Josephine Key is a neuro-musculo-skeletal physiotherapist with over 50 years of clinical practice — and an enduring fascination with one question: why do so many people develop spinal pain, and what can be done about it more effectively?

That question has driven a career spanning paediatric rehabilitation, private musculoskeletal practice, postgraduate clinical research, international teaching, and the development of two clinical frameworks that are now used by physiotherapists and movement therapists worldwide.

Where It Began

Joey's clinical journey began as senior paediatric physiotherapist at a large teaching hospital, working with infants and children with developmental motor delay. It was there that she first encountered adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis — many of whom required major corrective surgery with metal rods and wires to arrest the progressive collapse of their spine.

Frustrated by the absence of effective, less invasive physical therapy alternatives, she set out to understand spinal function more deeply: what it is, how and why it changes, and what can be done about it. That question became, in her own words, her life’s work.

Building a Clinical Framework

Leaving the hospital system, Joey moved into general musculoskeletal private practice and completed a year-long postgraduate course in Manipulative Therapy at Sydney University. Grounded principally in the Maitland approach, it was rigorous and formative — though it reinforced for her how little attention was paid to the interconnected function of the skeletal, neural, and myofascial systems working together.

Her background in paediatrics and rehabilitation had given her a different lens: she was always concerned not just with what was wrong, but why — why musculoskeletal problems develop, why they recur, and why chronic pain is so prevalent. That integrative, systems-based perspective became the foundation of The Key Approach®.

In 1985 she founded Edgecliff Physiotherapy Sports and Spinal Centre — a practice that has shaped and sharpened her clinical thinking for four decades. The practice earned a well-respected reputation for delivering effective care. Private practice, as she puts it, turbocharges the need for effective treatment. There is no room for approaches that don't work.

A Different Way of Seeing

Being an effective clinician, Joey believes, is rather like being Sherlock Holmes — finding the pain source, tracking down the altered functional mechanisms that drive symptoms, and reasoning deductively toward a solution that actually addresses the cause.

That kind of clinical reasoning requires an appreciation of the functional interdependence of the nervous, myofascial, and skeletal systems. Parts of the body don't function in isolation — they function in relationship to each other. A local musculoskeletal pain problem is almost always related to altered function elsewhere in the movement system. Understanding that interdependence is why she describes herself as a neuro-musculo-skeletal physiotherapist — and why that framing matters clinically.

A Life’s Work

The Key Approach® and The Key Moves® Programme represent the distillation of five decades of clinical practice, postgraduate study, peer-reviewed research, and national and international teaching. Joey has authored two textbooks and numerous peer-reviewed papers and has run workshops for clinicians and academics across Australia and internationally.

Now retired from active clinical practice, she remains committed to getting this body of work into the hands of clinicians, movement therapists, and educators and who can extend its reach and impact.

See Publications for Joey's textbooks and peer-reviewed papers.