San Francisco: Lazy Girl’s Yoga
When I was in Thailand a couple of years ago, I discovered the Thai Massage. If you’ve never had one, it’s a type of massage during which you get stretched and bended into bliss—kind of like doing yoga asana, but you don’t actually have to do anything. Since I’ve come home, I’ve been wanting to find a place to get Thai massage but it seems to be one of the rarer forms of massage practiced at most yoga studios. International Orange, however, offers a few variations of Thai massage and they also do something called a Thai Fusion massage, which incorporates the best of all worlds: the stretching motions of Thai massage, the smooth rubbing motions of Swedish, and the pressure point techniques of Shiatsu. I went for one last week with massage therapist and yoga teacher Christy Swenson.
Christy used Shiatsu compression and Swedish sweeping motions (along with signature aromatherapy oils) on my back and did Thai on my legs. While I was being massaged, I was positioned in various yoga poses, like Dhanurasana, Vrksasana, and half of Gomukhasana. She also did yoga while massaging me, literally climbing up onto the table and working on my back while she was in down dog! The massage was an hour and then she sent me home with a card that had a special mantra she wrote down for me, along with a couple of recommended yoga poses.
The benefits lasted well into the following week. I didn’t only feel looser, but I actually felt my circulation working better than it normally does. International Orange also offers a 90-minute straight-up floor Thai massage, if you’re more of a traditionalist. And the sauna there is also pretty sweet.
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