Thai Yoga Massage - Ancient Wisdom for Modern Healing

     Like most of the best things in my life, Thailand, and Thai Yoga Bodywork came as a surprise.
     On a May afternoon six years ago I was sitting with a friend and a couple of cappuccinos at the Hungarian pastry shop in New York City's Upper West Side. I was a senior at Barnard College at the time, brings to a former high school teacher who was nearby. This fall he would be heading on to Chiang Mai, Thailand, serving as the director of an internationalInternat. He told me that one of the teachers had begun to meet him there, unexpectedly withdrawn. Familiarity with my thirst for travel, and that my school is imminent, with the last sip of our coffee, he had given me the vacant teaching position. "I do not want to rush," he concluded, "but I need to know your decision within forty-eight hours."
As an African Studies major, were the only things that I connected with Thailand at the time
of rice paddies and elephant.Of course I had to do some research. A stroll through the 86th Street and Broadway, Barnes and Noble travel section led me to the Lonely Planet. With regard to the chapter on Chiang Mai, I learned that there was a town in the mountainous north of the country, had a yoga studio and, best of all, I could massage for two hours will receive a meager 6 U.S. dollars. With these words, I closed the book, does not need anything more to learn. In the evening I took the job. This was not a mistake because of this decision became an unexpected love affair withThailand and its healing arts, traditional Thai massage.
     Upon arrival in Chiang Mai for the first time I saw a few things very quickly: Thailand's kitchen is gorgeous delicious and everyone seemed to smile, and Thai massage is everywhere! In my first 72 hours as an expatriate, I experienced my first Thai massage. After receiving only Swedish and deep tissue massage, I did not quite know what to expect but, as I am never a drop of an adventure, Iwillingly succumbed. Subsequently, two decadent hours was pressed on a carpet in a borrowed cotton tank top and pants and rocked, twisted and stretched in the most ingenious of forms and possibilities. Left I feel much as I have after practicing yoga grounded and bright. Amazing! I was addicted and confused, left to ask: "What was that?"
     I quickly learned that traditional Thai massage (Nuad Boran than in northern Thailand was known) in Thailand before some 2,500 years after his birth in India through Dr. Jivaka Bhacca Kumar, personal physician of the Buddha. Today, Thai people continue to Dr Jivaka as the "Father of healing" in Thai medical honor. After landing in Thailand, this thriving art of healing in Buddhist temples, where lay people would come for healing. From there it spread in villages where children treated their parents at the end of long days working in the rice fields.
     Because of migration, Traditional Thai --Massage is a fusion of multi-cultural healing disciplines like Yoga, Ayurveda, Buddhist meditation, traditional Thai medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. From this fusion of the interactive structure is created that deep tissue compression, acupressure and reflexology, energy line work combined, tightening of the internal organs, energy balancing, range-of-motion exercises and supports hatha yoga. These techniques address the muscles, connective tissues, joints, and the more ephemeral 10major energy) lines ( "Sen", similar to the Nadis in the yoga system. A typical session runs about 2 hours. During this time a Thai therapist her palms, thumbs, feet, elbows, forearms and knees on a lucky recipient, will be configured in some or all of the five positions: supine, prone, side-lying, inverted, and sits . Relaxation, recreation, and is also prosecuted.
Today, to the delight of many, there is Thai massage is migration. Thanks to a first handful of pioneers, ThaiMassage has landed here in the U.S., where it fits without tradition. Here, take these changes the name of "Thai Yoga Massage", "Thai Yoga Therapy", "Traditional Thai Massage" and "Thai Yoga Bodywork." One of these early pioneers, Jonas Westring, serves as director of the Thai Yoga Healing Arts / Shantaya and conducts training workshops and certification around the world. As a yoga practitioner and teacher, as well as a physical therapist, has spent much Westring ofof his life traveling and studying in Asia. It is therefore not surprising that West Ring is Thai massage are the perfect packaging for merging Eastern and Western perspectives. In his take on the subject, shows "Thai Yoga Bodywork, West Ring," I'm getting married biomechanics and yoga in the Thai tradition. " During his clinical background forces him to keep to the safety a high priority, laughs Westring that it really is the "yoga, yoga, yoga." "By making it into the yoga perspective for both recipients andDonors, "he adds," It is a great place to introduce people to yoga and get my own practice. "
     With Thai-Yoga as a self-help modality for donor Westring makes a unique approach. After waking up at 4:30 or 5 clock in the morning and then eight or nine hours a day working as a Physical Therapy Assistant in Mattawan, MI, Colleen Potter Burton, a student of West Ring, still motivated to find time for her practice in the Thai Bodywork evening hours. What makes it possible, she asks, is"If you go back to diaphragmatic breathing, and connect the breath to the recipient, the feel of the end of a period of two hours session, I'm really wonderful!"
And help, not help themselves to negate each other. Maggie Hopson, also a student of western ring, is a physical therapist, yoga instructor and co-owner of High Desert Physical Therapy and Sports Rehabilitation in Winslow, Arizona. Thai Yoga Bodywork, she says, "has a new dimension to how I approach rehabbing patients.In the past, I would like to work on individual joints, but it helped me to see people more holistically. "Patients with injuries that will benefit as a cruciate ligament - and even those with severe movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus - - from the integrated approach to Hopson." These people are very careful, "she says," Other patients in the clinic You can find this and say, 'Why did not you do that to me? "
     But Hopson knows that the application of advanced body manipulationTechniques to injured persons can be risky. While studying Thai massage with other interested teachers Hopson because of their deficiencies in anatomy, estimates Hopson Westring conscious and scientific approach. "Jonas teaches safety first," she says, "and you need to keep a clear head, so that a resistance in the tissues and joints sense."
     On a larger scale, security is a real problem, such as Thai massage's popularity today is rising higher than ever before. Some doctors aremore skilled than others, and the reality is that people are being violated. In addition, practiced with so many people, there is concern about the integrity of the traditional form fading into extinction. Bob Haddad, a doctor in Chapel Hill, NC, has responded to these concerns by creating the non-profit organization, Thai Healing Alliance International (Thai). THAI aims to standardize more cohesion amongst practitioners construction and certification. Basic membership requires a minimum30 hours of training and proof of current practice.
     But does taking the techniques, certification requirements, and rapid growth, with the unforgettable magic of Thai Massage lives. What does an old pro like Westring still back for more information? He agrees with the masses: "It feels good."