In this episode of the Postural Restoration podcast I am joined by Yoshi Mitsuyama, who currently resides in Nashville, TN. Yoshi started his athletic training career in Rolla, Missouri after graduating from Northern Colorado. While working as a collegiate athletic trainer in Rolla he had the opportunity to intern with Sporting KC and step into the world of professional soccer. It was here that Yoshi was introduced to PRI concepts from Kentaro Ishii who was working there at the time. Yoshi discusses seeing strange activities being performed early on in his internship and became interested in the reasoning behind the techniques he saw being performed. After being introduced to the science of PRI Yoshi signed up for all three primary courses at the same time, completing them in 3 months over the summer. Yoshi discusses his early years of implementing PRI and having a new tool to provide individualized programming.
After several years implementing PRI within collegiate and professional settings in MO, Yoshi earned his PRT in 2018. Shortly after, he accepted an opportunity to move back to Colorado and accept a position with the Colorado Rapids. Building on his experience in MO, he was now able to provide one on one attention to professional soccer athletes while working alongside performance teams and other professionals who were apart of these athletes lives. Yoshi discusses the challenges of implementing a new approach within this team setting, and making sure that others involved were complimenting the PRI programming that these athletes were utilizing. One of the biggest aspects of bridging the gap between the performance side and "rehab" team, along with the athletes individual involvement, was determining what factors outside of their sport were affecting their performance. While performing at a high level is done day in and day out, the activities that are attempted outside of sport such as driving, sitting, walking etc. often cause tension, or autonomic tone, until addressed.
Yoshi has also spent time clinically working alongside PRC Lisa Kelly, and through their partnership of "Tri-Planar Movement Therapies" he was able to see and implement PRI within a more clinical setting along with a totally new client population. This time together allowed Yoshi to gain appreciation for ongoing vestibular, dysautonomic issues that not only were these clinical patients experiencing but also the athletes alike. We discuss what some of the symptoms are that these populations are dealing with whether from concussions, orthostatic issues, past traumas or the umbrella term of dysautonomia.
Since his time in CO, Yoshi has since moved to Nashville initially working with Nashville, FC and now working as a private consultant within his community. This has presented him with yet another population of people seeking out PRI treatment and he has began working alongside Erika Young (voice coach) to help singers gain control of their voice via PRI concepts of position, respiration and retraining their systems to allow proper pressure regulation for the production of sound. Throughout these diverse populations Yoshi has been a part of, We discuss how all of these cases have similar needs when it comes to ground sense, breathing mechanics and sense of ones self, whether kicking a soccer ball, singing on stage, or just trying to get out of bed. Yoshi will be presenting a live case study alongside Torin Berge as part of the 2025 PRI Interdisciplinary Studies Summit in April.