Old Medicine Hospital Thai Massage School Shivagakomarpaj (OMH)

About the school

The Old Medicine Hospital is the source school of northern-style Thai massage as foreigners know it. Founded in 1962 by Ajahn Sintorn Chaichakan, who had studied Thai traditional medicine at Wat Pho in the late 1950s and then reworked it through northern Lanna practice, it produced most of the teachers who went on to found the other Chiang Mai schools - Pichest Boonthumme and Chaiyuth Priyasith among them, and through Chaiyuth the whole Sunshine Network. Ajahn Sintorn's son, Ajahn Wasan Chaichakan, now leads the lineage. What you get here is the original northern sequence: rocking, rhythmic, generous with stretches, delivered by an institution that has been teaching over a thousand foreign students a year for six decades and has no interest in reinventing itself. It suits people who want the root tradition and the historical weight that comes with it. It suits less well anyone expecting polished Western customer service or a modernised, therapist-ergonomics-first pedagogy - this is an old Thai institution and it feels like one.