Watsu was developed at Harbin Hotsprings in northern California. This is a beautiful hot springs resort with lots of massage therapy and training programs in Watsu and Shiatsu and lots of other modalities. Personally I studied Chi Nei Tsang there, and I used to trade my Thai massage sessions for Watsu treatments with some of their teachers there. There is no water based Thai that I have ever heard of.
I have studied Zen Shiatsu as well as Thai Massage. Your question is hard to answer since there are several styles of Shiatsu as well as of Thai Massage. There is certainly quite some similarity between the two modalities. Thai Massage makes much more use of intense stretching techniques, and Shiatsu focuses more on energy line work based on detailed theoretical principles. Zen Shiatsu uses the abdominal area for diagnosis and can develop a treatment protocol from there which is not done in Thai Massage.
I have traded quite a bit with Shiatsu practitioners, and we are clearly talking about two massage modalities within the same family. But to compare apples with apples, you had to zero in on specific styles within Shiatsu especially.

November 22, 2011

Thanks Shama. I find it all fascinating. We have a aquatic instructor here at my facility that has done 3 of the thai workshops with me. She does personal training in the water as well as Thai Massage. I turned her onto the Watsu material and site and possibly she could learn and incorporate into our physical therapy and wellness program. Love the acro "flying stuff" too. We did some of that a few weeks ago. I figured you would know something about it.

October 16, 2012

this link is very helpful for getting any type of knowledge regarding massage
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