Our Mission...
PYTI provides partnership-based post-graduate and graduate level education in medical therapeutic yoga to transform healthcare and self-care and to advocate for use of yoga in medicine, rehabilitation, and wellness practice.
Medical Therapeutic Yoga Definition
Medical Therapeutic Yoga is the practice of yoga in medicine, rehabilitation, and wellness settings by a licensed health care professional who is completing or has graduated from the Professional Yoga Therapy Institute program and has been credentialed as a Professional Yoga Therapist-Candidate or Professional Yoga Therapist.
Our Vision...
- to evolve yoga for use in healthcare.
- to transform the biomedical model through use of the WHO endorsed biopsychosocial model of care.
- to foster creativity and innovation in healthcare through training a bilingual practitioner, the Professional Yoga Therapist. A PYT can fully utilize the power of yoga through biomedical science. A PYT's background gives them an advantage and expertise that makes them the ideal practitioner to teach and apply yoga therapeutically to complex patient populations.
- to address social conditioning and gender-bias in healthcare to guide ourselves and our communities toward optimal gut-brain-body health and self-care.
- to teach partnership-based rehabilitation via Caring Economics theory. PYTI is a member of the Caring Economy Coalition, and PYTI Founder, Ginger Garner, is a certified Caring Economics Conversation Leader. Caring Economic Theory works to bring value to culturally sensitive, egalitarian principles through shifting practice paradigms in economics, education, and healthcare.
Our History...
PYTI is the longest standing international model for clinical and public health education in yogic medicine for licensed (and student) medical providers and their assistants. Founded in 2000 by Ginger Garner during her time at Professional Health & Fitness in Bethesda, MD, Ginger took ownership of the program in 2005. Today Professional Yoga Therapy Institute has a fully developed and field-tested curriculum which is being used in post-graduate certification and graduate coursework at masters and doctoral programs through universities in North America. Medical Therapeutic Yoga methods are documented by Ginger in a four-volume series. Volume I is slated for publication in 2016.
