In Thailand, get a Nuat Thai massage

Wait till you discover what a real, traditional Thai massage entails when you visit the temple of Wat Po where it all began. It's not painful at all

If you tell a friend that you're going to Bangkok, chances are, he/she will associate your trip with one thing: a massage. True enough, when I recently joined a group of journalists who were invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand for a media familiarisation trip, a friend advised me: 'Make sure you get a massage.'
Yes, of course, that was on top of my to-do-list, I told my friend. After all, a visit to Thailand is incomplete without trying the traditional Thai massage.
I'm no newbie to getting a massage. In fact, whenever I have time and money, I always go for a massage, relax and rejuvenate myself - helps boost my over-all disposition. Depending on my mood, I would go for an aromatherapy, hot stone massage, deep tissue, reflexology, or shiatsu in Dubai or the native hilot (massage) back home in the Philippines. Hey, I did say wasn't a newbie to relaxing!
But when we were in 'massage land' there was only one type of massage that we tried: Nuat Thai or Thai massage. And we were told by our hosts from the Ministry that nowhere else could we find the best rubdown in Bangkok than the Wat Po Thai Traditional Medical and Massage School.
Located just a stone's throw away from the world-famous Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Wat Po is housed at a modest low-rise building. Its unassuming location belies its stature of being the first royal medical school. From here, Thai arts and the knowledge of traditional medicine and massage were gathered from ancestors and passed down. Wat Po has also expanded into four courses of Thai medicine - Thai Pharmacy, Thai medical arts, Thai midwifery and Thai massage. 
Since it opened in 1955, the institution has welcomed thousands of students from around the world, who after studying Thai medical arts, have opened their own massage, spa, and wellness centres. We were also told that it takes 800 hours of training to be certified a traditional massage practitioner, - that is 100 days of eight-hours a day extensive training, or serving 800 people at the very least, if you give them a massage for an hour each.
We were a dozen people in our group who simultaneously received a massage in one large room - the men on one side and the women on the other. We heard bones cracking and a little whimper here and there. Unlike shiatsu or aromatherapy, no special oil was used for Nuat Thai. We remained fully clothed throughout the treatment and the massage therapists worked on compressing, pulling, stretching and rocking our bodies.
We were also positioned in a variety of yoga-like positions during the course of the massage, whilst rhythmic and deep tissue pressures were applied to relieve our muscles. This is because Thai massage is also referred to as Thai yoga massage, following an ancient system of healing, that combines systems of acupressure with Indian Ayurvedic principles and assisted yoga postures.
A massage therapist explained to me that Nuat Thai generally follows the 'sen' in our body or the flow of the air we inhale, that travels through our body along pathways called 'sen', which Nuat therapists manipulate and correct manually.
All of us were apprehensive at first as our Nuat Thai therapy also included pulling our fingers, toes, ears, cracking knuckles, and therapists walking on our backs and moving our bodies into different positions. But after the massage, all of us were revitalised and rejuvenated.  We had reached nirvana even before we reached our next destination which was the nearby Temple of the Reclining Buddha.
angel@khaleejtimes.com
Angel sees newsbites in everything. Outside work, nothing works like a bone-cracking massage