Jo Formosa
For Jo, it started with being an Olympic hopeful. Jo had trained many years and while she endured her fair share of sport’s injuries, representing Australia at the Olympics was within reach. Then, a serious back injury shattered Jo’s Olympic dreams, and changed the plot of her life entirely. Jo quickly realised that acupuncture brought her faster relief and recovery times than more traditional physical rehab. While the results were not enough to reopen the road to an Olympic medal, they did become the reason Jo began to study natural medicine.
Health Dynamics is the expression of Jo’s personal journey into natural medicine. Over time, Jo became a fluent practitioner in a number of different traditions, such as Chinese Medicine, Remedial Massage, and Neuro-Strategies, and specialising in Ayurveda. As a witness to the powerful health benefits of all these modalities, it was Jo’s vision to preserve these traditions by offering them in a clinical setting, alongside Ayurveda, in order to provide clients with maximum options to regain their best health.
After listening to an Ayurvedic doctor at a conference speak about how the Science of Ayurveda can help people become disease free and live longer, happier lives, Jo asked him to become one of her gurus, along with Dr Smita and Dr Ajit. Like many “western” students of Ayurveda, Jo found creative ways of combining her own history, passions, and experience with older Ayurvedic teachings.
In the past, Jo always knew first hand that good athletes became great by training both their bodies and their minds. If an athlete got stuck in their physical program, medals were lost. Likewise, if an athlete got stuck in the mental program they were running, they also fell short. After discovering Ayurveda, Jo learned how to mix and match a variety of “programs” to help anyone seeking better overall health.
Coming around full circle, it was, in fact, Jo’s extensive training in these various modalities that eventually brought her to the Olympics, just in a different capacity than originally intended. Jo was contracted to treat Olympic team members, and so took a crucial role in helping Australia win medals, perhaps more than if her back had never been injured.
Jo set up one of the first Ayurvedic clinics in Australia and has a strong record in helping guide patients back to health through her multi-pronged, and practical, approach to healing.
Specialising in serious health conditions – from cancer and digestive disorders to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and autoimmune problems – she has a knack for intuitively understanding the body and reversing even the most complex problems.
For Jo, real healing is done on an individual level and she’s not afraid of disrupting the traditional models. In our busy, fast-paced, and fast-food culture, too often seemingly-small, or niggling, health problems that arise in everyday life are ignored – these become the building blocks of serious disease. The key is treating the cause and not the symptoms.
With 70-80 percent of your immunity located in the digestive system and food intolerance and complaints such as irritable bowel syndrome on the rise in Australia and throughout the Western World, Jo is a strong advocate for gut health. She set up the 28-Day Detox & Re-Set Program which has seen people around the world turn their life around by following her simple, but practical advice on how to eat and live, according to their body type. CEO of Health Dynamics - the world’s first system to link your health (what naturally gets your body in flow), your wealth (what naturally gets your mind in flow) and your happiness (what naturally gets your spirit into flow). This allows users to find out where they are on the health spectrum – and ultimately make their way higher, to better health and wellbeing.
Another one of her programs – the 5:2 Technology Detox helps children, teenagers and adults break a destructive cycle of dependence on technology. The program has been featured in media across Australia and the UK, including a 10-minute national segment on ABC TV and a double page feature in Australia’s widest selling newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph and several BBC radio interviews.
Jo is regularly featured in a wide-range of prominent media outlets including the BBC, ABC, Today Show, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Good Health Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph and more.