Choose Between Two Options

• $59 for a 60-minute Thai-yoga massage ($100 value)
• $118 for a 60-minute Thai-yoga massage for two ($200 value)

Thai Massage: Potent Practice of Pain Relief

Anyone who practices Thai massage has a lot to learn—more than 200 techniques, to be exact. See what a therapist has in store for your next session.

While many massage therapists will focus on a client’s specific body part, Thai-massage therapists expand their attention to include not just the full body but also the space in which it resides. During a typical session, which takes place in a large space partitioned by drapes, the fully clothed client lies on a thick floor mat. The therapist begins the massage knelt in a wai—a gesture of pressing the palms together with fingers pointed upward in a prayer-like position—as a symbol of respect. Light, rhythmic massage strokes then lead to more focused pressures applied with the feet, elbows, and even knees. The therapist may also stretch the body into poses reminiscent of Hatha yoga; these poses are believed to open sen lines, the pathways that convey life energy throughout the body.

With more than 200 techniques to learn and master, Thai massage can stretch the therapist’s mind nearly as much as the client’s muscles. The Buddhist monks who developed these techniques—sometime between 800 and 1200 AD, according to DaySpa magazine—sought a combination of rhythmic strokes, guided stretching, and acupressure that could both soothe physical aches and align the body’s internal energies. The resulting massage proved so restorative that field hands soon took to it as a means of recovering from their long days of work.