The Danish Wounded Warriors Project works to rehabilitate those that have suffered severe injuries. Photo / Supplied
She used to be a ballet dancer, pirouetting with some of the best as part of the Danish Royal Ballet under director Peter Schaufuss.
Now, she uses Pilates skills acquired throughout her career spanning over 20 years to rehabilitate people that have suffered traumatic injuries.
Jojo Bowman is the project leader of the Danish Wounded Warriors Project which was established by the Danish Royal Ballet Foundation.
They started the project in response to media reports highlighting a lack of rehabilitation efforts for soldiers returning to Denmark from the war in Afghanistan in 2009.
Bowman said she was thinking about what she would do after her ballet career ended when she was approached about being a part of the project.
"I knew the benefits of this training. Ballet dancers all know that the career is quite short. No one wants to see a 40-year-old ballet dancer," Bowman says.
"I'd never worked with amputees before. I didn't know what a prostetic leg looked like. I was assured it was not about going out to save the world, but to see if I could help."
The project uses Pilates, which focuses on stabilising people's core strength, helping their breathing patterns and getting them thinking clearly to rehabilitate.
Early on, Bowman had a hard time convincing people of the benefits of Pilates and that started with a trip to the Copenhagen University Hospital.
There, Bowman met with professor of surgery Finn Gottrup who was more than a little bit skeptical about her proposal of using the theatre to teach Pilates to the soldiers.
"Jokingly I said 'even if it's just getting the guys out of the hospital environment to where there's a lot of beautiful ballet dancers in tight clothing, what's the harm in that?'"
"Then he thought we were onto something. He was skeptical because putting such newly immobile men in the same room as elite ballet dancers could have been a bad thing."
It wasn't.
From there, Bowman and her husband Andrew Bowman, whose parents Catherine Bowman and Richard Ansell live in Upokongaro near Whanganui, got to work.
The Bowmans loaded wheelchairs into their vehicle and drove to the hospital where they would take soldiers living in the patient hotel to the theatre for Pilates training.
"Two of them that we call the bravest soldiers in Denmark started it by stepping forward and agreeing to a free session with us," Bowman says.
"They were also extremely skeptical because they thought Pilates was for celebrities and old women that sit on a board and pant."
The work proved to be successful and the project reached out to the US Navy Hospital who were also using Pilates to rehabilitate wounded soldiers.
After a visit from master instructor Elizabeth Larkam, Bowman hung up her ballet shoes, put on her business hat and committed to bolstering funding.
Enough funds were raised to open the training and knowledge centre in the heart of Copenhagen with enough left over to take on 15 soldiers.
They were men that had stood on explosive devices, been targeted by roadside bombs or suffered gunshot wounds that resulted in neurological damage.
In their first week of running the centre, their first civilian showed up.
It was a young woman who walked through the door, having been beaten up and thrown out of a third-storey window some time ago.
"She'd broken every bone in her body, had a traumatic brain injury and had post-traumatic stress disorder," Bowman says.
"That was a big turning point for us. The question was, could we transform or translate these programmes that we'd devised for soldiers, for civilians?"
In 2014, the project took on a small group of civilians and discovered a synergy between them and the soldiers, who were inspired to get back in touch with their civility.
The Danish Wounded Warriors Project have been researching their work from the start and have managed to reintegrate 61 per cent of participants into the workforce.
Every one of those people had been told that they would never work again.
The youngest person they have trained was 15 and that is an area those involved in the project have discovered as requiring more attention.
Bowman says they have found younger people that have been left in rehabilitation homes for the elderly.
"You have a 17-year-old who was in an electrical accident, major burns throughout his body and he's sat in a rehab home for 65-year-old women in wheelchairs.
"It's not exactly motivating. That younger group has somehow fallen through the cracks in the system."
The project is fully-funded by private sponsors which has become harder since civilians became involved as the work with the soldiers attracted a lot of attention.
However, finances have been helped with the project striking up a relationship with the Paralympics and insurance companies also becoming interested.
Bowman says it is important to remember that their project provides secondary care and that they come in after patients receive medical care and leave the hospital.
"The state has the money that it has and you can get the rehabilitation you can get within the system, but generally that will not be longer than three to six months.
"These are injuries for life that require training for life so one of the key things with our secondary rehabilitation care is a two to three-year training programme."
The Bowmans are currently on holiday in New Zealand with daughter Marley and son Liam, who are enjoying spending time with their grandparents.
The children were born and raised in Denmark, which is where Andrew met Jojo as he also used to do ballet.
Before they left for their holiday, Bowman and the project team were approached by a man that Bowman believes will provide their biggest challenge yet.
The Danish man and his wife are well known wildlife photographers who were filming a documentary series about rare animals nearing extinction.
"They were in a market in Gabon. He was attacked, stabbed multiple times in the throat and in the heart. He lost four litres of blood and was pretty much a goner," Bowman says.
"They managed to get the knife off this guy, but he was severely injured. He's had so many strokes and lost so much blood, he is wheelchair-bound and very challenged."
Despite the man being almost completely lame on his left side, the couple remain devoted to fighting through and getting to Australia to finish their work.
Bowman says she is excited to start working with the photographer.
"I've never worked with someone who is this cognitively challenged before. You can hear with his speech and his way of being, he's almost child-like, slightly simple.
"But when he looks at you, you can see he is absolutely there. I'm really excited to see how this story evolves."
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