Day 22: Pressing the Flesh

Day 22 is actually the 25th of December, or Christmas day. I spent the morning in the last session of my 4 day, 30 hour, private training in Traditional Thai Massage. It’s still a surprise to me that I took this course. I believe the origin of the idea traces back to my Sweet Auntie Karen Dear — the ‘aunt’ title being honorific — who coaxed us kids to perform massage in exchange for treats.

It stuck and I always kind of liked it. Never knew what I was doing, of course. More of a shoulder rubber than an actual masseur. And this year it seems I keep meeting people with serious musculoskeletal issues. It seems our system breaks peoples’ bodies down. So I found myself wishing more and more I could give a massage ‘for real’.

Here in Thailand the training is inexpensive and the Thai technique seems very effective, so I thought I’d give it a try.

There were a bunch of places providing training in Chiang Mai. I chose Loi Kroh because it offered very pleasant facilities and I like the fact that they also train teachers. Coincidentally, it’s a place very popular with Japanese folks, who were about a quarter of the student population and one of the senior teachers; most of the teachers spoke more Japanese than English.

Whether it comes from this Japanese connection or from the Thai massage tradition, the training day begins with an unexpected routine. First, calisthenic exercise. Then, a serious, 10 minute chanted prayer to the doctor who founded this school of massage. This chanting was complete with a phonetic cheat sheet for those who didn’t have it by heart, kneeling and bowing. A very formal, very unsual way to begin the school day.

It was costly. ฿6500, about $200. For that 30 hours of one-on-one instruction, a book and lots of tea and snacks. I like to think that the tea and oranges they fed me came all the way from China. The cost is sensible: this is a professional course and many of the students taking the advanced course or the teacher training worked as masseurs or even owned salons. Suddenly I’m in a completely different professional world, nothing to do with corporate software and nothing to do with the tourists or the travelers.

The training was straightforward. My instructor Thai (actual name! any massage he taught would have been Thai massage, technically!), walked me through a sequence of steps and illustrated the techniques. Then he said “OK, I do”. And he performed them on me.

Now, we’ve all nodded off in school before. Believe me, the boredom of a math class has nothing on the relaxing powers of massage. It’s hard to pay attention when you’re getting a light neck massage. Conversely, this being Thai massage, your mind is very effectively riveted when you have an elbow digging into your back. But it’s riveted on the pain, not the nuances of technique. So paying attention during the massage portion was a constant struggle.

After he’s done, it’s my turn. “You do.” Some of the sequences — like the face massage — have a dozen or more steps, so I’m often whispering ‘next?’ to my client/teacher. I perform them. I get a feeling for the flow and get feedback if I do it poorly. And since it’s about applying your weight, a surprisingly large amount of the instruction is not about how to touch the client, it’s about your own stance. How you’re rooted. Just like Yoga, just like Karate.

If there’s time once we’ve completed the day’s new material we repeat older sequences. There’s a lot of natural repetition in the sequences themselves as well, particularly with arms and legs so I practiced those a lot. Even the sequences in the back share common elements with the extremities.

The experience is intense. You need to focus constantly and so we had regular breaks. Tea and fruit. Or sometimes Thai sweets. The teachers and students were all universally very warm and open people. One of these fellow students was another drop-out from the corporate life, Satoshi, who had the mysteriously generic job title of ‘Office Worker’ for 25 years before deciding he’d had enough. Now he’s looking for something else. Might massage be it? It’s hard to give up the marathon where you’re so close to the finish line — enough money for retirement. Just 10 more years. Tough it out. Or don’t. Do something you love, if you can find it.

I wonder why that story resonates with me.

Will I use this skill, really? Maybe. Hopefully. It’s great to be skilled at helping people feel better.