At the end of 2008, I burned out from my IT-job. It was a time of intense personal struggle, but about eight months later — in the summer of 2019 — I decided to take a sabbatical year to Southeast Asia with the idea that it would help me to recover physically, emotionally, and mentally.
I was planning to travel around the continent and just take it easy, but in Thailand (the first country I visited) — and actually by pure chance — I enrolled for a Thai Massage training course with the Sunshine Massage School in Chiang Mai (Thailand).
To my own surprise I got immediately hooked. Moreover, I knew I had found my new vocation and would not return doing my IT-job. During the next couple of months I stayed in Thailand and spent learning Thai Massage with a variety of Thai Massage schools and teachers.
As I wanted to learn with the best teachers I started to ask around, and of course also search the Internet, but I discovered that info about training options was available all right, but scattered, incomplete, fragmented. It was hard to find accurate and complete info about all Thai Massage schools and teachers in Thailand.
To not lose the information I had collected, I started a private list with remarks, websites, addresses, Facebook pages, and so on. Because I lived in Europe at the time, I also began collecting notes on the whereabouts of European Thai Massage schools and instructors.
In fact, the rudiments of TraditionalBodywork.com were born without me knowing it at the time. In 2017, when I stopped actively giving and teaching Thai Massage and Thai Yoga (Reusi Dat Ton), the idea came to mind to make my notes publicly available for the Thai Massage community.
I had also been writing about Thailand, Thai Massage, and Reusi Dat Ton since 2010, so I thought it would be a nice idea to combine Thai Massage school and teacher info with my writings on these topics.
With Helissa’s help I finally got the will and the strength to embark on this project. I knew it would be a “hell of a job,” and I knew I needed someone by my side to not lose motivation and give up when things would be going tough.
Anyway, in the spring of 2017 we finally started with design and development of the Thai Massage training provider database and the website. We managed to launch the site in March 2018.
