I’ve spent the last two weeks, waking up at 8 a.m to go back to school, massage school. Read on…

Practicing on my teacher

Hanging out with loads of climbers, my basic massage skills have definitely been useful, so I figured I might as well get some real training in Chiang Mai, which is known for its massage schools. After some research I headed to the Thai Massage School Shivagakomarpaj in The Old Medicine hospital. It is the oldest massage school in Chiang Mai. I knew I should expect a big group but the group was even bigger than what the school had told me. We were 24 student with only 2 or 3 teachers at any time.

What the school altogether didn’t mention is that every day starts with 20 minutes of prayers!!! My allergic reaction to religion went off, while all the students stood and chanted words they don’t even understand (there were only 2 Thai women and the rest were westerners). I  sat, on a bench, refusing to stand, experiencing post traumatic flashbacks from my childhood. The next day I obviously came late but to my surprise after the prayer the class began with another half hour of meditation! No I’m not entirely against meditation, although I’m pretty sure that the teacher leading it was making fun of us, saying things like “thank you for the water and the soup as well, especially the tom yom soup”, but this is not what I paid money for.

The class guide book was very basic so we were all snapping extra pictures and I ended up making a detailed powerpoint of all the classes. The teaching was very “eastern”, which means watch and copy, do as you are told. This is typical to the martial arts I practiced in Vietnam and is the traditional way to pass on knowledge but for it to work you need a lot of personal attention from your teacher, which we weren’t really getting. I guess the only really good thing about the school was meeting a bunch of very interesting people.

Yep I’m Certified!!!

Anyway, after I got the first level certificate and headed to look for a private teacher. I found Nanthikan whose massage skills are far superior than anyone I’ve met. The flow of her movements is like a dance. She plays the human body like a musical instrument, coordinating her fingers, arms and body position. Unlike a lot of teachers and schools that are very strict and traditional she is very open to focus on what I want to learn, not forcing me to memorize the exact sequence but instead explaining the reasoning and working with me on techniques and precision. Even a professional complainer like me has found nothing to complain about! We’ve been working on getting my whole body weight behind every movement, using my skeleton and not muscle power (much like climbing), learning how to dig my fingers into tendons and a whole lot of very interesting stretches.

I’ve been practicing almost every day after class and it really is amazing how each body is different and how much I feel I’m training my own body while actually working on someone. Even if I’m really tired before I start, at the end I’m really energized, like after a nice, not too hard, workout.

The results so far from the people I’m training on have been quite good. Still an occasional flinch here and there but they all seem to enjoy it. One person even fell asleep, which my teacher says should be a compliment, although I’m pretty sure he was just really tired.