Returning to Thailand after 4 years, the land of smiles feels like a home away from home for me. The warmth of this culture, friendly sunny smiles of the people and delicious food brings a wonderful feeling into my heart each time I visit. Of all the places I've visited in the world, Thailand has really got something very special and unique. The happiness that emanates from the locals here is obvious as their moto is "sebi sebi" which means happy happy!
Jared & I arrived in Bangkok after a short journey from Nepal. We spent a couple of days in the crazy capital of Bangkok. Catching the metro from the airport was fun, taking us right into the train station in Bangkok where we took a tuk tuk (small taxi) to Kao San road (the tourist hub in Bangkok) where we stayed. After making arrangements of where we wanted to go next, I flew first to Chiang Mai because I'd registered to begin a course that was starting on Monday the 7th Nov. Arriving first I found a good room in a lovely guesthouse with friendly people and a very cute dog named Milo. Jared stayed in Bangkok until that evening because he wanted to travel by train to see some more of Thailand, the flood conditions and to save some money. After 14 hours of traveling, he reached Chiang Mai, where I met him at the train station at about 1am due to delays because of the flooding!
I started my Traditional Thai massage course the following day and the class was all women from multicultural places. Some of the students were Italian, French, one Dutch, and one Austrian. The group were great and we all connected very well as the teacher pointed out on several occasions! Our teacher was Thai and we learned many things about Thai massage and the philosophies of this tradition from him. I was surprised to learn this style of massage actually originated in India from the Ayurveda style. As it crossed over from India into Thailand different adaptations were made to create the Traditional Thai massage. This news brought a smile to my face because I'd already learned Ayurveda yoga massage and their connection was apparent in many ways throughout the course. It also gave me another perspective and building more skills in the massage field.
Sunshine school Chiang Mai (www.sunshine-massage-school.com) is where I took the course and it's a really good place to study massage if one is looking into this training. They are accredited by many countries all around the world. The professionalism, friendliness, good energy of the staff and teachers flows through the whole place. The teachers love their work and the joy of teaching shines through in their lighthearted but thorough delivery of the course work. Their passionate ways of expressing themselves is individual, as each teacher has their own unique way of inspiring students. I enjoyed going to school each day and learning something new was truly rewarding. Most mornings before class, I had a lovely yoga session by myself in one of the spare rooms there, to start my day flexible, centered and very clear.
Jared also done a 2 week training in a Lahu (name of the hill tribe) village in the North of Thailand through the Sunshine Network. He really enjoyed his course too and learned many new things while integrating with local life in a small primitive village. We just met up in Pai when he completed his course and yesterday we just exchanged our new skills. It felt good to be able to help one another fine tune our own techniques by offering feedback to one another.
Now we are in the processing of working out the next stage of our journey...
No comments:
Post a Comment