Chow - Advanced Thai yoga massage : postures and energy pathways for healing

Acknowledgments

This manual is a result of the help of many terrific people to whom I am indebted. Many thanks are extended to the following for their help and inspiration in bringing it to fruition:

The students of Thai Yoga Massage who inspire and challenge us to offer more techniques and courses to further your and our expertise

The many masters throughout the ages who have opened the doors for us to follow and contribute to the wealth of Thai Yoga Massage

The teachers and staff of Lotus Palm who have generously donated their time, particularly Shai Plonski, who has helped me put my thoughts into words, transcribing and editing the original manuscript, and Jyothi Watanabe, Sukha Wong, and Melaine Lecesne for their support, inspiration, and outstanding teaching

Julien Menard, an old soul in a young body, for all the support he has given Lotus Palm

Stephanie Golden, who has more passion for Thai massage than anyone else I

know Eleonore Piquet, my yoga instructor, who keeps me healthy

Deanne Pye and Kathleen Barbeau for keeping Lotus Palm strong and running while I am busy editing my book

Chirag Pandya who came to study Thai Yoga Massage and generously offered his services as a professional photographer

Guillaume Dsilets for his support and love for Lotus Palm

Mirabai who is a beautiful yogini inside and out

Jasmine de Jager, who reminds me of Dakini, the Tibetan Sky Dancer

Dao Huan Chang, the model for the sen line photographs, who, coincidentally looks like the illustrations I drew before I met him

Jamaica Burns Griffin, my editor, and the staff at Inner Traditions who get a big thanks for doing a great job

A ghost from the past, Kailash, an old friend of mine who appeared out of the blue after twenty years

My sister, Chun Nooi, who was like a mother to me; she left the world too soon

And finally, my children, Keanu and Dana, who taught me so much about openheartedness and love: Daddy loves you more than you will ever know

I arrived in Montreal and created lotus Palm sixteen years ago; it has been a rewarding, satisfying, and challenging experience. we have managed to gain an international reputation as the foremost school of Thai Yoga Massage. This in many ways can be attributed to my teachers, students, and friends who contributed in the schools making. As the saying goes, timing is everything, and it is time for me to pass over leadership so that I can move on and continue my journey. It feels like I have come full circle. I took off on a tangent sixteen years ago, and now, in a simple way, Im reconnecting back to my life where I began. Thats where Im most happy. So I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for this incredible lotus Palm journey.

I couldnt be happier that Sukha wong, my most senior teacher, is taking over ownership and leadership of lotus Palm. Talk about a perfect fit. People who have such good organizational qualities and also embrace the spirit of metta are few and far between. One of Sukhas qualities that touches me most is her deep connection with her mother who taught her everything about kindness, survival, and how to face challenges with dignity. Her mother single-handedly brought up her children with little knowledge of English or western culture; shes quite the woman. with this life experience, I have no doubt that Sukha will carry lotus Palm to a greater level beyond our imagination. I wish her the best, and I will continue to support her and lotus Palm and follow her leadership as a teacher and consultant.

FOREWORD

Cultivated Perception in Yoga and Thai Yoga Massage

Whether through dance, bodywork, or yoga, we can learn to cultivate our inner awareness. We sense the flow of our breath, any tension in our muscles, as well as the state of our mind and nervous system. As we refine this ability through ongoing practice, we come to trust what our senses tell us. Indeed in yoga philosophy, direct experience by someone who has systematically developed the ability to feel is considered the most reliable way of ascertaining what is true.

Masters of holistic healing traditions regularly use their rarefied perception to guide their lives as well as the healing approach they take with other individuals. Steady practitioners of yoga, for example, begin not only to be able to tell which yoga poses are good for them (or not so good!), but the mindfulness spreads to other areas of their lives. They may discern that a food that is supposed to be healthy makes them feel lethargic and bloated, and they do better without it. Or that a job thats high paying and well regarded leaves them feeling empty. Or that a particular type of therapeutic bodywork is profoundly relaxing to body and mind. That was my experience with Thai Yoga Massage; and in my yoga practice afterward, I was able to go more deeply than ever into several poses. Ive seen similar synergy with such modalities as Rolfing and craniosacral therapy.

Modern medical science, of course, tends to discount such experiences. It believes that anecdotal evidence, as it calls all subjective experience as reported by individuals, is inherently unreliable. Expectations and selective memory can interfere with accurate reporting. True enough, but doctors tend to ignore direct experience almost entirelyeven with patients who have cultivated embodied awareness for decades. Whenever possible, we physicians are supposed to recommend only those treatments that have been validated in randomized, placebo-controlled trials, no matter what people who have cultivated mindfulness for decades report.

Such experiments can indeed provide vital information, but due to ideological biases and financial incentives (most research is paid for by industry), many potentially useful treatmentsincluding almost all systems of bodyworknever have been studied adequately. If you are suffering from a health condition, and ask your physician about something like Thai Yoga Massage, you are very likely to hear that there isnt enough evidence to recommend it. But when scientific evidence is lacking, does it make sense to ignoreand deprive millions of patientsthe potential benefits of modalities that experience suggests are safe and which thousands of embodied individuals report are effective?

Thai Yoga Massage came to me in 2004 when I lived as a scholar-in-residence at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. It was in that picturesque setting in the Berkshire Mountains that I wrote much of my book Yoga as Medicine. Once I finished the first draft, for a couple of months I got to be a kid in a candy store, taking any workshops I wanted, including a five-day training in Thai Yoga Massage. Over the course of the week, I got to both give and receive various treatments, and the benefits felt palpable. One thing that surprised me was the link to Ayurveda, the deep, indigenous healing tradition from India, which I integrate into my own practice and teaching of yoga and yoga therapy.

In Advanced Thai Yoga Massage, Kam Thye Chow explains how to go deeper into this healing art, and clearly delineates its connections to yoga and Ayurveda. With lucid explanations and excellent illustrations and photos, this book will help sincere practitioners refine their approach. A number of case histories demonstrate how Thai Yoga Massage, as part of a broader holistic approach, can be applied to clients suffering from a variety of disorders. But this is no cookbook. Kam Thye recognizes that theres more than one good way to help, and that people with similar symptoms sometimes need different approaches. Above all, he stresses that the practitioners attitude, intention, compassion, and loving kindness may be the most important healing tools of all. His readers and their clients will be the beneficiaries of all the love, dedication, and embodied awareness that Kam Thye has put into writing this book.