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History/Lineage
Massage and herbal healing remedies are as old as humanity. Let’s examine how our lineage influences our understanding of the massage therapy world.
Massage and herbal healing remedies are as old as humanity. Let’s examine how our lineage influences our understanding of the massage therapy world.
Monks preserved this knowledge in Buddhist temples, where it was passed down orally and as part of monastic life. The practice, a key component of Traditional Thai Medicine (TTM), became an official profession in the 1920s and was recognized by UNESCO in 2019 as Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Who was your teacher’s teacher and so on?
Most Western practitioners will find that
tracing their lineage back will lead them
through the Old Medicine Hospital
in Chiang Mai.
When you teach Thai Massage, you necessarily teach in your style. This style combines your experiences and development as a practitioner and later as a teacher, and the things you learned when you were a beginning Thai Massage student.
The Thai Massage methods and techniques we have learned are a collection of styles that belong to a particular Thai Massage lineage. One reason it is important to know our lineage is to account for the differences in our approaches to treating specific problems. We may be operating from a general heritage, such as Northern Thai Style Massage or Southern Thai Style Massage, or a particular lineage, such as Jap Sen Nerve Touch Massage, founded by the late Lek Chaiya, also known as “Mama Lek.”
Thai Massage is a vast set of integrated
healing practices, techniques, and
methods that have spanned centuries of
development throughout Thailand,
with somewhat contrasting
types of implementations.
It is important to explain.
The style and type of Thai Massage we will teach them belongs to “such and such” lineage, and more importantly, what they will learn is only one way of doing Thai Massage.
And more importantly, what they will learn is only one way of doing Thai Massage. This is crucial in terms of effectiveness because it keeps the mind and spirit open, avoiding dogmatism and prejudice regarding the rights and wrongs of partitioning Thai Massage. Too often, I have met Thai Massage practitioners who are pretty rigid, focusing too much on “the only right way” of doing Thai Massage.
As Thai Massage instructors, we know that even the Thai Sen (lines) are said to have different trajectories (depending on the lineage) and that other Thai Massage techniques and solutions may successfully resolve health issues.
Well, just a reminder to keep Thai Massage what it is — a vibrant and continuously developing Thai healing melting pot. There is no wrong/right here, but as the Thai people like to say, things are “same same, … but different”.