Thailand 2025 – Teaching, Training, Hula-hooping, Reading
Most of you who have known me for a long time will be familiar with my winter escapes. This has been a trend for me since spending winter in Australia in 2008. That trip was my first experience of missing a UK winter and I had never been happier. Since then, I have endeavoured to chase the sun most winters and have connected the adventure to my work. In 2014 when I was newly qualified as a massage therapist I escaped to Mexico where I had my first ever massage job and since then it has been multiple trips to Thailand because there is so much to study there.
Study:
This year I took a short weekend course at a school called ITM in Chiang Mai. Thai Chair Massage was the course title, and we spent two days learning some delicious moves from Thai Massage that can be done in a normal chair or, better still, in a designated massage chair. You may be familiar with these? They are often found at events or in office settings for visiting therapists and I use a massage chair every year at WOMAD Festival of Arts and Culture where I am part of team that offer treatments to artists and musicians from all over the world who are performing or educating at the festival. My hope in the future is allocating some Sundays at venues around Stroud to offer short chair massage sessions, perhaps in the corner of Stroud Brewery or The Prince Albert. Watch this space!
Teaching:
Since 2018 I have studied Traditional Thai Massage Therapy and Chi Neitsang at Sunshine Massage School in Chiang Mai. Last year my Chi Neitsnag teacher requested that I come to assist her in the classroom, and I was invited back again this year. We had 12 students, all experienced bodyworkers in some discipline, come to learn with us and we originated and lived in a variety of countries; Ukraine, Isreal, Switzerland, Australia, France, USA, South Africa, Germany, India and the UK. The working language of the course is English which for some of the students is a huge challenge. I have a deep respect for their experience. It is not easy to learn so much new information over 2 weeks especially when not delivered in your mother tongue. One of my favourite aspects of teaching is writing on the white board all the day’s instructions and techniques. I have always loved to write and throughout my life I’ve had many opportunities to do amateur sign writing. The white board is a forgiving surface as it is so easy to make amendments.
Unfortunately, I got food poisoning on Monday evening, the first day of the two-week course. I was very sick and weak but not wanting to miss the second day I made it in to school (I have had a lot of food poisoning in my life and when on a scale this was manageable!) I was quite still and slow, nothing would stay down. We were a group of 12 but, one student had recently undergone surgery consequently, they could not receive any treatment, only practise. I was needed as a ‘body’ as we say in massage classroom settings. That afternoon I gave my withered self over to Lorenzo from Switzerland and told him to be very gentle explaining my sickness. Lorenzo is an experience bodyworker so I felt safe in his hands, and we agreed if it was too much to receive abdominal massage in my weak state we would stop. Where I had been repeated vomiting my body was tense and twitchy and the gentle and soothing abdominal massage calmed the nerves in my guts dramatically. After the session, I was feeling way more relaxed and was able to keep down some water and fruit – PHEW! It was New Year’s Eve that day and as much as I wanted to go out and see all the beautiful fireworks, I had to put myself into bed very early and have a big sleep to recover.
Have you ever had food poisoning? If you have, you’ll know that it really knocks your system down and even once the ejection phase is over one really needs to go slow and steady with the digestive system. It took a over a week to come back to full health and I was much helped by Oregano Extract which when ingested acts as a natural anti-biotic, bentonite clay, which is a miraculous substance if you’ve got bad guts in addition to psyllium husk and chia seeds with water for hydration. These for me are important natural products to have in your first aid box when away. Disclaimer – I am not offering professional medical advice here!
Despite the illness teaching was a real success, I felt in my element in the classroom and the students regularly requested my help and support which my teacher was happy to let me offer. I was able to offer explanations, hints and tips, share my own experiences with treating myself and clients and offer demonstrations of techniques we were sharing.
Treatments:
I went for 2 Chi Neitsang sessions with another Chiang Mai based practitioner called Om. Om was once a student of my teacher Doris and now has her own school in Chiang Mai. Her work is hard to put into words but, since my two sessions my abdominal cavity has been transformed. I had some bothersome scar tissue that has completely transformed and there too has been a wonderful impact on my menstruation. Om works very deeply and is highly skilled in removing blockages in the circulatory system, sometimes when she works you literally feel the rush of blood within you as she is manipulating tissues. I experienced some very deep work in my lower abdomen and hips. After both treatments my energy levels were elevated and I felt so light and joyous. Last year when I had a session with Om this was not the feeling! At that time I had one session and after I felt like I had been punched in the tummy for 3 days and it took quite a while to settle. This year, things were very different.
As I am documenting treatments let me also share two more quite incredible experiences – I had a 90-minute session with my teacher Doris. Doris no longer practises traditional CNT; her practise is focused on structural alignment, and she had noticed that my shoulders had gone out of kilter. Her mission – to sort this. Woweeee was it a mission; during the session I had to relieve the discomfort with swearing and had to dig deep to get through the session. Doris knew the challenge and held me, unflinchingly though it. Doris knows that what she is doing is necessary, she isn’t afraid of the discomfort because her experience has taught her the transformative power of the work. Transformative it was, relaxing it was not! Here, look at the before and after pictures:
Doris works on the floor, a lot of the session was focused on the ribs and neck, the ribs protect the spleen, liver, lungs, pancreas and stomach and of course house the diaphragm so, while the work is in theory on the intercostal muscles it is also having a deeper impact on those organs and their encasing fascia. Organs store emotional charges and old, old matter can hide away. This was a clearing out, no hiding, no shying away. Transformative and healing. I have deep respect for her work.
A much more gentle and ethereal massage treatment came to me when I was in the South of Thailand on a small Island. Here I met yoga teacher and bodyworker Andrea from Germany. Andrea offers water massage, known as Watsu or Janzu which I first encountered on Koh Phangan some years ago and have always wanted to experience again. Perhaps I will share a video, so you understand. The massage takes place in the sea (or can be a pool) and the practitioner guides your body thorough the water, taking you under and around channelling the energy of your in-utero self. You get lost in the fluidity, the weightlessness and the sound of the water. I cannot say whether you feel more like a dolphin or a small babe in the womb – maybe a combination of the two. For people who feel comfortable in water this kind of session is remarkable.
Andrea teaches Avita yoga which I had never heard of before. A branch of yoga that is designed to focus on bone and joint health. I thoroughly enjoyed adopting this new style.
On Yoga:
Yoga is a very important aspect of my life. I was introduced to yoga aged 22 by my now friend and very talented yoga instructor Amy Hughes. Amy gently and compassionately guided my confused and angry body through yoga with enough humour and patience to keep me on track. She transformed my life. Yoga is space to connect body and mind and quieten the chatter, find the space and learn patience. Yoga is absolutely for good health, and I am dedicated to the practise. I am unsure how I would maintain my work without it because it keeps me strong and robust in my life as a massage therapist and before that just as a human! For the past 4 years I have practised Iyengar Yoga with Tanaya DeLeersydner at Stroud Yoga Space. Iyengar yoga is nothing like the Ashtanga or Vinyasa practises that I began with. I was excited to see that Bangkok has a well establish Iyengar Yoga Studio which I was eager to get to. I made one class, and I was in awe of the well-equipped studio. The studio in Bangkok was so different to the yoga Shala on the Island where during practise you were complemented by the gentle sounds of the jungle life, you need to shut the door very fast when you came in to keep the mosquitos out!
Reading and Research:
Another wonderful aspect of my time away is that I can lap up lots of wonderful reading. I have spent hours with my nose in books on the brain-gut axis, Taoist Philosophy, somatic healing, anatomy and physiology and of course fictional novels. There is so much incredible research out there on what it is to be human and how we experience our world. I use this information to enhance my abilities as a practitioner, signpost clients to useful information that might help them and to find explanations and understanding for the work that I do.
Leisure
My down time in Thailand looked like beach time. The final weeks of the trip were on a very simple tropical island with no cars, no electricity save for generators at bungalows and a lot of wildlife. Life got simple. I spent a week staying in a very basic wooden structure which consisted of a bed, mattress, squat toilet and shower and very importantly a mosquito net. When I then moved to another bungalow with a bathroom and towels and lights I felt like I’d arrived at The Ritz! I spent 3 nights in my tree house Ritz before spending the final week of the trip happily camped in a bell tent on the beach playing frisbee with whoever would join and hula-hooping to the sunset and diving into the oily looking sea as the moon rose. My soul food. I could have gone on with that for much longer. Time away alone is a unique opportunity to slow down and get in touch with exactly who you are and what nourishes you. I use this time in that way anyway, I am not interested in going from sight to sight or tour to tour, I am interested in nature, in movement, in really listening to what my spirit is asking of me. I want to read and meet local people, practise my Thai and share and exchange culture. I really enjoy walking in the hot sun. I did a lot of this. It is a privilege and pleasure to spend this time. It is not always blissful and easy but when it is you can learn to fall deeply in love with yourself. Sounds cheesy but it is true and for my work I need to be in a space to give, to listen deeply and offer compassion, patience and kindness. If I cannot give that to myself, I cannot give it to you with sincerity. Thank you for your support of what I do.
Love, light and good health to you all x
