Of late, Thai Warrior Massage® (indeed, a registered trademark) has managed to rank itself as a fashionable Thai Massage treatment modality, a style of massage that has gotten some moderate attention from the general public and Thai Massage practitioners. Maybe it’s because it won a price at a massage championship in 2017, or maybe because it simply looks “cool.”
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Anyway, the Thai Warrior Massage was developed by Mr. Pathompon Aiyarattanaruk (Jack Shaman), a Thai Massage teacher from Thailand, and is promoted as a blend of Thai Traditional Massage and Reusi Dat Ton (Thai Yoga Hermit Exercise).
Additionally, by many Thai Warrior Massage practitioners and teachers it’s claimed that the massage modality is an “ancient traditional Thai therapy, recently rediscovered and reinstated” used already in the 13th century in Thailand to heal injured warriors returning from war.
Be that as it may, “Thai Warrior Massage” didn’t really exist. It’s a modern commercialization and fashion statement to sell Thai Massage in yet another way. On the other hand, in many ancient Asian cultures and countries, such as in India, China, Korea, Japan, and also in Thailand, massage therapy was indeed applied to prepare soldiers for war or to treat or heal them after their return. But that doesn’t mean there was an official “Thai Warrior Massage.” There was just Thai Massage i.e. Nuad Thai aka Nuad Boran.
It’s a bit like Thai Yoga Massage, a “Westernized” Thai Massage treatment modality in which (Indian) Yogic stretches have been emphasized. Mind, however, that Thai Yoga Massage didn’t exist before the 1980s, and as such it was not traditionally practiced in Thailand.
To be clear, Thai Warrior Massage is basically much like Thai Yoga Massage. It emphasizes the Yogic stretches you find in Thai Massage and in Reusi Dat Ton (Thai Yogic Self-Stretching and Self-Massage). Besides that, it focuses on the fact that Thai Massage is (or can be) also good and beneficial for the practitioner (which it already always was).
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So, Thai Warrior Massage is NOT a specific traditional massage treatment modality from Thailand. One might sell this commercially to clients or prospective Thai Massage students, but it’s a “new” invention that doesn’t bring anything extra to the Thai Massage practice which it didn’t already have in it. Do mind that I don’t mean to say that it isn’t any good; Thai Warrior Massage undoubtedly boasts the same health benefits as Traditional Thai Massage.
But honestly, I find this type of commercial reinventions of Thai Massage highly unnecessary because Thai Massage is inherently wonderful and effective bodywork and really doesn’t need trendy fashion statements and so-called “recently discovered and secret styles” to make it even more attractive.
In any case, the stretching, acupressure, and rocking techniques that are utilized in Thai Warrior Massage are basically a compilation of already existing techniques, although often somewhat esthetically exaggerated. In the end — in my opinion — Thai Warrior Massage is just a certain way of sequencing a massage session and an individual, personal interpretation of Traditional Thai Massage.
