Nuad boran, traditional Thai massage, works along the body's sen, energy lines conceived somewhat similarly to the meridians of Chinese medicine or the nadis of yogic anatomy though distinct in their own specific mapping, using firm pressing, rhythmic compression, and assisted stretching that moves the recipient's body through positions resembling yoga postures performed passively, with the practitioner's hands, forearms, knees and feet all brought into the work rather than hands alone.
Every session traditionally opens with the wai khru, a gesture of respect and invocation addressed to the practice's teachers and, in the fullest traditional framing, to Jivaka Komarabhacca, the physician traditionally said to have attended the Buddha and whom Thai medical and massage tradition honours as the art's founding figure, a devotional opening that marks the massage as a transmitted healing lineage rather than an anonymous technique. This attribution to Jivaka is a matter of traditional lineage claim rather than settled historical documentation, since no contemporary textual evidence directly links a historical physician of that name to the specific practice known today, and the atlas records the attribution as the tradition's own account of its origin, honoured accordingly by practitioners, rather than as established historical fact.