The Schools
I started at the Old Medicine Hospital in Chiang Mai, on a 90 hour course that gave me a real foundation in the Northern style. It taught the positions, back lying, side lying, front lying and seated, and how to work the sen with diligent, effortless hands, and it required two full two hour massages under the close watch of the instructors before they would let me out of the room. It was thorough and I would do it again.
It is also where the sequence question surfaced, because the final exam is a sequence several hours long and you are graded on hitting its points correctly. I hit them. I walked out still not feeling ready to give a Thai massage, and most of the people I trained with there never went on to practice.
Studying with a Teacher
Then I found myself at Ajahn Pichest Boonthumme’s house in Hang Dong, south of Chiang Mai, and that was another thing entirely. The days there were dharma talks, long stretches of chanting, and hours of practice on each other. He taught with the body as the teacher, your own first and everybody else’s after that, and he held that a student has to heal themselves before they are any use to anyone. His reading of a body went past anything I have seen from a doctor.
It was unconventional and it was hard. He took people apart, and a lot of students did not last long there. Every day the long commute out to his house carried both excitement and dread: would he break you down more today, or leave you alone while he brought another student to tears.
What you are given in exchange is what no course sells: the ability to work with no plan at all.
