I just spent 11 days in Thailand, exploring the culinary and architectural wonders, and of course absorbing everything I could about medical massage. I booked 5 bodywork sessions, and would have done a 6th, but I got a head cold at the end and wanted to self-quarantine as much as possible.

Here’s a quick summary of my thoughts – if you’re interested in more detailed descriptions and analysis of each session, that will follow below.

I was expecting the type of Thai massage where the practitioner moves and stretches you, turning you into a pretzel with the goal of increased range of motion. I did experience a bit of that, but mostly the focus seemed to be on very aggressive blasting of muscle and fascia. The first session, at the national center of Thai massage education at Wat Pho in Bangkok, was particularly brutal. My legs were covered in bruises afterwards. I don’t know if it was that she was a student, or that’s what they are teaching, but my travel buddies had similar experiences and bruising. Over the course of the hour-long foot and leg massage, she didn’t seem to have any awareness of what was happening in my body or the underlying anatomical structures. She worked away, performing her set order of techniques at full power, ignoring my flinching as if I were an inanimate object. Later sessions with more experienced professionals gave me a sense of better sensitivity (what my doctor ex-husband and I used to call “good hands”), but everyone used the same set of techniques in the same order.