The first time I heard about Thai yoga massage, a couple of years ago, someone described it, with extreme enthusiasm, as “lazy yoga.” The more technical term for what to expect is “passive stretching,” as it’s the practitioner who moves her client through a series of yoga poses, using the weight of her whole body to deepen the pressure. It sounded intriguing, but I wasn’t moved to try it until a few months ago, when my gifted friend Jo-Ann Goldsmith, a practitioner who has also worked as a doula, offered to show me what it was like. It was amazing.
As in traditional Japanese shiatsu, you don’t get naked for a Thai yoga massage and you don’t climb onto a table. Performed on a mat on the floor, in loose fitting, comfortable clothes, it can feel quite intimate and intense, though most practitioners use pillows to create a buffer between their bodies and their clients. After my first massage, I felt worked over in the best way — relaxed, certainly, but also more opened up through my joints than I do after, say, a Swedish massage.
“The work of the receiver is to surrender, which can be so hard,” says Tracey Currie (www.mettamovementarts.com), a licensed holistic practitioner and certified yoga instructor who completed her Thai yoga massage teacher training in 2001 at Lotus Palm in Montreal, one of the first schools of its kind in Canada. “There has to be trust involved and it is crucial that the massage is given in the spirit of metta, the Buddhist principle of loving kindness.”
Currie says that Thai yoga massage originated in India as a therapy within Ayurveda, the yogic science of medicine, and its development has been attributed to the Buddha’s physician, Jivaka Kumar Bhaccha, who is known as Shivago Komarpaj in Thailand. “For thousands of years it was practised by the monks in the temples as part of their healthcare system,” she explains.
While yoga and meditation have become far more mainstream over the last 40 or so years, Thai yoga massage has been slower to spread into Western alternative healthcare circles. The regulations governing massage are different in Ontario than in Montreal, and here certified Thai yoga practitioners cannot call themselves massage therapists unless they are also RMTs (registered massage therapists). Currie strongly believes in the therapeutic benefits of the massage, however, and says that her clients have reported that they sleep better, feel taller and have a greater awareness of their bodies afterwards.
Currie was introduced to the massage when she was working on her yoga training. “I’d never heard of it before, and because I had been a competitive figure skater, I’d experienced a lot of different body modalities,” she says. After a brief demonstration, she experienced so much relief from a pain in her leg that she resolved to find out more about the approach and almost immediately pursued training.
Currie recommends that if you don’t love Thai yoga massage on the first try, you give it three chances before writing it off, and she stresses it’s critical to find a practitioner who makes you feel comfortable. “It’s very powerful, I’ve seen people experience incredible feelings of bliss and a sensation of lightness,” she says. “And because old tensions are being released, sometimes there are emotions trapped under that tension and different stuff can surface.
“Because the work is so close, there is a real connection between the practitioner and receiver,” she continues. “When practiced in metta, it’s the most amazing thing.”
Tracey Currie charges $75 for 60-minute and $100 for 90-minute thai yoga massages (or $270 for three 90-minute sessions). Call 416-908-1806 for details.