood and yoga teaching, a migraine condition she had lived with since childhood progressed from episodic to chronic levels, despite her own dedicated yoga practice. This made her increasingly curious about what was happening in the brain and body, and about how much we can reasonably attribute to any one practice when it comes to health and wellbeing.
Those questions eventually led Jo back to university to study psychology. Her academic interests include trauma and early life stress, neuroscience and chronic pain conditions such as migraine. She is particularly interested in the relationship between psychological and physiological processes, as well as research into embodied approaches to treatment. Her studies have also led her to think more critically about the relationships between yoga, lived experience, faith and scientific evidence, including the different kinds of questions each can help us explore.
Jo has completed more than 1,000 hours of yoga training since beginning with Holy Yoga in 2015. She is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-500) with Yoga Alliance and has completed additional training in Yoga Therapy, Chair Yoga and Kids Yoga, as well as training with Briohny Smyth. She was the first Christian yoga teacher registered with Yoga Australia and has also served as an Ambassador for Migraine Australia.
Her work and story have been featured by Yoga Journal, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Salvation Army’s Warcry, Eternity News, Modern Witnesses, Wesley Mission,among others. She has also contributed to conversations around yoga, neuroscience and migraine through Neuroscience & Yoga and Migraine Australia.
For Jo, Grace x Strength brings together the different parts of her experience: Christian faith and yoga alongside her more recent study of psychology and neuroscience, which continues to inform her broader thinking.
Outside of Grace x Strength, Jo can be found at the ballet studio, tending to her plants, cheering on her husband and boys at sport, or spending time with friends over coffee.
For more about Jo’s studies, writing, migraine advocacy and broader work, visit HERE.
