Sangha

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Thai massage open practice has grown, shifted and changed through the energy that we’ve put into it. From something that started as what seemed like a fluke I nurtured those who wished to learn some Thai massage and continued promoting free bodywork til hours that eventually annoyed those we got space from. The issue was that we have too much fun, we break all the rules and no one really understands what we’re doing. Who does massage in a group setting til 2am on a Thursday night for free? We do, that’s who!

Thai bodywork has an ancient lineage and tradition. At a heart level I’ve done my best to honor that tradition while realizing that this is America, this is central Texas, whatever does not fit into our cultural lives will vanish. As a group we’re helping Thai massage evolve, we’re allowing an ancient healing practice to grow and develop in new ways. The acroyoga community in Austin has pushed us forward and helped syncretize something that’s never existed, healthy Buddhist night life in Austin. Is what we do yoga? It’s it acroyoga? Is it Thai massage? I’m not sure anyone can really answer. It’s none of those things but it’s more than the sum of those parts.

Licensed therapists and traditionalists have announced that we don’t meditate enough. No one is certified and there’s no established authority and control. This doesn’t look like Thai massage in Thailand and why is someone playing Jimi Hendrix on a stereo? Shouldn’t there be massage music? I’ve heard complaints til I’m blue in the face. Why have I persisted? I’ve persisted because almost nightly someone new has come to me and said, “This was Great!” Regulars come up to me and hug me earnestly, thanking me for keeping the group going and tell me it’s the highlight of their week.

In that space, what am I to do? Who am I to listen to? I, much like you, go with my heart. My heart tells me to continue Thai massage open practice but maintain no ownership over it. I do not directly profit from it’s existence and give it away for free. Many of you come to me with injuries, aches and pains and I distill 11 years of study to help you, for free. I could say no, but I will not.

I will not say no because I had to search, dig, scrape by and live in a world of pain for years to find those who had information to help me. I will never stop helping people and sharing because that is what the tradition says I must do.

Let me express this so it’s clear. Jivaka, the originator of Thai massage was the Buddha’s doctor. We’re told that as Buddhism spread from northern India into Thailand the monks preserved it, it mixed with local indigenous Thai medicine and there it sat. Thousands of years went by and Thai massage became distinct, nuanced, some mix of what looks like passive yoga and bodywork. The monks worked on each other to facilitate their meditation practices. They stretched each other out, did blood stops to get their legs to wake up after falling asleep from meditation and on they went, wide awake, alert and calm from the Thai massage.

Beyond that, these monks who knew the body were the local healers. People from the village came to receive the Thai massage to help with their aches and pains. The monks worked on them free of charge, helping them with their pain and hopefully encouraging them in their spiritual lives. Metta, or loving kindness was the deed of the day. If you were a monk you meditated, helped others and focused on Buddha, dharma and sangha. It was part of your spiritual duty to help others.

I’m not formally Buddhist. In fact I dislike organized religion. I’m a farang, a non-asian foreigner. I took the Thai massage taught to me and have given it 9 years to percolate through me and my yoga practice. When Thai massage open practice fell into my lap, my choice was to nurture anyone who wanted to learn, to give or receive for free. I work 6 days a week and take one day off every week. I still put energy into our group because It Must exist.

People want to feel better? Then come out. You want some bodywork for free? Then come out. You want something fun to do that doesn’t involved drinking and drugs? Come out. You want a way to be physically expressive and intimate with like minded people? This is your group. This is Thai massage open practice.

If we dressed you in saffron robes and had you do bodywork in a Thai temple, the people would mostly recognize it as Thai massage. They may look at you funny for some oddity of movement or positioning but make no mistake that the skeleton is still Thai. We’re adding our own influence just as people have done to yoga in America but now it’s time for Thai massage to spread. It’s time for this healing art to flourish in the west.

I don’t care if you have a license or not. I don’t care where your religious views lead you. I care that you wish to help yourselves and others. Metta belongs to no one. Loving kindness cannot be bought or sold, only given away freely. Everyone is fixated on rules, money, ego and personal gain in our culture. I can give because I have enough. You give because it makes you feel better. You all come out once a week and relieve each others suffering. In that sense, you’re all very good Buddhists.

Thai massage will continue to change in the U.S. There’s no way that the influence of western culture won’t have it’s effect upon the practice. Instead of avoiding that influence I decided to grab the wheel and help steer it where I think it should go. Massage therapists are slow on the pick up, yoga teachers love it but aren’t massage therapists and then comes the acroyoga community. The acroyoga community looks like a bunch of anarchists who’ve decided gravity is our friend. I happen to agree.

I write this to try to explain my position. We’re at a unique crossroads in the U.S. We’ve irritated and annoyed some because we refuse to play by the rules. The rules say that something isn’t of value unless it can be commodified, packaged, processed and sold in a drive through. We’re doing things right, creating community and helping people. We’ll never appeal to everyone but those who like what we’re doing seem to Really like what we’re doing. Everything in my being says find a new space and push the gas pedal to the floor.

Thai massage is good for everyone. Massage therapists, novices, yoga teachers and maybe, one day if we’re lucky, acroyoga, Thai massage and yoga for kids in public schools. Imagine recess where kids run outside and do bodywork on each other and therapeutic flying. You, my friends, are helping create that world. Focus on what you love and make it happen.

Sangha is a Buddhist term. Loosely it means community. The triple gem is Buddha, dharma and sangha. The Buddha represents the potential for enlightenment, dharma are the teachings that help us on our way and sangha is community. The community we’ve created is my sangha. I’ve sat with many massage therapists and felt alone because they’re not my people. I feel the same about much of the yoga community, just at odds with the dominant paradigm. Thai massage open practice and the Austin Thai Massage community have always been home, from the first day I set foot in the place. You’ve understood what we were doing and happily taken up the practice and shared with friends like you’d found gems underneath some dirt.

I’ve always been a loner. I anger many people. My thoughts and feelings on issues politically, religiously and otherwise annoy most. I’m always calm with our group. I feel understood. You are my sangha, my community, my friends.

Thank you for what you’ve helped create. We will have a new home soon. We will show Austin, Texas what night life can be for a 21st century human who’s decided to keep the healing heart of the Buddha alive in central Texas. Love in contagious. Thai massage is an idea whose time has come. We’ll feed the flame until it becomes an all consuming fire in our community.

Namaste’,
Robert

Thai Massage and Buying Local

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Landon Sykes and I have meandering conversations from time to time. I decided to record some of them which have become part of the video you’ll watch here. Landon tends to have a broad mental scope and we often talk about issues like the one we discuss in the video.

One of the themes we run into regularly is that people see the importance of buying local when it comes to coffee or produce but don’t necessarily consider their massage the same way. Buy local not only helps your therapist but changes the interaction with a therapist in subtle ways.

Buy local, it’s not only for coffee.

Lumbar Disc Bulge

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Someone wrote me asking about a lumbar herniation or bulge. I decided to answer that message in blog format so I can share this info with everyone.

Here’s a basic anatomy lesson on the spine.

Think of a disc like a chocolate candy. It’s got a chocolate coating then a gooey center. When the chocolate coating wears away, tears, ruptures or breaks it allows the gooey center to push backwards onto a nerve. Ow! Lumbar bulges are particularly frustrating because of the pressure of everything above the bulge pressing down due to gravity. What you’re dealing with is a tear, rupture or overly stretched annulus. The nucleus then pushes out, extrudes and generally causes mayhem and makes you wish you walked on all fours again and didn’t fight gravity.

So the annulus is the chocolatey shell, the nucleus is the gooey center. We can talk surgery, chiropractic, massage til we’re blue in the face but I’ll give you the brief run down of how you help a bulge. You decompress then you backbend.

Decompress means you’re taking the pressure off. Think about unloading a ton of bricks from your truck. Hey, the shocks stretch out. Long term that’s good for your shocks and good for your lumbar discs which perform some of the same function anatomically. After you’ve decompressed you backbend. When you backbend keep in mind that slouching forward then sitting up is a backbend. Slow, gentle, timed, breathing, maybe only for 5 minutes on a foam roll or ma roller is backbending.

disc

Why backbend? Well the disc causes problems when it bulges usually to the rear. This happens due to spine anatomy and the fact that most of our lives we spend our time leaning forward. If you put all the bricks in the back of the truck is it going to bother the front shocks? Bodies aren’t that different mechanically. You essentially spend your life stretching and pushing the gooey center back. When it finally tears or breaks you’re a in a world of pain.

So why backbend? Temporarily it’s uncomfortable. It actually can irritate in the short term because well, you’ve already got inflammation and irritation there and you’re pushing on it. Long term, over the course of a lifetime it takes the pressure off the back of the chocolate shell and opens up the front of the disc. Guess what happens when you backbend? You push the gooey center forward! You maintain spine balance and have good shocks for a lifetime.

So, the general answer to back pain is to backbend. Bad posture leads to problems muscularly and to deeper structures like discs. If you already have a bulge or herniation you push the disc forward and guess what happens? It reabsorbs, doesn’t put pressure on a nerve, lessens irritation and inflammation and then, what pain? I’m better.

Let me give you another example so you understand what we’re dealing with. Let’s say you backbend like crazy and rupture a disc to the front. Guess what happens? Usually nothing. Why? Because there’s no gooey center pressing on a nerve. The nerve is posterior and you pushed the bulge out into the front. Isn’t anatomy fun?

Always consult your doctor, surgeon, for medical advice. I’m just a massage therapist providing some information. My choice to decompress and backbend my spine is yoga. I’ve done Bikram yoga for 8 years. What does it do? It decompresses my spine, backbends me and in addition forces blood and circulation around those tough spots so they can heal.

Take your time, go slow, breathe, decompress and backbend. It’s a recipe for health.

Connecting with Clients

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As a massage therapist there’s a huge amount of public image that goes into our work. After all, when I sell bodywork I’m essentially selling myself. People come in and interact with me based on a huge number of factors. I strive to be professional and respectful to clients and I always tell them that I’ll give them 110%.

Over time my personal facebook is less personal and more business as people find me online. My business facebook is a constant ongoing ticker tape of news and updates about my business dealings and growth. I noticed on online facebook groups that massage therapists fancy themselves to always be publicly calm, serene and all their meals are healthy.

I can tell you that my business has grown through effort, hard work and that includes work on myself. I eat well, do yoga regularly and just like you, struggle to remain calm. I don’t teach yoga and practice bodywork because I’m the most calm, enlightened or smart person around. I do these things quite frankly because I have to. My body hurts but I work on it. To be brief I teach what I know. I don’t share what I learned in a book, I share what I’ve learned from life.

At the end of a week of dealing with clients, students, stress, strain, clients tales of broken relationships, job stress and back pain I sometimes sit down to a beer. You may find me in the line at Whataburger every once in awhile. Beyond that you might find me at the local comedy club saying things you’d never hear in session with me. When I’m done with clients for the day I may be playing ac/dc and eminem in my car on the way to the local bar. Doesn’t mean I’m not a good yoga teacher or massage therapist. It does mean that just like you, we’re all trying to deal with complex lives and our stress load.

You’re human, I don’t expect anything less than your foibles. Accept the same in me. I’ll see you soon for another Thai massage.

Low Back Pain

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Low back pain is one of the areas that Thai massage excels at providing relief. In my 11 years experience nothing provides such consistent results other than a regular yoga practice, fortunately I do both.

The complex interplay between hips, pelvic bowl, sacrum, lumbar spine and all the musculature involded means it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what every back pain in the area comes from. The psoas is often involved from being shortened and the hamstrings often pull the lumbar spine towards flat back. Long term these are bad, in the short term you feel stiff and immobile.

I started using the Ma roller in a more advanced way to help clients help themselves at home. Thai massage has me doing these sacral movements and stretches for you but the Ma roller allows you to work on yourself. Notice the lumbar flexion or flat back then the lumbar extension or temporary lordosis we create. You’re stretching and pressing into some of the deeper structures at the base of your spine and if you’re like most of my clients, your back pain will get better.

Go slow, breathe and keep moving. I’ll see you soon for a Thai massage session or class.