I have always been fascinated by movement and joy we experience being in our bodies.

When I was a child, I used to ride my bicycle all over my neighborhood, play outside with my friends everyday until our parents told us to come home. I also started practicing karate, influenced and inspired by my dad who was always practicing karate and is still practicing to this date. Besides martial arts, I played many sports including rugby, ultimate frisbee, boxing, kickboxing, badminton, tennis, and more. I felt so much joy and delight in my body through all those physical activities and movements.

Not only those things made my body feel great, but also they made me feel energized, happy, engaged, excited, stimulated, and alive. Figuring out how to ride my bike for the first time, learning new tricks on my bike (riding without hands, doing wheeling, etc), exploring a new town, getting better at roundhouse kicks, learning different badminton shots, learning how to tackle a person twice as big as me, all those things allowed me to experience myself as my body.

I studied exercise kinesiology & physiology, athletic training, and physical rehabilitation in colleges (undergraduate and graduate schools). Earning the degrees from the colleges didn’t stop me from learning more about movement. In fact, I continued to study and got more certificates in the field of human movement, hoping to deepen my understanding of the body and help other people with their bodies.

Those certificates include:

• Certified Athletic Trainer through National Athletic Trainers Association

• Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through National Strength and Conditioning Association

• Certified Orthopedic Movement Specialist through Therapeutic Movement Seminars

• Certified in LSVT BIG (an intensive, effective, one-on-one treatment created to help people with Parkinson's disease (PD) and other neurological conditions address walking and other functional movements)

• + a number of continuing education courses focusing on functional movement training, therapeutic exercises and rehab

I started my professional career as an assistant athletic trainer at a college where I was studying advanced exercise kinesiology and physiology. I applied my knowledge, skills and experience to help college athletes recover from injuries, prevent injuries, and improve their performance.

I moved away from athletic training settings because it was very challenging to prioritize injury prevention in those settings where we were working with hundreds of athletes and injury treatment of the athletes had to take priority. I always believed that injury prevention is absolutely important, so I transitioned to outpatient as well as inpatient and in-home physical therapy settings to gain more experience and to have the opportunity to work with people of all ages with all kinds of physical conditions. The years of experience working in these settings made me appreciate my body even more, and fascinated me even more about the power and potential of movement.

Although I gained knowledge about many physical injuries and therapeutic exercises and modalities and gained experiences about working with people of a range of functional levels, I became disillusioned about very mechanical way of working with people. I felt like we were working with our patients as if fixing a broken car, looking for faulty mechanics that we could fix. It almost felt as if our patients were dropping off their bodies at a shop and we would tell them when they could pick up their bodies after we fixed them. Not that conventional physical therapy and exercises weren’t useful and helpful, but they weren’t helping people change their root problem and their underlying conditions so they were often giving people only a temporary relief of their symptoms.

I began to question if this was really how we were supposed to work with our bodies. I began to wonder if learning about our bodies was really this complicated. I began to wonder if ancient people before having access to all these information had all these body issues we do now, and how they learned about their bodies and how they overcame their issues. I started wondering how we learn to move in the first place, how we learn to walk, run, jump, etc, and when people started asking “experts” to teach them how to move, why babies can learn how to crawl, sit, stand, and walk without being told step-by-step by “experts” (in most cases), and why all other animals can learn to move on their own, but adults (sadly even kids these days) need to be taught by others.

I was feeling lost, disconnected from my body and started questioning myself about all the things I’ve studied regarding human body and movement, conventional science based theories I understood and believed as the norm and the correct knowledge. Although I didn’t know why I felt so dissatisfied and what was supposed to be the right way, I intuitively knew that this wasn’t quite the right way.

It was then that I discovered the Feldenkrais Method.

When I realized that I really needed to study my body and movement from a completely different perspective in order to truly understand my body and improve my body, I decided to go through 4 years of Feldenkrais teachers training program. During the 4 years of my training, I had relearned how to connect with my body and experience my body and movement from the inside. I had rediscovered the joy of movement and being in my body, which had been missing for so long. I felt like I had finally returned to my home. I felt like a kid at home in himself, discovering easy and comfortable ways to move despite what he was told or believed was possible for him.

After I finished my Feldenkrais training, I started teaching group classes as well as working with people one-on-one based on Feldenkrais Method, martial arts, and functional movement training. I did teach only in person for the first few years, then I started exploring online teaching and sharing my experience and knowledge on YouTube to reach and help more people who struggle with movement.

I was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. Thanks to my mother who influenced me to study English, I moved to the United States in 1997 to study with the full support of my family. I was fortunate to have met Yuka at Oregon State University, who later became my wife, and is also a Feldenkrais practitioner. We love hiking, cooking, gardening, and traveling together.

I am raising Renta, my son. We enjoy running together every morning, doing push-ups every evening, practicing Aikido together, “fighting” as a form of playful workout every chance we get, playing sports (baseball, soccer, frisbee, etc).

As a family, we enjoy hiking, camping, cooking, traveling. We share one thing in common. Guess what? We love moving our bodies!!

I personally enjoy practicing Aikido, walking, running, outdoor activities, teaching movement, cooking and eating good healthy foods.

I currently host a popular YouTube channel where I share suggestions on how to address your body challenges and I also offer powerful online movement training “Understanding how YOUR BODY Moves Method” that teaches how to feel good in your body.

What others are saying about their experience of working with Taro:

Taro has been chosen as a top Movement Coach by the coachfoundation.com.