thai massage

Part deep tissue bodywork, part passive stretching, part yoga-style assists, part joint traction, part twisting, part intentional and progressive compression, part plucking and sheering and smashing, part fire cupping and scraping (similar to the Graston Technique) and hammering, part sports massage, part manual therapy -- all while fully clothed, on a mat on the floor, while the therapist uses her hands, feet, elbows, knees, body weight, and traditional Thai therapeutic tools.

Kelly specializes in massage for athletes, from the leisurely to the competitive to the professional. Her experience ranges from racing cyclists, triathletes, Ironman competitors, and Ultra runners; to dancers, weight lifters and Cirque du Soleil performers; and includes cross-state cycling road trips, exclusive training camps with George Hincapie, Lance Armstrong, Christian Van de Velde, Craig Lewis and Cadel Evans at the Hotel Domestique, and CEO Challenges. She has worked team camps and World Championship competition weeks with the Roger C Peace Para-cycling Team and the USA Olympic Para-cycling team.

Kelly’s Thai massage training began (in 2008 before massage school) in Asheville and Boone, NC, under the private tutelage of Lia Pardy, who has studied in Thailand for almost 2 decades. For months, she would take each sequence from Lia back to Greenville and practice on all her yoga students for free until the moves lived in her body memory. Practicing on hundreds of yogis of all body shapes and sizes with ranging mobility taught her in detail how bodies moved beyond her own, and inspired her to enroll in a formal massage school in 2009.

In 2012, she deepened her knowledge and diagnostic approach through 70 hours of Thai Therapeutics at the Naga Center School of Traditional Thai Massage in Oregon with director and “research maven” Nephyr Jacobsen, who has traveled to and lived in Thailand on and off since 1998. She also took a 24-hour Thai Foot Reflexology course in D.C. at the Thai Institute of Healing Arts with Sararut Roylance the same year.

In 2013, she spent several months in Northern Thailand, first living and studying privately with Nephyr for the first few weeks in Chiang Rai, during which she learned Tok Sen in a traditional Thai medicine clinic through a translator. In Chiang Mai, she studied Thai Nerve-Touch with Lek Chaiya, son of Mama Lek, and advanced techniques with Pichest Boonthumme at his home studio.

Note to new clients : all levels of athlete are welcome, of course, but be advised that Kelly specializes in deeper work. If your preferred style of massage is more relaxing with a lighter pressure, please look elsewhere.

booking

To book a massage, text Kelly at 864.704.5605 (voicemails will not be answered).