The Best Way to Practice Thai Massage

Is there a best way to practice Thai massage? This might be something you’re thinking about if you’re searching for courses or you’ve been exposed to different styles.

Obviously, it’s a loaded question and you could make the answer a simple “no” or you could also explore the intricacies of that conversation. Which is what I’ll attempt to do here. I’ll also take you in a bit of a different direction, so that instead of thinking about one “style” of practice being better than another, it’s more about the methods you use for your people.

It’s important to know that there are so many styles of manual therapy in Thailand that could all be included under an umbrella of what Thai massage is. There’s a huge variety – that spans things like the use of oils vs not, the use of thumbs as the practitioner vs other parts of the body, having the client fully clothed vs not, using literal tools for manual application vs not and so much more.

To suggest that a single style of executing the practice is the “best” is at best naive, which is why we are taking the conversation towards methodology instead, because all styles and shapes can use methods – it’s not exclusive.

In the same way, this conversation has connections with the idea of one form being “more traditional” than another – but we’ll save that for another time.

When it comes down to the best way to practice, one of the things that you COULD say with confidence is that it’s whatever way that most adequately meets the needs of the client. Being a versatile practitioner is very helpful in that respect – when you have a large toolkit to draw upon, and you know the ins-and-outs of each technique you use, you can tailor the treatment to what this individual needs.

How do you add to your toolkit (or create the toolkit) in a comprehensive way?

Know what you’re learning, and WHY you’re learning it. These two things give you context and nuance – which are two of the most important elements for using tools in a way that best meets the needs of your people. It also gives you an understanding of your scope of knowledge and where there might be gaps that you could fill over time.

Here’s an example:

We teach people to apply pressure incredibly slowly. We teach long holds with pressure applied. This is because most of our clientele are stressed and their nervous system is more reactive as a result. Moving slowly and pausing with pressure gives us more access to something called the golgi tendon organ reflex, where we essentially (in a really oversimplified way) have the ability to almost force (but that’s not the right word) deeper levels of relaxation. This gives a twofold benefit: one, it satisfies the desire for pressure (most people want generous pressure), and simultaneously avoids pain and induces more relaxation. Meaning people get a unique blend of intensity but also deep relaxation. You can’t get that combination when you move fast. And that combination just happens to be one of the things that most clients need these days.

I chose that as an example because almost no one is out here teaching practitioners to move SLOWER.

Of course, that’s not what absolutely everyone needs – just most, these days. The trick is knowing when to employ that idea, how much to employ it and how to execute it, in order to get the best outcomes possible for your client.

Notice that this has nothing to do with the postures themselves or whether or not oils are used? It’s more of a methodology that gets applied individually – rather than a recipe that stays the same. This is how we might be able to work towards the best Thai massage for each client.

In case these methodologies help, here are some other parts of our approach and why we do it the way we do:

• • Fully clothed – because this opens a lot more doors of who feels comfortable getting a treatment. Massage of any form can feel really intimate, and that can often deter people from getting a massage in the first place. We can easily reduce the effect of that barrier by keeping a physical layer on.
• • No oils – because we’re attempting to sink into the muscle tissue instead of over it in order to work more closely with the golgi-tendon organ reflex. If we use oils, we move too fast to get the full effect of this reflex.
• • On padded floor mats – because as the practitioner, our mechanical advantage is greatest when we have our fully height available to us of bodyweight transfer. An efficient practice is a practice with longevity.
• • We use various parts of our body as the massage “tool” – including hands, forearms, knees and feet – because we want to spread out the force distribution amongst more joints and more regions of the body to prevent ever overusing our tools. Because thumb pain is very common in a lot of styles of manual therapy, and it often means people retire from the thing they love due to pain. We’re avoiding that.
• • Sinking pressure is our main style of massage application because there is a small but reasonably sound body of evidence to suggest that sinking point pressure is often more successful at the reduction of trigger points (sore spots in the muscles), which means we become more effective in what we do.
• • With a working knowledge of anatomy and physiology – because it helps immensely with understanding the stuff people come in with, the nuanced changes you need to make with each application of pressure to get the most out of it, and the biological responses you’re looking to observe/feel as a result of your work.

When you’re thinking about the best way to practice Thai massage and Thai-inspired manual therapies, these methodologies can help – almost regardless of the style you typically use. Depending on what your person needs, and the REASON behind employing any of these methods, you might decide to line them up in order to work towards the best Thai massage experience for your client on that day.

Do you use any of these methods already? Which ones?