The question of how good or how healthy it is to have a Thai Massage is quite often asked by first-time receivers. Well, let me say it like this: a traditional Thai Massage is as good as any other full body massage treatment. Nevertheless, just having a massage at some point in time — for instance, every three months or half year or so — is perhaps interesting or relaxing, but it will not bring much in the “health benefit” arena.
As is the case with all types of massages, one needs to have regular massages to reap the health benefits. That is, massage is foremost a type of illness prevention and body maintenance. It can also be used as a therapeutic restorative of healing modality, but here — perhaps even more — counts that one usually needs a range of treatment sessions (maybe once, twice a week or even daily), during a specific period of time, to see results.
Yet — compared to other types of massage modalities — Thai Massage can be rather tough and intense, and boasts a very broad variety of massage tools and techniques, such as acupressure, the famous Yoga-like stretches, and general techniques such as petrissage (kneading), effleurage (strokes), tapotement (percussion), vibration, cracks, and friction, among others.
As a matter of fact, it’s sometimes thought that Thai Yoga Massage can be dangerous for the receiver, and now and again one would see some or another “horror” story in the media. To be honest, that’s all a bit exaggerated, but we have paid some attention to this topic in our post Is Thai Massage Dangerous?