Our first Video Workshop appeared in the summer of 2021, that is, two years after our first eBook. Actually, we wanted to create Thai Massage Video Workshops already in 2019, but I hesitated quite a while before doing so.
The thing is that I firmly believed that it’s hard to teach Thai Massage online, maybe even impossible. I felt that online education works well for non-touch theoretical subjects, like geography, mathematics, or language teaching, but for physical contact and touch subjects, such as dance, martial arts or massage, I thought online training is not really the way.
Of course, knowledge of massage theory, like anatomy and physiology, other theoretical aspects of the massage modality students want to learn, such as the theoretical part of the Meridians in Chinese Medicine, or the Sen Energy Lines in Thai Massage, general knowledge about hygiene, precautions and contraindications, the business, and such, can be transmitted perfectly well via online or distance learning.
But then at some point I realized that demonstrating additional techniques for those who are already Thai Massage practitioners could be helpful. In addition, I also realized that videos could be meaningful for those who just want to know a bit more about Thai Massage. So, the way to do it and present videos took form as rather offering workshops instead of offering (beginner) courses.
It’s why we now offer Video Workshops in the following way (let’s take the Video Workshop Thai Massage in the Prone Position as an example):
◾ For those who want to know what Thai Massage in the Prone Position is about;
◾ For massage practitioners who want to add more massage techniques to their repertoire;
◾ For massage instructors who’d like to add more techniques to their massage study curricula.
Nevertheless, I still believe that it’s not okay when a Thai Massage teacher claims that someone who doesn’t know anything about Thai Massage can learn doing it properly without having physical contact/exchange with a teacher and other massage students.
You see, I think that to learn giving Thai Massage from scratch (without having any previous experience), students need to feel how a Thai Massage technique works on them (done by the teacher or other students) and they really need an actual human being to practice on (with close monitoring of the teacher) to fully understand what they’re doing and how the treatment is experienced by another person.
I actually really don’t see how the above is possible or feasible through online massage training whatever advanced video or communication techniques are used, or whether it is given through streaming or live-online.
Let’s be honest: can you imagine being given a Thai Massage session by a therapist who learned the trade on YouTube? Strangely enough, I can — the world is crazy enough nowadays — yet, being a client I would be happy to have the hospital emergency room around the corner.
