Gail Parker, Ph.D., C-IAYT, E-RYT 500, is an author, psychologist and a yoga therapist educator.

 

She is the author of Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma (2020) and Transforming Ethnic and Race-Based Traumatic Stress with Yoga (2021). She is the president of the Black Yoga Teachers Alliance (BYTA) Board of Directors. Dr. Parker is a faculty member in the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy teaching in the Mental Health Module of the curriculum. Her broad expertise in behavioral health and wellness includes forty years as a practicing psychologist. Dr. Parker is a lifelong practitioner of yoga and is well known for her pioneering efforts to blend psychology, yoga, and meditation as effective self-care strategies that can enhance emotional balance, and contribute to the overall health and wellbeing of practitioners. She teaches yoga therapists, yoga teachers, and behavioral health professionals how to utilize Restorative Yoga to support stress reduction and recovery from ethnic and race-based traumatic stress.

 

Dr. Parker has appeared as a psychologist expert on local and nationally syndicated talk shows, including numerous appearances on the Oprah Show.

 

She was a faculty member in the Beaumont School of Yoga Therapy in the department of Integrative Medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak Michigan, for six years where she taught mind/body strategies for reducing stress and healing emotional trauma to aspiring yoga therapists. She was also a faculty member in the groundbreaking Co-Curricular Yoga Therapy Program at Wayne State University School of Medicine for two years, teaching Yoga Therapy to first and second year medical students as part of their academic curriculum. She was an adjunct faculty member in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, teaching “Effective Managerial Coaching and Counseling” to executives for ten years, where she was also an Executive Coach customizing and conducting leadership development programs through the Department of Executive Education.

 

 In 2006, Dr. Parker appeared in the inaugural edition and three subsequent editions of Who’s Who in Black Detroit, a Real Times Media publication celebrating African American achievements. In 2011 she was honored by the Michigan Chronicle as a Woman of Excellence and is featured in volume one of Vital Signs, a Real Times Media tribute to African American achievements in the health care industry.

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She is married and the mother of one son.