Today we are spotlighting one of my favorite skills to incorporate to support my clients postpartum: Thai Yoga Bodywork. Thai Yoga Bodywork is a folk healing tradition originating in Thailand, and it was only lumped in with yoga by westerners, to illustrate the difference between this practice and western notions of massage.
As it was taught to me, there are two primary traditions relating to Thai body work: a village version, where individuals, mostly family members, take turns giving and receiving this healing body work to one another. This version is non-transactional and a relationship of peers, human to human, like a general tune up for our bodies as they work, play and accumulate wear and tear. There is a corresponding tradition born more in urban centers, where there’s more commerce and merchants and massage professionals set up shop and clients come in for their healing work. This city model is similar to our western conception of massage, like Swedish or deep tissue.
Thai body work is done fully clothed, on a mat on the floor, and it incorporates energy work alongside the physical components. The energy part is largely twofold: the process follows the body’s meridians, or sen lines, which relate to the yogic concepts of nadhis or chakras. The other energy component is that the person giving body work is really focusing on loving kindness throughout the practice.
Another unique component of this tradition is the way that the person giving bodywork uses their own body: incorporated lunges, forward folds, (another reason it was linked to yoga pretty naturally) to support and boost their own body even while giving support to another. Where western concepts of massage are pretty tiring and extractive for the person giving the massage, who is usually being paid, the Thai body work model is promoting circulation, mobility and health for the person giving as well as the person receiving. It makes a lot of sense in the context of family members or other close relationships supporting their shared well-being and longevity.
I first learned this practice in 2017 in my yoga teacher training, and it just really resonated with me. I practiced it a lot on everyone who was willing: my partner, a friend who had just gone through something awful. I even bartered a session with someone in exchange for them helping me clean out my closet.
As I started to incorporate this practice with my postpartum clients, I saw how beautiful of a fit it is for this tender time of healing. First, it gives my clients a really good challenge: for the first 20 minutes of our postpartum session, arrange to have everything handled. 20 minutes to yourself. It sounds so simple on paper but it can be really challenging to step into claiming that space. When you feel like you are the only one keeping everything afloat, it feels impossible to step away even for 20 minutes. But that shit is exhausting. So the first challenge is claiming 20 minutes.
When we start the session, it usually feels really good to just lie down in a quiet room with gentle music playing. Usually between interrupted sleep, pediatric appointments, other kids especially toddlers, my clients’ nervous system’s can feel a little fried in the weeks following having a baby. Taking this 20 minutes at the beginning of our session centers the client: instead of looking after everyone else they are being looked after on a physical and emotional level. It’s primarily compression- which I tend to call ‘smushing the muscles’- combined with some super gentle movement: back and forth with the foot, cradling the head and turning it to the side. It’s twenty minutes of gentle physical bodywork while someone really focuses on sending you loving kindness.
Sometimes for my clients this turns into a nap, which I applaud. I think what’s more common is Non-Sleep Deep Rest, a concept popularized by Andrew Huberman which is shown to support learning, creativity, mood, and physical health: all huge boosters for parenting! It’s a reset for the nervous system, and feels so so good.
I am so grateful for this practice. The Thai are really experts in postpartum care and have so many beautiful healing traditions and I am honored to be able to incorporate a small part of that knowledge and tradition.