It is difficult to be precise about the roots of Thai Massage because very little has been recorded. Of the little that has, the majority was destroyed during the Burmese invasion in 1767.

Thai Massage is believed to have Indian heritage, as some of the terminology (for instance the names of the energy lines) are very similar to their Indian counterparts. Similarities are also evident when comparing the passive stretching of Thai Massage and various asana postures of Yoga.

It is not clear how much the Chinese influenced what is now known as Thai Massage, while it spread from India the same time as Buddhism, some 2500 years ago.

Thai Massage was traditionally passed down through families, enabling them to maintain the gruelling hard work of farming rice. Occasionally it was passed on from the village Healer to his chosen student, who would specialise and learn this wisdom over a period of many years.

In the 1900’s, Thai Massage was banned. There was a huge tragedy in which the Queen drowned amidst thousands of onlookers. Nobody saved her because touching female royalty incurred the death penalty. The King understandably went a bit crazy, and radically changed many Thai laws including the banning of Thai massage in favour of a more modern Western Medicine approach.

Thai massage had a revival when a wandering German punk rock singer stumbled across and fell in love with it. Asokananda (his Buddhist name) hung around at the old medicine hospital in Chiang Mai, slowly learning from his teachers Pichest and Chyutte.

As time went on, more foreigners turned up at the old medicine hospital and showed an interest in learning what they had experienced. Speaking English and having a growing understanding of Thai Massage, Asokananda began teaching.

He applied routine to his teaching, allowing him to teach a lot of what he had learned in a far shorter time period. He also wrote the first non-Thai book on Thai Massage compiling much of the then very limited resources, and began to make the Thai Sen (energy) lines explicit and universally recognised.

As tourism took off, so too did Thai Massage, which is now offered right across Thailand and is relatively easy to find in many countries the world over.