Choosing a continuing education course is a professional purchase, not an impulse. You are spending tuition, closing your book for several days, and betting that what you learn will still be in your hands a year from now. Most CE catalogs make that decision harder than it needs to be. The listings describe hours and topics, rarely the things that determine value: who is teaching, how much of the day you spend with your hands on a body, how many people are in the room, and whether the technique holds up on a full schedule in a real treatment room.
Authentic Thai Massage NYC teaches a five-day Thai massage course for licensed therapists in Midtown Manhattan, and this guide is written from that side of the table. It covers how to evaluate any CE provider before you enroll, why lineage carries unusual weight in Thai bodywork specifically, what mat-based training does for your body mechanics that a table adaptation cannot, how Part 1 and Part 2 are sequenced, and the logistics of the classes held in Suite 2007 at 501 Fifth Avenue. Where a claim depends on state rules rather than on the course itself, you will be told to verify it yourself — because you should.
Verify the approval before anything else. Confirm the provider’s approval body and provider number, then confirm with the New York State Education Department Office of the Professions that the credits will be accepted for your license and your current renewal cycle. Requirements change, and no provider — including this one — should be your only source on what your license requires.
Then judge the teaching, not the syllabus. Hands-on hours, class size, and the instructor’s own training tell you more about what you will retain than a topic list does. A course with an instructor who can correct your position while you are in it is worth more than a longer course you mostly watch.
For Thai massage specifically, ask where the instructor learned. Thai bodywork is a lineage tradition. A short adaptation taught by someone who themselves took a short adaptation loses the structure that makes the work coherent. Authentic Thai Massage NYC’s continuing education classes carry 35 CE credits per part, are NCBTMB-certified, and are approved for New York State LMT license renewal, taught by an instructor trained at Wat Po Medical School in Bangkok and the Thai Massage School of Chiang Mai under NCBTMB Approved Provider #792.
Every legitimate CE provider can tell you, without hesitation, which body approved the course and what their provider number is. If that information is difficult to find, treat the difficulty itself as an answer. For Thai massage training in New York, two things are worth confirming in writing: the national approval — the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, with a specific provider number — and whether the credits are accepted toward New York State LMT license renewal.
New York State continuing education requirements for massage therapy are set by the New York State Education Department Office of the Professions, and they are subject to change. This article deliberately does not state how many hours you need per cycle or when your cycle closes, because printing a number that is later revised would be worse than printing nothing. Check the Office of the Professions directly for your current requirement, your deadline, and any limits on course type or delivery format. Then confirm with the provider that their specific course applies to your license.
That verification takes one afternoon and protects the entire investment. If you hold licenses in more than one state, or you maintain national certification alongside your New York license, check each separately — acceptance in one system does not guarantee acceptance in another.
A short list of direct questions will separate a well-run program from a loosely organized one. Ask them by email so you have the answers in writing, and treat a vague reply as data.
That last question is the one most catalogs never answer. A course can be well organized, properly approved, and still leave you with nothing you can integrate into a 60-minute appointment. Listen for a specific answer rather than a general one.
In some modalities, technique travels well through a manual. Thai massage travels poorly that way. It is a sequenced tradition built around Sen energy line theory, a specific logic of positioning, and an economy of movement refined inside institutions that still teach it. The order of the work is not decorative. Each position sets up the next, and the transitions carry as much of the method as the individual techniques do.
Two institutions are widely recognized as reference points: Wat Po Medical School in Bangkok, attached to the temple complex that has taught traditional Thai medicine for generations, and the Thai Massage School of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Training that runs through these lineages tends to preserve the full sequence, the traditional positioning, and the reasoning behind both. Sasighan Prasertsri, who teaches the classes here, is a native Thai practitioner and New York Licensed Massage Therapist who trained at both, and you can read more about that background on the studio’s founder and credentials page.
The alternative is common enough to name plainly. A weekend Thai module, taught by an instructor whose own exposure was a weekend module, delivers a handful of stretches stripped from their sequence. What is missing is the connective reasoning — why this position precedes that one, how the practitioner moves between them without breaking contact or straining, what to do when a client’s body does not permit the standard shape. Without that, you are left with a small collection of maneuvers and no framework for adapting them, and arbitrary technique is the first thing to disappear from a busy practice. Thai bodywork is taught by feel and correction more than by description. An instructor who learned the tradition from inside it can put a hand on your hip and change your entire alignment in a way no written cue accomplishes.
Traditional Thai massage is performed on a mat on the floor, and there is a mechanical reason for it beyond tradition. On the mat, the practitioner can move around the client on all sides, kneel, stand, use both feet, drop their center of gravity, and apply pressure by leaning rather than pushing. The floor lets you position your entire body behind the work. A table takes most of that away. It fixes your height, restricts your angles, and quietly pushes you back toward using arms and shoulders for pressure that should come from body weight.
Table-based Thai adaptations exist, and there are practical reasons some studios use them — space, existing equipment, client expectation. But learning on a table first tends to build habits you then have to unlearn. Learning on the mat first gives you the correct mechanics, and adapting a subset of that work to a table afterward is far easier than the reverse.
These classes are held on the mat in keeping with Thai tradition, which is also why the clothing requirement is what it is. You work fully clothed, both as the giver and the receiver, and spend the day moving between kneeling, standing, and seated positions rather than standing beside a table.
This is the argument that persuades experienced therapists more often than any other, and it has nothing to do with adding a service line. Manual therapists lose careers to their hands. Thumbs go first, then wrists, then the dominant shoulder. A therapist doing six deep tissue sessions a day with thumb pressure and hand-driven work is spending a finite resource.
Thai technique is built around a different economy. Pressure comes from body weight transferred through a stable base, not from grip strength. The primary tools are forearms, elbows, palms with straight wrists, knees, and feet. The practitioner leans in and lets gravity do the work, then unloads by shifting position rather than by muscling back out. Assisted stretching uses leverage — the practitioner’s body braced against the client’s limb — so that the range of motion comes from the setup, not from pulling.
The practical effect is that a well-executed Thai session can be less physically expensive to deliver than a deep tissue session of the same length, while still producing substantial pressure for the client. Even therapists who never intend to offer a full Thai session often find the mechanics transfer: once you have learned to generate pressure by leaning rather than pressing, you start doing it on the table without thinking about it.
Nothing here is a guarantee against injury, and no technique substitutes for reasonable scheduling, rest between sessions, and your own care when something hurts. But of the choices available to a working LMT, retraining how you generate pressure is one of the few that compounds in your favor.
The course is split into two five-day parts, each carrying 35 CE credits, at $899 per part. The division follows client positioning rather than difficulty level, which is why the sequence exists in the order it does.
Part 1 covers the foundational postures — face-up (supine) work and side-lying positions. This is where the sequence begins in the tradition, and where the core vocabulary lives: the opening of the feet and legs, the assisted stretching patterns through the hips and hamstrings, the Sen line pressure work, and the question of how you position your own body relative to the client’s. Side-lying work matters more than its share of the syllabus suggests, because it is the position you will reach for with clients who cannot lie flat comfortably.
Part 2 builds on that foundation with face-down (prone) and seated techniques, emphasizing flow, precision, and practitioner posture. The seated sequence is the one that changes what many therapists can offer — it opens up chair-based and event work, and addresses the neck, shoulders, and upper back from angles a table does not easily allow. The prone work uses the practitioner’s feet and body weight in ways that require the base you built in Part 1.
The sequence is not arbitrary gatekeeping. Taking the parts out of order means learning the more demanding mechanics without the foundation that makes them safe to perform at speed.
The classes are live and in-person — no remote component, which is appropriate for work that has to be corrected by touch. They are held in Suite 2007 at 501 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, a separate suite from the treatment rooms, entered through the front entrance on Fifth Avenue with elevators 2, 3, or 4 to the 20th floor. For most therapists in the five boroughs, that is a commute to Grand Central, Bryant Park, or Penn Station and a short walk.
Class sizes are small and the format is highly interactive, which is the practical difference between watching a technique and owning it. You practice on your classmates and receive the work in return — feeling a stretch applied correctly tells you things a demonstration cannot. Wear loose, comfortable clothing every day.
A Certificate of Attendance requires 100% attendance. Plan the week accordingly and block your book before you enroll rather than after. After completing both Part 1 and Part 2, participants are welcome to attend review classes at any time at no additional cost, subject to availability — which is genuinely useful, because the second exposure to a sequence is where most of the retention happens. Current dates, enrollment details, and course descriptions are on the Thai massage CE classes page.
Be realistic about this. Adding a modality does not automatically change your calendar, and no honest provider will promise you a revenue outcome from a five-day class. What it changes is what you are able to offer and to whom.
Practically, you gain the ability to work with clients who do not want to undress and do not want oil — a category larger than most therapists assume, including corporate clients and people whose first experience of massage was uncomfortable for reasons of exposure rather than pressure. You gain a way to address mobility and range of motion directly, through assisted movement rather than soft tissue work alone. And you gain a distinct service to describe on your menu, which matters in a market where “deep tissue” appears on nearly every one. To see how the finished work is positioned to clients, the studio’s traditional Thai massage service page is a useful reference.
What you charge and how you package it are business decisions that depend on your market, your setting, and your existing clientele. The training gives you the capability. The rest is your practice.
The instructor is the author of The Manual of Authentic Traditional Thai Massage, available on Amazon and BookBaby. It covers Sen energy line theory, traditional technique, and the principles behind the work, and functions as the theoretical companion to what is taught in the studio. Reading it beforehand is not required, but it changes the first two days considerably — arriving with the vocabulary already familiar means you spend those hours refining position rather than absorbing terminology. It also serves as a reference afterward, when you are reconstructing a transition from memory three weeks later.
If you are evaluating Thai massage classes in NYC, the sensible order is: verify your current CE requirements with the New York State Education Department Office of the Professions, confirm a provider’s credits will be accepted for your license and cycle, then look hard at the teaching — lineage, hands-on ratio, class size, and what you walk out able to do.
Course details, dates, and enrollment for both parts are on the Thai massage continuing education page. If you have questions about credit acceptance, prerequisites, scheduling, or whether Part 1 or Part 2 is the right starting point for you, reach the studio through the contact page or by phone at (212) 759-6618. Some therapists also choose to experience a session as a client before enrolling, which is a reasonable way to assess whether the work is something you want in your own hands.
Massage supports wellness but does not diagnose or treat medical conditions. Consult a qualified health professional about persistent pain, acute injury, neurological symptoms, or cardiovascular concerns — and screen your own clients accordingly before applying assisted stretching or deep pressure.
The courses are NCBTMB-certified and approved for New York State LMT license renewal, at 35 CE credits per part, under Approved Provider #792. Still, verify your current requirements with the New York State Education Department Office of the Professions, since rules and cycles change, and confirm before enrolling that the credits apply to your specific license and renewal period. If you hold licenses in other states, check each board separately.
Part 1 covers face-up and side-lying positions and establishes the mechanics that Part 2 assumes. Part 2 covers face-down and seated techniques and emphasizes flow, precision, and practitioner posture. The sequence exists for mechanical reasons rather than administrative ones, so taking them in order is strongly advisable. If you have substantial prior Thai training and want to discuss your starting point, ask before enrolling.
The classes are designed for licensed massage therapists adding traditional Thai technique to an existing practice. Prior Thai experience is not assumed for Part 1 — the course begins with foundational postures. What is assumed is professional comfort with hands-on work, client positioning, and reading how a body responds to pressure.
Wear loose, comfortable clothing every day. The classes are held on the mat in keeping with Thai tradition, and you will spend the day kneeling, standing, and moving around your practice partner, as well as receiving the work yourself. Nothing about the format involves undressing or draping. Bring water and whatever you use to take notes.
No. After completing both Part 1 and Part 2, participants are welcome to attend review classes at any time at no additional cost, subject to availability. Availability is not guaranteed for a specific date, so contact the studio to arrange a review session rather than assuming a particular class will have space.
A Certificate of Attendance requires 100% attendance, so plan the five days as a block and clear your schedule before enrolling. If something unavoidable comes up, contact the studio to discuss options — do not assume a partial week will produce a certificate. Ask about make-up, transfer, and rescheduling terms in writing before you pay, as you should with any CE provider.
