To study Five Element Thai Massage
is to gift yourself and your community
the loving kindness of Thai massage,
and the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine.
These practices will support your optimal well being and maximum joy,
for the rest of your life.
Why Thai massage?
The Sarahs have studied many modalities of therapeutic massage, including deep tissue, hot stone, sports massage, swedish, myofascial, trigger point, lomi lomi, and shiatsu.
We find Thai massage to be the single most effective massage modality for facilitating healing.
Because Thai massage is, most essentially, a meditation on metta — loving kindness — it does not require the memorization of complex sequences or anatomy to still be highly effective. When the healer holds a meditation on metta, for themselves, that love is transmitted to the receiver. The receiver’s relaxation is then felt and received by the giver, so that a feedback loop of relaxation is created between giver and receiver.
Because Thai massage is done on a mat, using bodyweight, leverage, and patient presence, this meditation is actually healing for the giver. Thai massage is a gentle asana practice, with breath work, lunges, toe stretches, hip openers, and even gentle backbends — for both the giver and receiver. This is unique in our experience of massage modalities, which usually physically deplete the giver.
What is this Five Element thing?
The Five Element system is a key to unlock the ancient mysteries of Chinese medicine, to make them available for our modern everyday health and wellbeing.
Five Element theory uses imagery and symbolism to link physical ailments with:
- emotions,
- behaviors,
- internal organs,
- lines of energy along the body (called meridians),
- and also with the forces of nature.
We are amazed at the power of Chinese medicine to effect sophisticated cures, described in very simple terms. The language of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water is powerful because it is not scientific; rather it is a symbolic language that evokes images more than single events or anatomical parts. It provides the synergy that we, as Western analytical thinkers, crave and need.
So what do you get when you combine the Five Element system with Thai massage?
Five Element Thai Massage is a unique modality that uses listening, touch, and coaching skills to diagnose and treat physical ailments, and the patterns that create them.
Our Thai massage flows and therapeutic flying balance the energetic meridians in the body. With practiced diagnosis, Five Element Thai Massage can be used to treat many common ailments, such as headaches, coughs, fatigue, joint pain, menstrual pain, stress, indigestion, anxiety, frustration, indecision, and depression. Because no healing journey can be completed without the receiver committing to their own proactive process, we teach behavioral and nutritional concepts to support the bodywork, and how to coach your receiver in those supports, for a holistic healing framework.
Why do you teach this?
Just as a Thai massage practitioner is inspired to greater relaxation by their receiver’s relaxation, we, as teachers, are inspired to greater healing and learning by our students’ journeys.
As more people commit to their health and happiness, the vibration of our human community is elevated.
The ripples of this work extend far beyond our time together in the classroom.
To put it another way, we learn from 5 Element theory that creating health in the microcosms of our internal systems creates health in our overall lives, and that thriving, in turn, necessarily improves the health of the societal and planetary macrocosms. 5 Element Theory is, in this way, fundamentally is an environmentalist practice. If the planet is not healthy, neither can we be.
And inversely, if we truly, deeply heal ourselves, we heal the planet as well.
The most efficient and sustainable lifestyle follows the cycles of nature, moving with the free flow of energy on the planet, as well as within our bodies. We are all from the same source; we are all ultimately one energy.
We are passionate about thriving together with our Mother Earth and all her offspring, and supporting students in that journey.
We look forward with delight to seeing you on the mat!
SARAHPEUTICS, MINNEAPOLIS, MN AND LOS ANGELES, CA
SARAHPEUTICS@GMAIL.COM