In Thailand, giving Thai massage was never seen as “just a job.” It was considered a spiritual healing practice closely connected to the teachings of the Buddha, accompanied by animistic religious features of local beliefs, and in rural areas often practiced in a shamanic context. You can see proof of the latter still reflected in the way some of the Lanna folk healing arts are carried out.
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Practicing Thai massage within the family, community, or temple was (and often still is) an expression of love and care for others. It exemplifies Metta (loving-kindness) and Karuna (compassion), which are Buddhist conceptions deeply ingrained in Thai society. Devoted masseurs, healers, and therapists in Thailand still work in such a spirit today, performing sessions with full awareness, mindfulness, and concentration.
Massage healers in rural communities (practitioners known as mo nuad) inherited massage knowledge and techniques from generation to generation. Until today, they practice to simply help relieve others’ suffering rather than to make a living, and it is customary not to demand financial compensation.
They do accept kha khru i.e., small donations, gifts, or free labor, which are actually rather tokens of respect given to traditional healers to honor the lineage of their teachers from whom they inherited their healing knowledge.
It is important to understand that both the healer and the patient share the same belief that positive results of a healing session are to be attributed to the teachers, including Jivaka Komarabhacca and the Buddha, who are considered the source of knowledge and ethics.
Hence, local healers always pay respect to their spiritual teachers before giving a massage to a patient and conduct an extensive gratitude ceremony on an annual basis — the Wai Khru — all part of spiritual ethical conduct.
In fact, in the recent past, about up to the 1950s, the Thai healing arts were only taught and practiced in the Wat (the Thai temple), by local healers, and at home within the family. Even today, one of the most important massage schools in Thailand, the Wat Po Medical Massage School, is still closely connected to the famous Buddhist Wat Pho temple in Bangkok. The establishment of legitimate, secular, and commercial massage facilities and training centers outside of temples, homes, and local healing practices is quite a recent development.
Another evidence of the spiritual background of Thai massage and traditional Thai healing is the convention to give a moment of silence, respect, and prayer just before a massage session, the so-called Wai Khru. It is a solemn testimony of respect to Dr. Jivaka Komarabhacca, the Buddhist “Father of Thai traditional medicine.”
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Apart of paying respect to Dr. Jivaka and the Buddha, to ancestors, and all previous teachers, it is also a plea for strength, wisdom, courage, and protection during a Thai massage treatment session.
Although not strictly necessary nowadays, it is still seen as important to keep this ideal in mind and to learn Thai massage in that spirit, and in many Thai massage schools in Thailand this spiritual tradition is honored. There is a world of a difference between a massage performed in a meditative, concentrated, and compassionate mood, and a massage done just as “a job,” and serious, experienced Thai massage teachers and healers know this as no other.
Yet, unfortunately, in past decades, the explosive growth of tourism in Thailand has also brought a whole other kind of Thai massage, one that, in terms of treatment offerings, clearly outnumbers the traditional style of practicing the art. This new, “touristified” style of Thai massage is rather aimed at relaxation, unbridled indulgence, pampering, and exoticism, usually highly commercialized, and increasingly remote from what the traditional Thai healing arts stood for.
Mind also that a therapist or masseur working in a meditative state of mind will develop an intuition for the energy flow in the body, for the Sib Sen energy lines, and for the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the receiver. Subsequently, such a healer will be better able to treat different people successfully according to their needs.
Without such higher consciousness and awareness, Thai massage becomes mechanical, overly commercial, to finally lose much of its healing power.
