I began my study of massage 17 years ago, when I was 21 years old. My first love was Swedish deep tissue and I quickly became adept at the art of penetrating down into the knots of flesh and stress. For the first handful of years, being young and indestructible, I paid little if any attention to my own body mechanics. But when my hands began to ache, I took notice and began to take care. I paid attention to my stance, leverage and angles. I employed my elbows and forearms. I applied to my wrists a procession of ice packs, hot packs, moxa, liniments and oils. But no matter how good my body mechanics, no matter what I smeared on my wrists, no matter how I visualized peace in my carpal tunnels, the pain worsened. Eventually it was so bad my screaming wrists would wake me up in the middle of the night to sob, yes for the pain, but more for the grief of an injured body and the paradox of how healing can hurt the healer.
And then came Thai massage. My first trainings in it did nothing to help my wrists, and to be honest I did not expect it to. But as I continued down the path of this ancient modality I found a teacher, a master, for whom the healing of the practitioner is of utmost importance. In broken smiling english he reprimands his students for only giving and “doing” without being themselves taken care of. He shows us new ways to work, using our feet, knees, arms and even hands to heal without hurting ourselves. He laughs as he demonstrates techniques that work deeper than anything I have ever seen before, yet are effortless, truly effortless for the therapist. “Work?” he says, “what work”? Again laughing.
Back on my home side of the planet, I have found that in my private massage practice I can do Thai massage as much as I want without pain. But it goes beyond this. I actually find that Thai massage is healing for the therapist. On those days when I am tired, my immune system fighting something, those days when I just don’t want to go to work, I find that in doing Thai massage I do not have to push myself so hard as I feared to make it through. And more, I find at the end of the session, most times, I feel better than when I started. There is a healing quality to the focused nature of the modality. Doing Thai massage has a nature that is similar to doing Tai Chi, or yoga, or meditation. It becomes a practice in the way of those other physical spiritual practices. And like them, it takes us inward to a peaceful place of well being.
These days I rarely do more than one Swedish massage session in a month. When I do, I immediately feel the shadows of old pain in my wrists. Even though about 40% of my work on the table is now made of Thai techniques, and despite a continued attention to body mechanics, I find the table unforgiving. A friend who is an excellent massage therapist herself, recently asked me if I would work on her hurt leg while I was visiting. Then seeing how tired I was she said “no, you should not work on me”. I assured her that it was no problem to which she replied “oh that’s right, massage is easy the way you work”. Work? What work? Again laughing.
