Bangkok (AFP)

Sari sits on his partner's feet, lying on his stomach, and pushes his thumbs deeply down his spine. She is learning the art of Nuad, Thai massage, a thousand-year-old discipline that could soon be included in UNESCO's intangible heritage.

Thailand has applied and the organization is scheduled to return to Bogota, where it will meet from 9 to 14 December.

Sari, a masseuse by profession, came specially to study at Bangkok's Temple of Reclining Buddha (Wat Pho) school, the oldest to teach massage classes in the kingdom.

"The teaching is demanding, the technique is very precise, there are so many things to be aware of, you also have to be in a good state of mind to stay connected with the patient in order to give him the best care", smiles the Chilean 34 years old, performing with his palms slow rotations on the skull of a student.

Pressures with thumbs, elbows, knees and feet, stretches, contortions: students learn a choreography of dozens of steps perfectly orchestrated on ten energetic lines of the body.

"200,000 students have been trained and now work in 145 countries", told AFP Preeda Tangtrongchitr, director of the school of Wat Pho.

Imported from India about 2,500 years ago by Buddhist doctors and monks, Nuad has long been transmitted orally, from master to student, in temples and then families.

In the nineteenth century, under the leadership of King Rama III, scholars engraved in stones of Wat Pho their knowledge in the field.

But it will be necessary to wait for the creation of the school in 1962 so that this technique spreads little by little in the West where today the Thai massage parlors proliferate.

- "Opportunity" -

5 to 10,000 students, half Thai, half foreign, come every year to study at Wat Pho.

"When the economic situation is bad we have more students," notes the director. "For many people they are disabled, indebted, this job is an opportunity because it requires no material, only his hands and knowledge."

Once back in France, Matthieu, a nurse in the Lyon region, hopes to help elderly people who are treated less to suffer. "It could also allow me to earn a little more," he says.

Thai massage has become an institution in Thailand that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in sales every year.

Practiced in salons that abound in cities, streets, markets, railway stations or at the beach, it is an integral part of local life.

It is also considered for ten years as a therapeutic treatment in its own right, dispensed in several hundred hospitals in the kingdom.

In addition to its relaxing benefits, many studies have put forward its properties to help relieve back pain, circulation problems, headaches, insomnia or anxiety.

The image of Nuad was somewhat tarnished from the Vietnam War and the arrival of tens of thousands of American soldiers in Thailand. Since then, some massage parlors also offer sexual services.

"I leave everyone to his conscience Nuad is a therapy and only a therapy," said Preeda Tangtrongchitr, who strongly expects a favorable response from UNESCO to give it back its nobility.

© 2019 AFP