4 - Workshops shared with another teacher teaching their subject and where I integrate Thai massage teaching as a supporting tool for better learning and integration.
Thai massage gets you relaxed and centered, ready for change, new information and learning.
It is also a practice that fosters deep listening and connection.
For these reasons I love the idea of supporting another subject of study with sessions of Thai massage.
Many practices can benefit from such a combination, but dance is the most obvious one to me. Thai massage indeed shares a lot with dance: feeling, touch, listening, reciprocal tension, intuition... Development of all these qualities in one practice inevitably leads to improvement in the other.
Thai massage can be both playful and deep.
It is a wonderful art to get in touch with others on a deeper level, and to find peace for ourselves while getting in touch with our own intuition.
It is very accessible to give someone a beautiful and relaxing massage, and to ground ourselves by doing so. Mastery is a long journey that comes with practice, and the beauty of Thai massage is that practising it is relaxing, joyful and healing... for everyone involved in it!
The 4 main teaching formulas I offer:
1 - Stand alone 2.5 to 6 hours workshop to discover the world of Thai massage
After a short introduction on Thai massage, its philosophy, mechanics and concepts, the students pair up to follow and apply an easy sequence on their practice partner... and then they switch! This allows everyone to feel the joy of connection: giving, receiving, feel relaxed and balanced. All in an easy and joyful atmosphere.
2 - Weekend and week-long workshops
Let us dive deeper! We put focus on understanding the techniques, rather than just replicate them. We practice ways to deepen our listening skills, and work on correct body mechanics to make our touch more effective, soft and effortless.
Any workshop will propose a sequence of movements that can be applied for a massage, but the most important is always to see the principles that lie beyond this sequence, and what it can teach us to improve practice!
A 5 days (25 to 30 hours) workshop allows for the minimum time to acquire the skills to give a whole body Thai Massage.
A 50 to 60 hours workshop over two weeks offers the possibility to work deeper on fluidity, listening, and alternate techniques that allow us to have options to adapt our massage to our receiver and our own physical capabilities.
3 - Workshops combining the use of Thai Massage with the development of vocal technique and/or polyphonic singing.
After years of working on vocal technique and facing many walls in my progression, I discovered that sometimes adequate human touch can bring the right amount of relaxation to create the space needed for new coordination habits to fall into place.
Thai massage will not teach you how to sing of breathe, but I might very well allow you to feel new, easier, and healthier sensations that you will then be able to make yours.
In these workshops, I alternate between guided massage and self-massage sessions, focusing on key areas of singing (abdomen, diaphragm, ribs, neck and jaw), and singing or vocal technique practice. This allows us to integrate the benefits of the massage into our singing practice.
In the classes I teach, I alternate the focus between these points:
1 - The Quality of our presence: a central aspect of Thai massage, which affects and is affected by all other aspects of our practice
2 - The Development of our intuition and sensitivity
3 - The Development of our understanding of anatomy and how the body works
4 - The Dancing aspect of Thai massage:
Thai massage is a dance, just like tango. The idea of a ''giver'' and a ''receiver'' is partially an illusion, just as the concepts of ''leader'' and ''follower'' in dance.
There is always an exchange that goes both ways, and when we listen carefully in our massage, we are guided by the body of our partner. We learn to feel different layers of tissues, various levels of stretches and tension... and to play with them all!
Moving gracefully, focusing effort only where it is needed and working together in harmony with our partner can completely change the feeling of the massage, be it for the ''giver'' or the ''receiver''.
5 - Building strong and precise technical foundations:
Just because Thai massage gives much importance to presence and intuition does not mean that technique should be overlooked.
On the contrary, precision in the execution of our movements allow us to be more effortless, and therefore more sensitive to what our receiver shares with us.
Just like most good jazz musicians practice their scales so that they can freely improvise when they jam on stage, we want to learn precision in our technique so we can let go and focus on connection and intuition during a massage.
If you are interested or would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact me!