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MPT, ATC

Healing through the Universal Language of Healing Arts
Music, Movement, & Meditation



 
 
ABOUT GINGER

Dedicated to Empowering American Women since 1992, through the healing arts.

Learn More about Ginger's Methods in Women's Health.

Ginger has written, spoken, featured in, or been quoted in or by many organizations, publications, and media outlets including:

  • PT Advance
  • National Association of Mothers’ Centers
  • OT Advance
  • Lower Extermity Review
  • IDEA Fit
  • Yoga Therapy In Practice
  • The International Journal of Yoga Therapy
  • The National Athletic Trainers’ Association
  • The popular blogs Midwife for your Life, SheKnows, Ageless Pilates, and Your (Wo)man in Washington®, and Circle+Bloom Fertility
  • USA Today and other news prints
  • The Holistic Health Show with Dr. Carl Helves
  • Carolina News 14 television
  • (Spring 2011) Her new women's health column, Women Breathing In This Life, for Yang Sheng magazine
  • (Fall 2011) Pathways magazine for parenting.  

Trailblazing in Holistic Physical Therapy
In 2001, Ginger opened one of the first integrative physical therapy and yoga practices in the country after years of practice in traditional orthopaedic, women's health, and hospital settings.
Ginger started the first programs in yoga and medical yoga in North Carolina, and shorty after developed CE programs and began teaching licensed health care professionals how to start and practice integrative medical therapeutic yoga.

Read Testimonials


Founder of a Grassroots Movement
Ginger founded the first program for medical yoga therapy in the US and its method, called Professional Yoga Therapy (PYT)

PYT is the oldest program for medical yoga therapy in the US. It is a model for educational standards in medical yoga education and integrative health care delivery in the United States.

Ginger has taught PYT in every region of the United States from Alaska to the Virgin Islands, including Canada. Hundreds of clinicians and dozens of graduates from the program practice PYT, some of whom are also currently involved in research in yoga, occupational therapy, physical therapy, nursing, and medicine.

Says Ginger, "the quality of our students and their work is a testament to the effectiveness of the PYT method and to the model of medical yoga training it will become in the United States." read more>


Education
BA- Athletic Training 1995
MPT - Physical Therapy 1998
Yoga Studies - 1992 to present

Mentors and teachers
Dr. David Frawley (Ayurvedic expert Pandit Vamadeva Shastri), Aadil Palkhivala, Rodney Yee, Shiva Rea, Pattabhit Jois, Tias Little, David Swenson, Scott Blossom, Sarita Shrestha (mother of Ayurveda in the westNepal's first female Ayurvedic physician, female OB/GYN), and others.

After several years of study Ginger made a decision to depart from claiming a specific lineage and instead began to develop a method she considered more comprehensive - one of combining evidence based rehabilitation with non-dogmatic yoga. After more than 15 years, what has emerged has become known as Professional Yoga Therapy.

Ginger states, I have learned the most about living my yoga, not from my education or experience, but from my mission/karma yoga projects, which include raising my own children They are my gurus.

Her work in multiple settings, such as outpatient orthopaedics, women's health, inpatient, wound care, neuro, cardiopulmonary, obstetric therapies, home health, as well as her studies and performance in music and sound, have all played a role in continuing to develop PYT.


Specialization In Action: A Message from Ginger

Healthy proactive lifestyles are what I promote, facilitate, speak, teach, sing, and live for...
The methods I use define a very different delivery of physical therapy & wellness education - which nurtures a different slant on living healthy.

I use elements of gross and subtle body analysis, combined with my education, to develop holistic wellness and academic programming for individuals, groups, corporations, universities, and communities. 

I serve on the peer review editorial board of the International Journal of Yoga Therapists, the National Athletic Trainers Convention Advanced Track Seminar Committee, and the APTA Section on Women's Health Portal Team. Past commitee involvement has included serving on the first IAYT appointed steering committe for creating educational standards for yoga therapy and various fundraising committees for foreign missions.

IIn 2009 I started Musicians 4 Missions, as a result of my experience on multiple domestic aide missions all over the United States. My efforts focus on fundraising for women and child health and education initiatives in Haiti and Afghanistan.
My standardization stance in IJYT
Press


Most recently...

I authored and am currently teaching the first medical therapeutic yoga series in the United States, offered in distance learning format, through NATA.

My greatest hope is to (finally) finish the maternal and post-partum book I have been nurturing for several years now.

It has existed as a certificate program in specialized professional yoga therapy for motherhood since 2005. Yoga Therapy for the Season of Motherhood & Beyond is a prenatal, childbirth, and postpartum yoga therapy certificate program for the health care professional advocating for mother-centered and holistic health care.

Both PYT and my work will continue to evolve as any art or science does, just as the individual and their society transcends barriers and shatters glass ceilings.

I am currently working across the United States with Universities, hospital systems, and private practice clinics to incorporate PYT into their integrative medicine and wellness programs, and to begin the process of creating programs in medical therapeutic yoga. read more>


2011 & Beyond

I am working to forge a more comprehensive approach than that of just one country's culture and medicine toward a more culturally global or unified manifesto. The foundation for my approach is elemental, using yoga, Ayurveda, and other methods of both ancient and modern healing to help people, especially women, achieve their healthiest life.

My future projects include:

  • Continuing to grow my women and mothering blog, Breathing In This Life, developing a large community of support for mothers and women and to be an educational force for all those who help women thrive.
  • Developing new distance learning educational curriculum in medical therapeutic yoga for medical professionals.
  • Growing my not for profit musical venture for humanitarian aid to Haiti, M4M
  • Expanding my reach to bring healing to all who listen through writing, teaching, and music.

 

 

 

Hotel Regina, ParisGinger Garner MPT, ATC, PYT, ERYT500

Ginger is a practicing licensed physical therapist (MPT), licensed athletic trainer (ATC), advanced level experienced yoga therapist and teacher (ERYT500), certified Pilates instructor (CPI), and Ayurvedic Counselor (ALT).

Publications
Press
Ginger's Music Mission

 

 

Bio Highlights

1992-2004 Developed PYT™ while completing studies in yoga, yoga therapy, athletic training, physical therapy, Ayurveda, feng shui, music, & public health education.

Professional - The medical therapeutic yoga method I have developed co-exists within a framework of the Pentagon of Wellness, which treats every facet of the individual via evidence based medicine & rehabilitation within the context of a post-graduate medically progressive yoga therapy model.

Yoga Therapy - A controversial term with varying definitions, I believe licensed medical professionals are ideally suited to deliver therapeutically based yoga because of their comprehensive knowledge of the human form. Patient centered care has long since existed in modern health care, it simply needs to be applied within the context of a yogic model. I believe our program, working hand in hand with all advocated for yoga therapy, can agree upon a unified definition which will revolutionize health care delivery in this country.


2004
2001-2 - After years of clinical practice, I began lecturing throughout United States in Pilates and Yoga for licensed health care professionals. I also wrote and directed the first certification program in yoga therapy for licensed heath care professionals in the US. The first two manuals in the series totaled 150 pages at that time.

EI Sunset
2004 - Emerald Isle, NC, Just before taking over the Yoga Therapist Certification program and formally developing it into PYTS™.

Studio Shoot Day 1
2004 - Day 1 of the DVD shoot

EI Shoot 2004
2004 - Day 2 of the DVD shoot

DVD
2005 Purchase Ginger's DVD - My DVD was shot in 2004 on location in Emerald Isle, NC. I produced and teach in the DVD which was released in 2005. Purchase: Amazon.com.
Read DVD Review

Washington D.C. 2004
2005, PYTS™ website launched


34 weeks
2005 - Photo shoot for prenatal PYT™. Began writing a natural childbirth book a few weeks before the birth of my first son. Photo taken at sunrise in NC.


Postpartum 2006
2006 - Postpartum photo shoot after the birth of my first son.

Ginger Inversion
Soon after, I complete the manuals for Prenatal and Postpartum Yoga Therapy and publish them through our own BROWNDOG Media Group. The first courses run in 2006 and 2007.

In the studio before William 2007
2007 - In the studio again, shooting photos for prenatal PYT™ just before the birth of my second son. My first son, then 20 months, was showing off his downward facing dog skills.

Postpartum 2007
2007 - Shortly after my second son's birth, we went back into the studio and did a mommy and me yoga shoot, along with a new bank of postpartum PYT™photos.

Photo Shoot
2008 - I am at work in the photography studio in shooting the last 650 of thousands of photographs for all of my books. Shooting photos has been a 10 year process, in order to document the PYT™ method. 2nd editions of course texts are finished. During this time I also completed the Yoga Therapy for Low Back Pain course.

Kaleswara Mudra in class
2008 PYT™ Course, first graduating class
Since its inception, the PYT™I-IV level texts have grown from 150 to over 800 pages in less than 10 years.

VT Picnic
2008 Retreat in mountains of Virginia

for our children
2008 - A session with eldest son, then 28 months old.

St.John 2009
2009 Ginger expands her teaching as far as Alaska and St. John, USVI.

Alaska 2009
2009 New editions published of her PYT™ I-IV & lumbopelvic manuals. Ginger pens a new course, Cervical Spine & Shoulder Complex PYT™. Ginger begins her seventh book and is her first geared toward women's public health education in the prenatal and postpartum.

Juneau, AK Whale Watching
2009 trip to Alaska to teach the spine course to Juneau and Washington State PT's, Yoga Therapists, and teachers.

Ginger Handstand
2010 - After 4 months of developing the new PYTS website and the new ER site, we launch both of them in February and then take a much needed retreat "off the grid" to enjoy the deep NC mountain snows/blizzards of 2010. (and of course, plenty of yoga)

Ginger and son
2010 - I began to develop the first distance learning program in yoga and medical yoga in the United States. After presenting at the 62nd NATA National Convention, I wrote a first ever webinar series for NATA entitled: Medical Therapeutic Yoga in America: A Paradigm Shift in Health Care Delivery.

Ginger 2010
2011 will see the launch of two great projects: the PYT Distance Learning Program & the welcoming of our third son.

2012 & Beyond - My mission is to always search for the Better Way.

We need to measure our action in life not for our own gain, but For The Next Generation.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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