Mission & Vision

Our mission is to offer post-graduate, evidence based, medical yoga continuing education that can transform health care delivery by addressing the whole individual.

PYT begins with western rehabilitation methods as its base and then evolves methods of yoga and Ayurveda by testing them against the PYT Method's 15 evidence based precepts.

PYT graduates are prepared to be:

• Leaders in the field of integrative rehabilitation.
• Master clinicians in medical yoga therapy.
• Supervisors of integrative therapy programs which can employ and oversee both licensed medical professionals and laypersons trained in CAM techniques.

PYT honors and recognizes

• The birth culture of yoga and Ayurveda and its traditions from India.
• Western medicine has a vital role in restoring health and saving lives, which cannot be ignored or discarded by those who practice holistic medicine.
• All medicine, east or west, must universally evolve based on research and new technology.

PYT manifests its mission through the visionary efforts of its CE programs.

• We are laying the groundwork for a new system of delivery for rehabilitation in the United States.
• We are working to improve health care delivery by teaching clinicians how to empower the individual. We aim to put health care back into the hands of the person.

PYT is doing its part to

• Set high standards for teaching and therapeutic yoga use.
• Set the highest prerequisites in the field so its graduates can use yoga to address the complex American patient. 
• Make yoga relevant for the 21st century.
• Be a green business.
• Support humanitarian projects.

What is Yoga Therapy?

A topic of great interest and debate internationally, yoga therapy is a growing field in its infancy in the United States and abroad.  Despite the age of yoga, the recognition of a yoga therapist is yet to be established and accepted within the framework of the western medical model.

The Evolution of PYT from Founder, Ginger Garner

2002 - Yoga therapy is about learning to facilitate functional patterns within the breath and the poses and to identify and guide a student toward managing dysfunctional ones. In addition, being a yoga therapist requires constant self analysis & reflection.  We must deepen our self awareness before we can deepen the students’ self awareness.

2003 - The therapeutic value of yoga is determined by function + interrelationship.

2004 - The practice of yoga therapy shifts or completely changes existing paradigms of health and wellbeing through combining the ancient experiential wisdom of yoga with modern research and rehabilitation, an ongoing event to contentedly anticipate and embrace. Yoga therapy as a discipline, when practiced by those trained in both western and eastern philosophies, addresses every facet of the being and spirit – psychological, physical, spiritual, emotional, and social, in order to bring ultimate evenness to the individual.

2009 – The practice of Professional Yoga Therapy is characterized by 15 precepts developed to distinguish the practice of yoga therapy by a licensed medical professional from that of a laytrained or non-licensed medical professional.  The PYT, specifically trained through PYTS, is a therapist or other licensed health care professional who is able to treat the individual through a multi-faceted approach in either an individual or group setting, as part of a medical team, and can act in a supervisory role and/or liason between the laytrained yoga therapist and the western medical professional.