The Chinese developed massage as a therapeutic tool over four thousand years ago. Egyptian wall paintings from 2330 B.C. depict a physicians's practice of massage. The anient Greeks and Romans used massage as one of their principal means of healing and relieving pain.

In the early fifth-century B.C., Hippocrates, the father of medicine, prescribed its use and wrote, "The physician must be experienced...in rubbing...For rubbing can bind a joint that is too loose, and loosen a joint that is too rigid."

After the fall of Rome in the fifth century A.D., the Western world lost touch with the use of massage. However, the Arabians continued to study classical teachings on the healing arts. Shiatsu was introduced to the Japanese Buddhist monks in the sixth-century, and ancient Tibet developed its own style of massage. Western massage was revived in the sixteenth-century through the work of a French doctor, Ambroise Pare.

At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, a Swedish fencing master named Per Henrik Ling, combined his knowledge of gymnastics and physiology with ancient techniques, creating smooth, kneading manipulations, small circular movements, and brisk, rapid blows. Esalen massage evolved out of the 1960s and 70s human potential movement and combined with Swedish to develop the popular style of Swedish Esalen massage.