Daniel Carr

"Having sciatica, a back injury that was shooting intense nerve pain down my leg, led to my learning secret bodywork techniques. These injuries led me to seek a cure in Chinese Medicine and eventually to train intensively in Thailand."

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My name is Daniel Carr, and I am a long time practitioner of Chinese Martial Arts, Indian Yoga, and Eastern bodywork. I have owned my own Kung Fu School for over 7 years and have had the good fortune to have studied with some of the best Masters in all of these fields.

My main claim to fame is having studied with Kung Fu Grandmaster Jack Man Wong for 14 years in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I bring a strong work ethic to all of these arts. All of my teachers are "Old School" Masters, who learned their craft in China, India, and Thailand and are of a similar mind.

In the final analysis, I let my work speak for itself:
if you don't feel tangible results, you don't have to pay.

Thai Massage and Chinese Body Work

The very first statement that should be made here is that I am beyond grateful to the arts of Thai Massage and Chinese Tui Na/bodywork for providing me with the opportunity to have a new body. I would most probably be limping around from all of the sports injuries I have accumulated over the years if not for these ancient arts. These art forms should be respected for their power in reducing the suffering of all those who are in needless physical pain.

Getting The First Tools
In Chinese Tui Na

I received a Physical Therapy Certificate from the San Francisco College of Acupuncture back in 1990, a course that taught practical Tui Na (translates to "push/pull" with obvious implications to bodywork). A good friend of mine, Dr. Michael Clauson, ran the clinic and was also a student in Sifu Jack Man Wong's Kung Fu class. He knew and worked with many of the best Chinese Medicine people in the Bay Area.

Using his clinic as a backdrop, we had the opportunity to work with many Chi Kung, Kung Fu, and Tai Chi Masters visiting the Bay Area. It was an exciting time, since many of the Mainland Chinese, Tawainese, and Hong Kong Masters were finally starting to share some of their secrets of bodywork. Many had "family style" secrets in Tui Na that were amazing for fixing martial art training injuries, techiques that had been never shared with anyone outside their own families.

It was during this time that I met Dr. Rong Rong Zheng. Dr. Zheng is the most knowledgeable doctor I have ever met and now runs a thriving practice in San Francisco treating cancer patients, this while doing research at Stanford University. Her background includes being trained as surgeon at John Hopkins in Shanghai, receiving an OMD/Doctorate in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and being the head of the Shanghai Chi Kung Research Institute.

After seeing Dr. Zheng as a patient a number of times for hip and back injuries, she eventually revealed to me the logic and application of her Tui Na technique for eliminating scar tissue deposits in the muscles. "Investment in loss" is a concept in Taoism that gets played out in these type of situations: Dr. Zheng demonstrated and explained her technique as she worked on and helped heal my injuries.

The technique, which breaks up scar tissue and liberates the injured muscles while undoing whatever spasms may exist locally, was so effective that I never felt the need to utilize anything else when working on people. People limping into my Kung Fu studio with sciatica, knee and ankle injuries, tight necks and shoulders, etc. would walk out with amazing levels of relief and non-reoccurance of the injuries. If they practiced Kung Fu, Tai Chi, or Yoga at the studio, the results would be even more dramatic.

The story should end here, but there are three problems with this particular style of Tui Na technique:

By it's very nature, the technique is excrutiatingly painful, which is too difficult for most people to handle: Clients would dread coming in for a second treatment. Even the proudest and grittiest of Kung Fu students would cringe and sometimes cry during these sessions. The results from the first treatment were good enough that most people never fully completed their rehab by showing up for further treatment or practicing Yoga and/or Tai Chi: There is not a complete set of structural resets to go with this Tui Na technique, so one's work in either Yoga or Tai Chi Ch'uan was the only way to accomplish this. Most clients either lacked the time or desire to finish the job. Most people are not physically aware enough to understand where their injuries originate and end in the body; they know where they feel pain locally, but they don't know the exact location of every muscle that is affecting that injury: For example, pain in the low back can caused by muscle torn in the front of the hip, which can be linked to muscles torn around the knee. Relief locally did not guarantee elimination of the condition that was the root of the problem.

Thankfully, Thai Massage perfectly compliments Dr. Zheng's Tui Na scar tissue removal technique. In fact, there are similar scar tissue removal techniques built into the higher level Thai Massage treatments that, while not being quite as fast in removing scar tissue as Dr. Zheng's Tui Na technique, do the job.

A Continuing Journey To Thailand

I visited Thailand for the second time back in 1996 to further my studies in Muay Thai, the Thailand style of Kick Boxing. I had received a few Thai Massages the first time I had traveled to Thailand in 1985, but it was during this trip that I was taken by some of the trainers and fighters I was working with to some expert Thai Massage Therapists.

Their work was so amazing that I vowed I would return again to seek training under true masters of the art. They were able to put me to sleep while using an incredible amount of pressure in their techniques. I felt so flexible and deeply relaxed after these treatments that it defied my understanding of bodywork at that time. With the daily punishment I was receiving in Muay Thai, these treatments provided me with the ability to rebound in a fraction of the normal time.

I starting teaching Kung Fu and Muay Thai again when I returned from Hawaii to the Mainland in 1996. From there, I opened up a formal studio in late 1998 in Los Angeles, which meant putting off going to Thailand until some later date in the future.

As the school became more successful, a certain stress overtook me: while I was getting locked down into the business by the momentum the school was creating, I was also feeling the effects of some old injuries that had only partially healed. I became increasingly concerned that some of these old injuires would be problematic in my training and teaching with the same intensity I always had. To make matters worse, I had re-injured myself badly over training in mid-2000.

I also knew that my grasp on Yoga was better than most teachers in the US, only fair to good at best, with plenty of gaps in understanding. It was impossible to further my studies with the intensity I wanted here in the US, so I set a date to travel to India and Thailand as a pilgrim in search of knowledge in late 2002 and packed my bags.

I trained at the famous Wat Po (Wat = temple in Thai) in Bangkok and received certification in their style of Thai Massage. While their massage represented the collective efforts of the best minds in Thailand with respect to Thai Massage, the program did not allow enough time for professional bodyworkers to hone their craft. I left there feeling like I had just had a great introduction to Thai Massage.

As chance would have it, I located one Thai Massage Master, Ajahn Pisit Benjamongkonwaree, who was famous for teaching the blind. His school and clinic were always busy, as his blind massage therapists were considered to some of the best in Bangkok.

I walked into his school not looking to get a certificate, as they were notoriously strict in giving them out, but as a truly motivated student who wished only to hone his craft. My attitude made me a big favorite of Ajahn Pisit's right away, as many of the Westerners were only concerned with securing certification and not with mastering the art.

I spent over three months training at his school everyday, spending additional money to massage his blind therapists in my spare time outside of class so they could continue to hone and expand my technique. My attitude and generosity was rewarded a thousand times over, as I made friends with "Yong Ghiat", one of Ajahn Pisit Benjamongkonwaree's top massage therapists.

What can I say? I lucked out. Yong Ghiat is the most amazing bodyworker I have ever met, having mastered both the Northern and Bangkok styles of Thai Massage, countless routines of two person stretches, and numerous treatments for all types of conditions. I trained with Yong Ghiat privately for almost three months outside of the blind school at his apartment...we were working almost 12 hour days of massage. Needless to say, my thumbs were in excrutiating pain from time to time.

Though I cannot claim to have being taught everything he knew (and absorbing half of that), in Yong Ghiat's words, I was taught "10 years of Thai Massage".

Yong Ghiat also took me to his favorite Thai Massage establishments in Bangkok. Where does a blind Thai Massage expert go to get a Thai Massage? He took me to a number of his favorite places, explaining and teaching me the techniques from the various Thai Massage masters we visited. In the process, I sampled many different versions of the two main styles, the Northern and Bangkok routines.

I also re-learned Ajahn Pisit's routines and treatments from Yong Ghiat. With his help, I actually received certification from their school. I can say with full confidence that I would have no problem working in Bangkok as a Thai Massage Therapist. In fact, upon leaving, Yong Ghiat was pretty amazed at my hand strength, body power, and Chi', all of this from having slaved in Martial Arts and Yoga for so long. After an additional two years of working and conducting seminars teaching Thai Massage, I can say with absolute confidence that my technique is without equal in this country.

Ajahn Pisit's six position foundation routine in Bangkok style Thai Massage is treatment enough to fix any structural injury that is not related to torn cartilage or tendons. It is also an energetic treatment without parallel; it balances and circulates energy in the body as well as any acupuncture treatment available. Yong Ghiat's supplemented Ajahn Pisit's six position foundation routine with an array of sophisticated techniques and stretches to provide a client with the greatest range of possibility.

With over 70 assisted stretches to choose from and treatments for every area of the body, the curriculum of material I learned from Ajahn Pisit Benjamongkonwaree and Yong Ghiat is enough to handle anything that does not require surgery.

You can expect reductions in chronic pain and increases in range of motion in the first session or there will be no charge. This is my promise of quality to you.