Studio Team

Close-up of a man with dark hair and beard, wearing a black T-shirt with a colorful logo and the words "Mitsui Collective" and "Resilient Together" on it, standing against a plain beige wall.
Yoshi after competing at the 2026 Great Lakes Kung Fu Tournament

Yoshi and family at the 2026 Great Lakes Kung Fu Tournament — Maple Heights, OH

Group of seven people standing outside a building with traditional Chinese architecture, including a wooden door and tiled roof. The group is smiling and dressed in martial arts uniforms, with some wearing glasses and one child holding a water bottle.

Yoshi alongside apprentice students and head apprentices at Wudang Mountain Tai Chi & Kung Fu Academy — Wudang Mountains, China — Oct 2024

A group of people on an outdoor tennis court, with one woman holding a tennis ball and two women standing in the background, one in a towel dress and the others in casual clothing, engaging in conversation.

Yoshi teaching a Mitsui Movement seminar at Camp Nai Nai Nai — Waynesville, PA — Spring 2018

Yoshi Silverstein

Founder & Studio Head

Yoshi Silverstein (he/him) is founder and executive director at Mitsui Collective, Studio Head at Studio Mitsui, and creator of the Mitsui Method system of embodied Jewish alchemy.

A student of the human body and spirit rooted in his dual lineages as a Hakka Chinese and Ashkenazi American Jew, he has over 25 years of experience as an educator, facilitator, and creative practitioner of movement and somatics, martial arts, music, and nature-based experience.

He holds a 2nd degree blackbelt in Lotus Kajukenbo, purple-black belt in Shuai Chiao (Chinese wrestling), and is a nationally-ranked competitor in both Shuai Chiao & Sanshou (Chinese kickboxing), including competing at the 2024 World Shuai Chiao Games in Baoding, China as a member of Team USA, and winning gold medal in Sanshou at the 2025 Great Lakes Kung Fu Nationals Tournament. He is also a level nine Tai Chi practitioner and teacher in training, and in 2024 spent a period of intensive internal martial arts study in the Wudang Mountains of China.

Yoshi is a recipient of the 2022 Pomegranate Prize from the Covenant Foundation, was named a 2021 “Grist 50 Fixer” building a more just and equitable future, and holds a Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture and certificates in spiritual entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, permaculture design, and environmental education. He lives in Shaker Heights with his wife and daughter.

Select Trainings, Study, and Achievements:

  • 2nd Degree Blackbelt — Lotus Kajukenbo — awarded 2006, retroactive to 2003, by Kajukenbo Senior Grandmaster Tony Lasit; 1st degree awarded spring 2001 by Professor Roy Harrington — Lotus Self Defense Institute — Spokane, WA

  • Founding Member — Lotus Kickboxing Competition Team — 1996-2006 — Lotus Self Defense Institute — Spokane, WA

  • Ongoing Chinese Martial Arts Studies — Sifu Robert Fleming, Two Tigers Kung Fu — 2022-present — Bedford, OH

  • Purple-Black Belt — Shuai Chiao — awarded Spring 2026 under Sifu Robert Fleming and Sifu John Ervin

  • Level 9 practitioner — Yang style Tai Chi — awarded Fall 2025 under Sifu Robert Fleming and Sifu John Ervin

  • Gold Medal, Sanshou — Great Lakes Kung Fu Tournament — April 2025

  • Bronze Medal — World Shuai Chiao Games — October 2024 — Baoding, China

  • Foundations of Wudang Kung Fu and Baguazhang (10 days) — Wudang Mountain Tai Chi & Kung Fu Academy, China

  • Coach — Bushwick CrossFit — 2016-2019 — Brooklyn, NY

  • Student — Movement Brooklyn — ongoing movement studies 2018-2019 — Brooklyn, NY

  • Embodied Transformation 4-day Intensive for BIPOC Leaders — Strozzi Institute

  • Movement Intensive and Community Retreat (4-day) — Marcello Palozzo and Shai Faran with ApeCo Movement School

  • Somatic Abolitionism 5-day Intensive — Omega Institute with Resmaa Menakem

  • Radical Dharma Camp — Omega Institute with Rev angel Kyodo williams Roshi

  • Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism + 9-Month Communal Consultation (online) — Education for Racial Equity with Resmaa Menakem

  • Certificate in Spiritual Entrepreneurship (9 months) — Glean Network with Columbia Business School

  • “Motion” Intensive Workshop (3-days) — Ido Portal with ApeCo Movement School

  • CrossFit L1 Certification

  • Alpine Level 1 Ski Instructor