Nuad Thai, the famous centuries old Thai massage gets UNESCO heritage tag

It was a proud moment for Thailand when its ancient skill of back-cracking, sharp-elbowed technique of traditional Thai massage was added to the prestigious UNESCO heritage list recently. With its inclusion, Nuad Thai is now a part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which boasts of practices and traditions that had been passed across the generations.

The list of intangible cultural heritage is different from the World Heritage List, which recognizes sites and buildings of prominence. The cultural heritage site, in fact, seeks to recognize items that are necessary or important to preserve for future generations like stories told and songs sung, and these require active efforts to safeguard them. As of now, the cultural heritage list boasts of 550 items from around 127 countries.
This massage technique originated in India and was practiced in Thailand for centuries; this massage, however, was popularized when a school, especially dedicated to teaching this technique to massage therapists from around the world, was opened in the 1906s.
Referring to this, a Thai delegate at the United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation meeting in Bogota, said that Nuad Thai’s inclusion in UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage practices is historic and that this would help promote this practice not just locally, but also internationally.
Nuad Thai massage, unlike conventional massages, typically involves people forming a series of positions, which involves a lot of movement. Therapists use their hands, knees, and forearms to apply pressure, and no oil is involved in one such massage.

As per the Unesco, the practice actually has its roots in self-care, as in the past, Thai peasant society had massage healers in almost every village to whom the villagers used to seek help when they had aches in muscle from working in the field.