Traditional Thai Massage

Warning: this post may have more detail on the massage than most people will be interested in but with both Liam and his girlfriend Brenda currently enrolled in a 2-yr training course for Massage Therapy in Canada, we figured they would appreciate the extra details.

Since our last post, we've had a traditional Thai massage. You can't walk down a street in the neighbourhood where we are staying in Chaing Mai (or many other cities in Thailand) without there being a Thai massage available, including people actively soliciting you as a customer. There is the foot massage, the neck/shoulders, face, hands, legs each for a .5 hr. or a full one/two hr. full body massage. There is the oil massage, the clothed and the unclothed varieties. Also at many wats (temples which are kind of like our churches but with additional structures on the grounds and often with resident monks) you can get massages and at some markets there will be many lazy-boy type chairs with people offering massages - mostly the feet in these cases.

With so much choice we decided to take some time to hopefully find the best of the best. What we read was that the massage schools are usually your safest bet for a legitimate traditional style Thai massage. Tara Callaghan, a prof at StFX, had a colleague at Chiang Mai University who had an association with the:

Thai Massage School of Chiang Mai
http://www.TMCschool.com

She recommended this school highly so we checked it out and decided to give it a try. It turned out to be outside the downtown area so we made an appointment for 2 hour massages for all three of us and arranged transportation.

We had also read that this school had a high number of non-Thais taking classes due to the high quality of the English language instruction. When we arrived the students were all leaving for the day. They were mostly farang (foreigners).

But our massage therapists turned out to be the instructors themselves. We were ushered into a lovely room with open windows on a river. There was a small candle burning and a half dozen or so mattresses on the floor with bolster pillows and little face/neck pillows like you see on massage tables in Canada or those ones people use on airplanes to support their necks. We were given a little bamboo basket with a PJ-like outfit (Courtney says they were more like hospital clothes). Anyway, they were roomy and soft. We also had a bathroom and were asked to put on the PJs and they would be back.

Three women arrived to take us through the massage all together. It was wonderful doing it this way. We had our blood pressures and pulses checked first and then they washed our feet since they would be doing so much foot work as part of the massage process.

Thai massage is one of the four disciplines of traditional Thai medicine, the others being herbalism, meditation and dietary control. It is related to oriental practices of body work such as Chinese acupuncture, Indian Ayurveda and Hatha yoga. Thai massage works on the principal of maintaining the condition and the flow of the body's vital energy through a network of chanels known as Sen, again related to the Chinese "chi" and the yoga "prana". The massage focuses on the muscoskeletal system (the bones, joints, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue) and the ways in which they inter-relate with the body as a whole. It is described as combining modern scientific knowledge of anatomy and physiology with oriental medical disciplines.

The massage was carried out on the floor with the therapist joining you on the mat. They began by each saying a prayer. They use their hands, fingers, arms, feet and elbows for the massage. At one point, I was on my stomach and the therapist was sitting on my upper legs, I think. There was lots of pressure and lots of attention to feet and legs. Most of the shoulder work was done with us sitting up. We were also pulled and twisted into what I would describe as yoga-like shapes - hanging onto their wrists as they pulled in several instances.

There was no oil except when they did our faces, there was a tiny bit of something with next to no scent, although it had been warmed by the candle. They started with a bit of soothing music but left off that once they got going. It was pretty quiet except for some occasional instructions to change our positions.

Courtney and I didn't have any "strange" experiences but David said that when his therapist massaged his face, he started having "visions" - visual images that he can't recall but that he also lost all sense of time. He couldn't tell if the facial massage was 5 minutes or 20 minutes but he said he didn't fall asleep.

After the 2 hours we were left alone in the room with little cups of green tea in china cups.

The cost was 300 BHT each (about $10 each for the 2 hours).

Oh yes, and the final technical detail for Liam and Brenda. Here are our pressures/pulses pre/post.

David
Pre-Pressure: 118/72
Post-Pressure: 115/80
Pre-Pulse: 65
Post-Pulse: 63

Elaine
Pre-Pressure: 122/79
Post-Pressure: 117/75
Pre-Pulse: 70
Post-Pulse: 55

Courtney
Pre-Pressure: 119/65
Post-Pressure: 80/59
Pre-Pulse: 69
Post-Pulse: 58

There was much animated discussion of David's results in Thai between the three therapists. I don't know if they came to any conclusion as to why one of his post-pressure results went up rather than down as it did with both Courtney and I but if they did we will never know. Any ideas?

Well that's it for now. We are planning to leave Chaing Mai tomorrow to go by bus to a small town northwest of here called Pai. Will try to send another post from there.

Thanks to the guys for comments sent and details re the tsunami news in Canada. Patrick teased me for saying it was just the women who were keeping in contact, but in fact both Patrick and Michael have sent replies and also great to hear from Sharon (with her coffee in hand) and Terry Dunnigan. Also heard from Teresa Babineau earlier.