5 easy ways to improve your Thai Massage (including video Tutorial)

In this blog post, I am sharing some easy ways to instantly improve your Thai Massage. Of course, becoming a great Thai Massage therapist takes training, a lot of practice, and massaging a lot of people. However, it is not only improving our physical massage skills that will help us become better. Today, I am sharing some tips on how to improve as a Thai Massage therapist without doing any extra training—with the exception of one specific technique that I highly suggest starting your Thai Massage with, for which I have included a video tutorial below.

1. Talk and, most importantly, listen to your clients

Part of being a good therapist is giving your client time at the beginning of their session to talk. Ask them how they feel, give them space to express if they have any issues with their bodies, pain, or discomfort (it is possible to do this with the help of an intake form), and show genuine interest through follow-up questions. Most importantly, actually try to listen to what your client is telling you. For a lot of people, simply expressing themselves and feeling that they are truly being listened to is already a vital part of their healing process.

Follow-up questions can be easy. If somebody talks about shoulder pain, ask them exactly where they are feeling it, what kind of pain it is, and if the pain is continuous or if it comes and goes. A lot of health practitioners do not take the time for this, and sometimes that can leave a client feeling incredibly frustrated.

2. Create safe boundaries for your clients

Trust is everything in our work. When your client feels safe with you and safe in the environment where you are massaging, they start to trust you, and as a result, your client will be able to relax much more easily. Before every single massage, I tell my clients: ‘If anything does not feel right, feels too painful, or if I work an area that feels like it is really helping—or maybe you are getting cold—please tell me so I can adjust according to your needs. If you get emotional, do not be shy, as it is perfectly normal to have an emotional release during a massage.’ If somebody tells me that they have a shoulder problem, I will explain that I am going to focus more on it during the session, but that I will massage other parts of the body first to prepare them.

3. Adjust your massage according to what your client says

Based on what your client tells you, adjust your massage dynamically. Thai Massage is traditionally taught as a strict sequence, and I see many therapists who just follow their sequence blindly and mistake the sequence for the massage itself. Let’s say somebody comes to you complaining about shoulder pain, and after they share this with you, you just run through your standard Thai Massage sequence anyway. You spend a lot of time on their legs (traditional Thai Massage has a massive over-focus on the legs) and only address the shoulders for a couple of minutes. Your client will likely leave feeling disappointed that their actual problem was ignored.

Unbalanced Body, Unbalanced Massage

Now, instead of doing your whole standard one-hour sequence, choose to do fewer leg techniques and spend the last 20 to 25 minutes of your massage working thoroughly on the shoulders. After the session, your client will feel that you have actually helped them. Remember, part of helping someone heal is making sure the client feels that you addressed their unique problems instead of ignoring them. Do not be rigid in your sequence; you can let go of it completely. I have often done full one-hour massages just working around a single problem area of the client’s body.

4. Listen to the body of your client during the massage

Let’s come back to our client with the shoulder problem. Once we are massaging the shoulders (and of course, not only then, but during our whole massage), start to listen to what the body of the client is telling you. With your fingers, thumbs, and palms, listen deeply. You will find tight or sensitive areas, and if you do, stay and work those areas longer in a non-aggressive way, noticing how the texture of the tissue begins to change (or sometimes not change).

Also, notice what kind of feedback the client is giving you in a non-verbal way. Keep an eye out for subtle reactions on their face, shifts in their breath patterns, a clenching of the hands, or other small cues. If a client reacts like this, you are likely on a sensitive spot, which can be a sign to stay there longer or a sign to be much more gentle. What I also do when working around an issue area is encourage them to tell me if I am reaching a spot that feels like it is really giving them relief. After all, we cannot feel absolutely everything ourselves!

5. Use the first 5 to 10 minutes of your massage to relax your client

We can tell our clients to relax ten times or even a thousand times, but just saying the words will not help them do it. If your client is not relaxed, your massage becomes much more challenging. The client keeps their guard up, keeps their protection engaged, and sometimes it can feel like a fight instead of a beautiful dance. The moment your client truly relaxes, their nervous system shifts into the parasympathetic state, they begin to surrender, and your massage becomes much easier. There are massive, deep healing benefits when the nervous system drops into a parasympathetic state.

In every single Thai Massage I perform, I spend the first 5 to 10 minutes doing techniques specifically designed to guide my clients into a deep state of relaxation. Once they are relaxed, the massage can turn into a dance. One specific technique I use very often is called the Chi Machine (you can watch the tutorial below). Except for rare cases, this technique gets my clients into a deep relaxation within minutes.

Remember, your client might have had an incredibly busy day with a lot of stress, and that stress is not always easy to let go of. But with the Chi Machine, your client will be snoozing in minutes.