Ginger Garner MPT, ATC - is an educator in medical therapeutic yoga and a physical therapist in integrative rehabilitation. Her fields of focus include orthopaedics, chronic pain, and women’s health.  Ginger is an activist for improving health care in America and reaches her audience through her popular columns, Breathing In This Life, Fit and Fearless Birth on Modern Mom, Yang-Sheng Magazine, Caring Economy, and her publications in medical therapeutic yoga.

Ginger has written more than 30 programs and a 4 volume text standardizing the use of yoga in integrative medicine and rehabilitation through her program Professional Yoga Therapy. Her undergraduate to post-graduate & medical continuing education programs were a first in healthcare when she founded the program in 2001.  Her most recent project is developing the first US based distance education program in medical therapeutic yoga (2010-2012) now offered in partnership with the National Athletic Trainers’ Association and other national organizations. Ginger credits her work in multiple settings, such as outpatient orthopaedics, women’s health, inpatient, wound care, neuromuscular, cardiopulmonary, obstetric therapies, home health, as well as her studies and performance in music and sound, with developing her methodology in using yoga as medicine.

Founder of Professional Yoga Therapy – A Grassroots Movement in Evidence Based Yoga Education to Improve Health Care In America

During her graduate studies in physical therapy and public health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, almost 20 years ago, Ginger developed her original mission for the first education program in medical yoga, out of what she perceived as a great disconnect in American health care.  Professional Yoga Therapy (PYT) was born out of the vision to see eastern and western medicine yoked to offer more comprehensive health care for both the healthy and complex American patient. Today, PYT offers a working model for educational standards in medical yoga education and integrative health care delivery in the US.

Ginger has trained hundreds of medical professionals across North America over the last decade in using yoga and Pilates in Complementary and Alternative Medicine; while at the same time working to raise awareness and funds for improving women’s health.  As a result, graduates from the PYT program have created or taken jobs as integrative rehabilitation supervisors in hospital systems, clinics, and non-traditional settings in nursing, medicine, as well as therapy.