Norman, Oklahoma
Traditional Thai Bodywork
Thai bodywork shares a connection with yoga. It is done on the floor on a mat, and it involves hands, feet, knees, elbows, and forearms with rocking, compression, and stretching. We use deep breathing and take your body through ranges of motion that are difficult to reach by yourself.
Thai bodywork is excellent for addressing lower back pain, repetitive movement injuries, and yoga and sports related injuries, or simply to rejuvenate and recover from stress and strain.
What to expect
People come for many reasons.
Tightness, old injuries, recovery from physical activity, limited mobility, or simply the need to relax and be worked on carefully. You do not need to be flexible or have a specific problem.
Rather than forcing change, I work gradually and pay attention to how the body responds. Pressure, rhythm, and movement allow release at its own pace.
A session may leave you deeply relaxed, or more open and mobile, with a clearer sense of where you hold tension and how it shifts.
How I work
Every body is different.
I like to begin with a short conversation and a postural analysis. On a first session I take extra time to visit beforehand, ask what is going on, ask where you feel pain or discomfort, and ask what you want out of the sessions. That extra time is not charged for. It is perfectly fine if the goal is simply to relax and feel better, and if there are specific issues to address, I like to plan that out right away.
I start with the most relevant part of the body and the most relevant techniques. If someone comes to me with a lower back or a neck, I start there and gradually work outward, trying to understand what is underneath the problem and how to relieve it by working with the whole body rather than only the area that hurts. My work includes fascial release, and a number of other styles of bodywork are interwoven with the traditional Thai sequences.
Sometimes the work is enough on its own. Other times I will suggest simple movements or practices to support what we found.
The highest compliment is when someone takes what they learned and uses it in their own practice or daily life.
Before you come
Start to finish.
Wear something you could do yoga in. Soft pants or leggings and a t-shirt with sleeves, no zips or belts, and nothing that will dig in when you are folded up. Bring socks if your feet get cold. Eat lightly or not at all in the two hours before, because a full stomach makes the abdominal and twisting work uncomfortable.
60 minutes covers the whole body with attention to the areas you named. 90 minutes gives me time to go through the full range of Thai positions and give a more complete experience.
Afterward, drink water and take the rest of the day gently. Some people are mildly sore the next morning, in the way a long practice leaves you sore, and it passes.
The practical part
- Where
- Yoga on Main, 123 East Main Street, downtown Norman.
- What to wear
- Loose clothing you can move in. You stay dressed throughout.
- Parking
- Street parking on Main is usually there. If it is not, the bank lot behind the studio has plenty.
- When
- Weekdays, mostly. Weekends can be arranged if you ask.
- Payment
- All major credit cards, through Stripe.
- Changes
- Twenty four hours notice if you can manage it. Late is still better than nothing, and I am not looking to charge someone who could not make it.
- At your place
- $150 an hour, anywhere in the Oklahoma City metro.
Watch
Some of what a session looks like.
I think of a session as a kind of mapping. I learn a body by working with it, its texture, its patterns, how it answers pressure and movement and breath. From there the work develops in real time.
If something needs attention we stay with it. If something does not respond, I change approach. There is no fixed routine. Thai bodywork gives a framework, and every body is different.
Your practitioner
Andrew Eppler.
I have practiced Ashtanga yoga for more than forty years and spent most of that time studying how the body moves, adapts, and changes. Thai bodywork has been part of that study for more than thirty five years. The two keep informing each other. Yoga shapes how I work, and the bodywork deepens what I understand about movement in yoga.
I work with everyone, from athletes to elderly people, and I enjoy working with anyone who is ready to feel better. I specialize in lower back pain, repetitive movement injuries, and yoga and sports related injuries. I also enjoy working with seniors who want to preserve their mobility and independence.
In my experience there are two main causes of tension in the body. One is toxicity and the other is stress. Using what I know of the Indian knowledge systems and of yoga, I work with clients in a holistic way. A session usually carries some counsel drawn from yoga philosophy, along with practical guidance on diet and daily life, and you will go home with a few exercises to keep on your own.
My father's final years, living with Parkinson's disease, taught me another dimension of this work, how essential simple and careful movement is for maintaining dignity and independence.
I am still learning. That is the most important thing to know about how I work.
I also teach private yoga, and there is more about my teaching here.
Before the work begins, the practitioner remembers their teachers and the tradition they learned from.
The tradition
Where the work comes from.
Thai traditional medicine developed within a cultural world shaped by Buddhism and by long exchange between Thailand, India, China, and neighboring regions. Its understanding of the body includes pathways known as sen. In my own study I have found strong parallels between this system and the energetic anatomy described in the Indian traditions that inform yoga. The systems are not identical, but the relationship between them has been central to my work.
I was introduced to Thai bodywork more than thirty five years ago by one of my early yoga teachers, David Williams, who encouraged me to study it. I recognized its connection to yoga immediately.
My training began in Chiang Mai at the Old Medicine Hospital and continued in Austria, England, and Greece. In 2014 I completed levels one and two with Chock Petchprom at the TMC School of Thai Massage. Along the way I studied deep tissue work, myofascial release, osteopathy, Shiatsu, myoskeletal work, Muscle Activation Technique, and chiropractic approaches. Of all of these, Thai bodywork has remained the central thread. It lets me bring most of what I have learned into one coherent practice.
Thai practitioners open with wai kru, a gesture honoring one's teachers. It is a plain acknowledgment that the knowledge was received rather than invented, and that every technique in it has passed through other hands first.
The longer history is here, for anyone who wants it.
Questions
The ones I get asked.
Does it hurt?
It shouldn't. There is firm pressure in places and a stretch you will feel, but the work stops well short of pain. Say something at the time and it changes.
How is this different from the massage I am used to?
It happens on a mat rather than a table, and there is a great deal of movement in it. Compression along the sen lines, then the joints taken through their ranges by hand.
I am not flexible. Does that matter?
No. I move you into the shapes, and only as far as your body goes that day.
Is there anything that would make this a bad idea?
A few things. Recent surgery, acute injury, blood thinners, uncontrolled blood pressure, and pregnancy all change how I work or whether I work at all that day. None of them is automatically a no. Tell me when you book and we will sort it out beforehand.
Begin
Book a session.
Booking runs through Yoga on Main, where the sessions happen. If you would rather write first and tell me what is going on, use the form below or call.
Traditional Thai Bodywork with Andrew Eppler. Yoga on Main, 123 East Main Street, Norman, Oklahoma.