Being Told My Technique Was Terrible
I studied in Phoenix first, with a few teachers, workshops and the occasional private lesson, and it never felt complete. It was all technique and maneuvers. So I went to Chiang Mai, and my first two weeks at the Old Medicine Hospital reinforced exactly what I already had: palm pressing, thumbing, forearms, elbows, a client moved through a handful of positions, and a final exam where you perform a sequence several hours long and are graded on whether you hit the points correctly.
I still did not feel ready to give a Thai massage. I remember thinking that it could not all be about a sequence, and how thin that would be if going through the motions were enough. Plenty of the people I trained with there never went on to practice.
The First Day at Hang Dong
Then I found myself at Ajahn Pichest Boonthumme’s house in Hang Dong, and on my first day he told me my technique was terrible. Two days earlier, teachers at the Old Medicine Hospital had told me it was perfect. I believed Pichest, because inside I felt the same.
He watched me work on somebody and told me the sweat on my forehead was not a good sign, that I was working far too hard. He told me my body was terrible too, that I had been practicing too much yoga and was inflamed from it, and that I should take an anti-inflammatory. He tried to correct my hands physically and then gave up.
That was the first day I needed. He was taking apart whatever ego I had built around this, and it worked. I broke down in tears that night, and underneath it there was relief, because I could finally admit that I knew nothing about Thai massage. The pieces of paper and the years of study in my spare time were hollow, because I had not learned to feel with my heart, or to work without the analytical mind running, or to understand my own body.
I believed Pichest, because inside I felt the same.
Going Back the Next Day
I gave up my daily ashtanga practice. I took the anti-inflammatory. And I went back to his house every day expecting to be broken down again. Pichest was not a conventional teacher and a lot of people did not last long there. Learning from him meant unlearning things that are difficult to put down. The commute out to his house carried excitement and dread in the same measure: whether today was the day he worked on you, or the day you watched him bring somebody else to tears.
I spent three months in Thailand across three trips that first year, most of it at his house. In between I opened a small studio in Phoenix and started giving sessions, and every one of them raised the same question the house did, which is whether this is the person who shows me I know nothing again.
