My Story
I'm a mindfulness and yoga teacher, and alongside Joanna Rose Wellbeing I also work part-time as a primary school teacher. So I understand how full, busy and demanding life can feel.
Like many people, I spent years trying to keep all the plates spinning. I was teaching, raising two young children, renovating our family home and doing my best to keep everything going. I kept telling myself that life would feel easier once I'd got through the next week, the next school term or the next thing on my list. The trouble was, there was always another thing.
Looking back, I realise I wasn't really living my life. I was rushing through it.
Around that time, I was also experiencing a number of health challenges and, although I didn't know it then, I was beginning to realise that constantly pushing through wasn't working anymore.
One day my mum sent me a little book by Thich Nhat Hanh. Inside was a simple story about washing the dishes simply to wash the dishes. It sounds almost too ordinary to matter, but something about it stopped me in my tracks. It made me realise that I wasn't really present for my own life.
That small moment led me to enrol on an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course at Swansea University in 2016 and, looking back, it changed the direction of my life. Not because life suddenly became easier. It didn't. I still had a busy family, a demanding job and all the ordinary ups and downs that come with being human. What changed was the way I experienced them.
I began noticing my thoughts instead of being swept away by them. I started appreciating ordinary moments I'd been too busy to notice. I learnt that slowing down isn't about doing less; it's about paying fuller attention to the life that's already here.
One moment from that time has stayed with me ever since. After learning about mindful listening, I came home determined to really listen to my children. During a conversation, my young son suddenly stopped, looked at me and said, "Mum… you're really listening." I still get emotional thinking about that. It made me realise that mindfulness wasn't simply helping me feel calmer. It was changing the way I showed up for the people I loved.
That experience sparked a curiosity that has never really left me. I wanted children to have these skills much earlier than I had, so I trained with the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP). Watching children begin to understand their thoughts, emotions and bodies showed me just how powerful mindfulness could be.
One day, during a swimming lesson, a little girl was frightened to let go of the side of the pool. Before I could step in, another child quietly walked over and said, "It's just your amygdala trying to keep you safe. Notice your breathing."Slowly she relaxed, took a breath and let go. I remember thinking, this is why this matters. It wasn't about remembering a mindfulness lesson. It was one child using understanding and compassion to help another.
Those moments made me realise that mindfulness isn't just something we practise on a course. It's something that quietly shapes the way we relate to ourselves and to one another.
As my work in schools grew, I found myself asking another question. If supporting children can have such a positive impact, what happens when we support the adults around them too?
That question led me to train teachers, support school staff and eventually become a MiSP mentor and advisor. It also widened my work beyond schools into workplaces and community settings. I've come to believe that when we help adults feel more grounded, compassionate and connected, those benefits ripple out into families, classrooms, organisations and communities.
Alongside all of this, I continued to deepen my own practice through retreats, further study and ongoing professional development. Over the years I've been fortunate to train in mindfulness, Compassionate Mind Training, yoga, somatic movement and, more recently, Forest Bathing. Each has added another piece to the puzzle, but they've all led me back to the same simple belief:
When we slow down enough to really notice what's happening, we often discover we already have more strength, wisdom and compassion than we realised.
A mindfulness teacher training retreat at Trigonos in the mountains of Eryri became another turning point for me. Standing in an early morning movement practice led by Sarah Silverton, watching the clouds drift slowly across the mountains, I realised that slowing down wasn't something I had to earn once I'd finished everything on my to-do list. It was something I needed to practise in the middle of ordinary life.
Later, I trained as a yoga teacher. Initially it was simply to deepen my own understanding of movement, breath and wellbeing, but I quickly realised something interesting. People rarely talked about the stretches afterwards. They talked about how they felt. Calmer. Lighter. More connected. More themselves.
Through mindful movement and somatic practices, I found another way of helping people experience mindfulness, not simply as something to think about, but something to feel in their bodies.
Over time, those experiences naturally evolved into Joanna Rose Wellbeing.
Today my work has grown into supporting people through mindfulness, Compassionate Mind Training, embodied movement, seasonal retreats and time in nature. On the surface they might look like different things, but to me they're all different doorways into the same experience: helping people slow down, reconnect and come home to themselves.
Then I came across Compassionate Mind Training, and it felt like another piece of the puzzle falling into place. One of the things I love most about compassion is that it isn't simply about being kind. It's about recognising suffering in ourselves and others, and finding the wisdom and courage to respond. This changed the way I understood both myself and the people I work with. It reminded me that there isn't something wrong with us. We're human. Our minds are simply trying to protect us. Mindfulness helps us notice. Compassion helps us decide how we'd like to respond.
Nature has become another quiet teacher. Whether I'm walking through woodland, sitting beside the sea or simply noticing the changing seasons, I've found that the natural world has a remarkable way of bringing me back to the present moment. I'm endlessly curious, and one of the things I love most is continuing to learn. Recently, I've been fortunate to train in Forest Bathing in Scotland, an experience that has deepened my appreciation of how profoundly nature can support mindfulness, compassion and wellbeing. I'm excited to continue weaving that learning into the retreats and nature-based experiences I offer, helping other people experience that same sense of slowing down and reconnecting.
People sometimes ask if I always feel calm because I teach mindfulness. I usually laugh. Definitely not! I still overthink. I still rush. I still have days when life feels overwhelming. Mindfulness hasn't made me perfect. It's simply given me a kinder way of meeting those moments.
Over the years, it's often been the smallest moments that have stayed with me. A participant recovering from cancer once told me that mindfulness and mindful movement had helped him rediscover ordinary moments of joy during treatment. Teachers have shared that they feel more present with their pupils and families, while people attending retreats often describe returning home feeling lighter, more connected and with a renewed appreciation for everyday life. Those conversations mean a great deal to me because they remind me that this work isn't about dramatic transformations. More often, it's about the quiet shifts that happen when people begin to understand themselves with a little more kindness and carry that into their everyday lives.
I simply hope to create spaces where people feel safe enough to slow down, breathe, understand themselves a little more deeply and reconnect with what really matters. Whether that's through a yoga class, a compassion course, a workshop in a school, a workplace programme or a quiet walk in nature, my hope is always the same: that people leave feeling just a little more connected than when they arrived.
This isn't about getting it right or pushing yourself.
It's about having somewhere to come back to—just as you are.