Ginger Garner

Ginger Garner MPT, ATC, PYT, E-RYT500
PYT Founder and Creator
Ginger Garner is a licensed physical therapist, athletic trainer, and an educator in medical therapeutic yoga, women's health, and holistic pain management.

Ginger is founder of Professional Yoga Therapy (PYT), the first education program for Complementary and Alternative Medicine practice in medical therapeutic yoga in the US.

PYT takes western rehabilitation and adds to it a strong evidence based for using yoga, combined with her 15 precepts of the PYT method.  Ginger is the author of multiple CE texts and programs that are taught at PYT and offered through various organizations across the United States.  She also serves as Executive Director of PYTS and is President/CEO of Living Well, Inc. 

During the last 15 years throughout the US, Ginger has traveled to educate health care professionals about integrative rehabilitation using techniques such as yoga and Pilates, and to raise awareness about improving healthcare and its delivery. Ginger's method is documented in her positively reviewed DVD, Ancient Yoga, New You.

Ginger is a published author who also pens the popular blog about work/life balance and healing arts for mothers, Breathing In This Life. She has been published or featured in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, Lower Extremity Review, PT Advance, OT Advance, IDEA fit, National Association of Mothers' Centers' Your Wo(man) in Washington, People magazine's Mother and Babies blogroll, USA today, and in local print and radio. Her current projects include writing texts in and teaching continuing education on medical therapeutic yoga, as well as writing a women's health book on medical yoga use during pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond.

Ginger's work extends beyond the border of the US to include Haiti and Afghanistan, where she has worked through since 2008 to improve health care for women and children.

Ginger focuses on women's health issues such as childbirth education, prenatal and postpartum Professional Yoga Therapy, pelvic floor dysfunction, and is an activist for women's access to holistic health. Her efforts have been repeatedly recognized by the Associated Press, Heifer International, The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, and Stop Hunger Now not for profit organizations.

Ginger is a member of the Education Section and the Women's Health Section of the American Physical Therapy Association. She is also a member of the National Athletic Trainers' Association and the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Her medical yoga therapy school, PYTS, is a Charter Member of IAYT.

Ginger's mission is to empower a country to seek out holistic health care. She believes health care is a right, not a privilege. Ginger focuses on women's access to holistic health care, and believes that health care professionals trained in medical yoga are ideally suited to deliver therapeutic yoga. As a result, Ginger's method for delivery of a holistic, prevention centered medical model, PYT, was born.

"Everyone can have a richer and more fulfilling life through embracing both medical science and non-dogmatic principles of yoga."               

Ginger's passion for therapeutic healing has led her to study and apply her techniques in diverse venues of physical therapy and disciplines of Yoga through her almost 20 years of practice and study. These areas include home health, inpatient, outpatient, skilled nursing facilities, sports medicine (high school and University level), and her current private practice, where she will even make house calls.

Ginger studied and earned her license as an Athletic Trainer before earning her Master of Physical Therapy at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at UNC, Ginger also completed graduate work in the School of Public Health. Her work in the public health arena underscored her dedication to her grass roots effort to empower the public about holistic, environmentally and socially responsible living.

Her teaching emphasizes flowing meditation of thoughtful movement and breath within the framework of proper biomechanical alignment of the body and meditation of the mind. Garner’s work in chronic pain has earned recognition in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy (2004 Vol. 14) as an effective modality for treating fibromyalgia, neck and back pain, as well as weight management and anxiety/panic disorders. Ginger has been interviewed and quoted by newspapers, journals, and journalists across the United States.

She is a contributor and peer review editor to the International Journal of Yoga Therapy and Yoga Therapy in Practice. Her positively reviewed series of Yoga Therapy DVD's entitled: Ancient Yoga, New You, are modeled on her 18 month research study and over 5 years of focused work with her wellness model treatment of paradigm for chronic pain sufferers. Her most recent written work was published in Yoga In America. She is currently working on a childbirth education text. In 2009 she launched her now popular blog, Breathing In This Life. 

Ginger makes her home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina along with her husband and three wonderful children. 

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