Principles of Thai Massage

Thai massage is like a flowing dance between client and masseuse

Often a Thai Massage seems just a sequence performed very mechanical, regardless of therapist or client. But knowing the massage techniques and the sequence is really not enough for giving a good Thai Massage. A good Thai Massage therapist uses using her body weight, leverage, and balance to free tension stored in the body.  She accesses her agility and relies upon her intuitive sense and feeling to know which areas to focus on, how much pressure to apply and for how long.  Each session is adapted to individual needs of the client.  Thai massage can be seen as a continuous flowing dance movement between the client and practitioner. All these aspects will be adressed during the Thai Massage courses at NAMO Chiang Mai.

Body Mechanics

The first aspect is crucial to all aspects of Thai Massage and thhis wil receive a lot of attention during the Thai Massage beginners course. In Thai Massage we are using our own bodyweight for pressure; we are not making use of muscle power. So body balance and understanding body mechanics (how to use your body) is important.

Body mechanics for single palm press: Sit on your heels, have your back straight, your arm and elbow straight, bring your body up and drop your shoulder. A good posture should not hurt yourself, should feel like you can relax your body.

The difference between bodyweight and muscle power for pressure is that the first one feels much softer (less sharp), allows the therapist to go deeper, and makes it possible to transfer energy much more freely.

Do not hurt yourself

How can you heal someone if you are hurting yourself? 

A principle sounds in theory very easy, but in practice can be very difficult. Again here it is important to know about body mechanisms and to know what your limitations are. People are build differently, not all techniques will be suited to be performed by everybody, or can not be performed on everybody. Be sensible towards that. Same if a client is asking for more pressure, but you are leaning in with all bodyweight, do not start using muscle power, it is always very easy to compensate with muscular power or take an unnatural position. But by doing this you are creating tension in your own body, which over time will create problems. From the very beginning of your instruction, if a particular movement is causing you pain, you should stop. You should not push yourself, as is often done in various types of exercise, but realize that either the movement is not being done correctly or something in your own body mechanics is not right. There always many alternatives which will not hurt your body. My teacher use to say: How can you heal someone if you are hurting yourself? This will be one of the focususses in our Thai Massage courses.    

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Relaxing your body

Breathing
Using your breath is an important tool during the massage. It helps you to relax your body and therefore helps to create a energy flow from you to the client. When you are leaning in (applying pressure) breathe out.

Using bodyweight and breathing are helping you to relax yourself and your body during a massage. With relaxing we mean not creating tension in your own body. When you are not creating tension in your body your massage will not create tension in the body of the client. And again energy will flow much easier.

When you feel that the client is holding tension or resisting in the massage, ask him to breathe (out). 

Thai Massage enables you to press muscles and to balance energy levels. This is what affects flexibility and equalizes the effect of muscles on both sides of the body. The amount of movement a muscle can produce at a joint is determined by the difference between its length when relaxed and when fully contracted. When muscles are tensed, they become shorter, even when you are not consciously contracting them. This can happen through overworking them, by not using them enough or it could be due to emotional tension. Whatever the cause may be, the end result is progressively more restricted movement and the onset of stiffness, aches and pains which are all characteristics of the ageing process.

Muscles that shorten and become tense can create uneven force on the spine, the very important container of the spinal cord. This, in turn, creates the back pain, neck pain and headaches that can easily become a regular feature of daily life. With ability to stretch all the most important muscles in the body systematically, Thai Manipulations enable you to achieve effects which are unlike those of any other bodywork. Thai Massage surpasses western massages and is much more then a mere physical experience. The giving and receiving of Thai Massage is an ideal way of providing for the subtle, yet powerful interchange of intrinsic energy between two individuals.

In our Thai massage course advanced we will be focussing on how to relax during a massage.

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Other principles of Thai Massage

Feel loving energy and try to massage from your centre (Hara)
Massaging from the center of your body (Hara), by doing this it is much easier to connect to your intuition.

Sense and feel
When your body is relaxed it will also be much easier to sense and feel the body of the client. So you can sense were the blockages are in his body and adjust your massage according to your findings. An import focus in Thai Massage Course advanced.

Sequence is just a means
The sequence is not the actual massage, nowadays too much emphasis is being placed on learning a sequence and just following this. It is good to know a sequence and use it as a framework or a means to understand and find the blockages of your client. When knowing the blockages you can start the real massage by working on the blockages.

Individual needs
This principle goes together with the one before. Nobody is the same, so no 2 massage are the same also. Adjust your massage, pressure, etc according to the individual needs of your client.

Communicate and observe
Communicate with your client. Before start of the massage ask him/her if he has or has had any problems, injuries, blood pressure etc, and if he had massages before. During the massage ask him/her if the pressure is ok (or you can tell before that if something feels uncomfortable to tell you). During the massage observe the client (breathing, face, bodily reactions), by observing it is easy to see if the massage is ok or the pressure is too much. After a massage ask feedback, especially when client is planning to comeback.

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