About Dr. Mitchell Yass

The foremost expert on treating chronic pain

A 20 year odyssey of exploration and discovery

How it all started

To put it simply, my life has been a series of events which built upon one another has led me to this place. As a child, I had self esteem issues associated with being very thin. I decided that only I could change my life and feelings about myself. I decided that I would use weight lifting as the mechanism to achieve this goal. Over a four year period I put on 40 pounds of muscle. The great thing was because I had a natural curiosity about physics and a natural inclination toward the subject, I taught myself the physics and biomechanics of weight lifting. This knowledge would become a key component to my understanding of how to resolve pain through targeted strength training.

During this period of time, I became disillusioned with my present occupation as a project manager in building construction. I left the profession and took a job in a gym because I simply enjoyed weight lifting and liked to be around it. The first guy I met told me about a profession where you can make a living treating people’s bodies; physical therapy. I found out I only needed a few prerequisites to apply to medical school for physical therapy so I took the courses. Luckily I was accepted to physical therapy school and took the next two years obtaining my bachelor’s degree. Strangely enough while everybody else seemed to be going along with the process, I saw major flaws in the logic of what was being taught. It was obvious that things that were being taught couldn’t be correct. I decided to sit tight and stay the course to get my degree but knowing full well that I would attempt to create my own understanding about what was causing people’s pain and how to treat it once I was given the chance to practice.

Success treating patients

Upon graduating, I got a job in a very busy practice. I was left alone to treat patients based on my own judgment. While other therapists were following the standard care, I was noticing that most people’s pain seem to be coming from muscular causes. Because of my very strong background in weight lifting and my ability to use it to strengthen muscles even with people in pain, I started to treat patients in my own manner. This began the development of the Yass method. Within a year and a half, I had my own therapy facility and now I was going full steam. I was seeing unprecedented success. Ninety percent of my practice was word of mouth. Things were exploding and I was in my glory resolving pain in patient after patient. People who had pain for years were seeing their pain disappear in just a few treatments. I decided to write a book about the value of strength training and how it could change people’s lives. Guided by a patient and soon to be friend, I created a book about how the patient could tell if the pain were muscular and then showed the appropriate exercises to resolve the pain. It took a couple of years but we got the book published. It was time to get publicity and we shortly were able to get some interviews on a local television news program. Within a year and a half, I had so much name recognition that I ended up with a 6 month waiting list for people to come to the office. It turned out that a gentleman saw the interview and told his daughter about me. She came to me and within just a week she saw a major reduction in her pain which was unaltered by a cervical spinal fusion. It turns out that this woman was the partner of a gentleman who had performed PBS specials. This was a turning point that would bring me to the present situation I find myself.

Taking the Yass Method to the Streets

A woman contacted the PBS producer who in turned took an interest in what I was doing and decided it was worth performing a test show to see if there would be interest in the viewing audience. It turns out that there was huge interest. This led him to decide that we would perform a special. The producer had so much confidence in me that he decided to reach out to publishers to see who would be interested in providing the book that would be the cornerstone gift in the pledge package that is given to those who decide to pledge. Hay House was chosen because of their extensive background in multimedia including publishing, lecture tours, online courses and even their own radio station.

So here we stand ready to go international. The PBS special and international release of the book is a more than twenty year odyssey trying to reach people about my method and making them aware of it as the only true method for diagnosing and treating pain. I have battled and maintained my conviction that the existing system is completely flawed and that for some reason I was given the understanding to create a logically based, theoretically and clinically proven system that can identify the cause of pain so it can be resolved quickly and effectively. To date, every time this method and I are presented to the public, the response is overwhelming. People see the logic in the system and choose to use it for themselves to resolve their pain.

Unifying the method for treating pain worldwide

If all goes well in the present, there will be an international embracing of my method. The use of diagnostic testing to identify the cause of pain will be disavowed and abolished. I intend on providing multiple methods of getting my method through books, courses, lectures and programs including radio and television. Once the method is seen as the norm, I plan to create a certification program for medical professionals. The goal is to unify my method as the standard of care for those suffering from chronic pain. Just like all dermatologists follow guiding principles or cardiologists or any other specialty, there should be only one standard of care when treating pain. I believe that the vision I saw over twenty years ago is upon us and that the transition is coming from creating awareness of my method to providing the method in abundance.