LOOP MASSAGE / WAPPING WHARF
An Oasis of calm in the heart of Bristol.
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A Container Massage Studio based at Cargo 2, Wapping Wharf Bristol

 

LOOP YOUR SHOULDERS

Welcome to Loop Massage & Wellness. Our mission is to help ease and restore you, to you.
We are a boutique massage and wellness haven based in two converted shipping containers on Bristol's Harbourside. 

So,  loop your shoulders, take a breath, relax and rest your mind - while we treat your achey, stressed out body.

 

LINEN STUDIO

We believe that just as every person (and every body) is individual, each massage should be tailored to reflect this. Our ‘house’ massage blends techniques inspired by Holistic and Deep Tissue massage; we also offer Sports and Remedial massage, Pregnancy Massage

BIRCH STUDIO

Loop has a collective of wellness practitioners, with a wealth of experience, offering a host of individual holistic treatments and small pop up events all housed within our container studios.

NATURAL BEAUTY STORE

A carefully curated selection of products to introduce you to a more mindful way to look after your skin + our in house candles, oils and soap all produced here in Bristol. Available in studio, and online.

 Instagram @loopmassage

H E A R I N G Not for the first time I’ve realised I did not think my mini eassays through, how in the world to you pictorially represent hearing?! I find listening hard. Not least because I have almost entirely lost my hearing in my left ear. I have a hearing aid I stubbornly refuse to wear. After 30 odd years, I’m accustomed to a quieter, less busy world. Whenever I do wear it, all the hubbub is distracting, the amount of sound ya’ll have to put up with.  Sometimes though it has nothing to do with my hearing. I find it hard to listen, I try really hard but I often feel like I fail. I get excited about a conversation and think about an answer instead of fully engaging in listening. Or I’m happy to see you and just want to tell you everything, all at once, and then fail to listen again. Or I hear what I want to hear, good or bad, which may or may not hold any semblance to the truth of the situation. I have, what people have referred to as, a ‘rich inner life’ which often means I’m quiet and distracted. I don’t mean not to listen, I have every excuse as to why it’s endearing but it’s embarrassing. It’s my least favourite trait, tied only with my messiness. I’ve started taking a few deep breaths to steady myself and anchor me, to help with the listening. I also have a hard time listening to what I need too, to what my body is trying to say like “hey it’s ‪3am‬, you need to put down the book, step away from the YouTube rabbit hole and go the F to sleep. In fact the only time I find it easy to listen, is when my inner voice is spewing self doubt. It tells me I’m not good enough. It tells me I’m a rubbish human; it whispers that I’m fat and worthless. It laughingly points out that the friendships I’ve shyly formed are fake, that people feel obliged to spend time with me. That I am unloveable. It’s tiring to listen to that voice, but listen I do, because there’s a part of me that believes it to be true. I am so bored of it.  The world is crowded with noise, it’s easy to get distracted but I’m trying very hard to be an respectful and responsible listener.
S I G H T An awesome class with @ktgillies_surfacedesign and @hannahkbroadway July colour challenge has gotten me thinking about sight today. As a massage therapist, the first sight of a regular client (we do it with newbies too but like any relationship we get to know you better over time) helps us gage mood, tiredness, how you’re feeling in your body. Body language helps us to figure out what you’re not saying too. During a treatment, we’re constantly looking to your body for visual feed back. So while touch is key, sight is important too. When I was little, if I ever saw something I thought was truly beautiful, on long journeys in the family car, I’d have to roll down the window because I wasn’t sure I could truly say I’d seen it, if it was behind a pane of glass. When I explained this to my Pa, he smiled and blew my mind further by quizzing me on how I knew, what I knew to be the colours were in fact how he saw colours. Not going to lie, that one still puzzles me now and again. I love how our pupils enlarge when we gaze on something or someone we think is rather lovely. Opening our shutters so wide, to take the whole image in and help fix it in our mind, gorging on the delightful sight of it. We have no control over it, the very fact that it’s involuntary is what makes it so special, another little quirk of our nature. My favourite colour is Grey, and there’s a debate to whether or not it is a colour at all. It’s the space between black and white, there’s nuance there. My mother despaired at this. I am not joking when I tell you, in the days before she died, one of her final pieces of advice to me was to ‘wear more colour, grey is so frightfully dreary’. I didn’t argue the point and I’m glad we’d got down to the minutiae of my wardrobe, helps me to think we got the important parts out there. While I wished she’d lived longer for lots of reasons, every now and again, I wished she’d been around for the grey resurgence, so I could say ‘there, see, I told you - grey makes all the other colours better and brighter. Maybe it’s quiet and unassuming but it works hard to lift up others. It’s not dreary at all’
Friday doodles. Happy Pride Weekend Bristol! Always, always, always choose Love
T O U C H For a massage therapist touch is possibly the most important of the senses, but strangely the one that’s hardest for me to write about. I didn’t even know what image to use for it. I went with an octopus (when in doubt, go with an octopus) A person can explain where they feel tense or sore, but until I’ve had the opportunity to feel those muscles for myself, I don’t get the full picture. The draw back however, is that I now find my first instinct is to touch, in order to understand. I think that’s why I like octopuses who use the thousands of sensors in their arms to not only feel but to taste and smell via touch. I’ve learnt that you can be burnt in more ways than one by trying to interpret the world predominately through touch. I find it amusing that most of my close friends are actually touch adverse, it helps to make me mindful that people don’t necessarily appreciate my way of expressing and understanding things. In a world where you can communicate, socialise, shop and order food from behind the safety of a screen. It’s not unsurprising people are getting more and more isolated from physical contact. As a child I remember linking arms or holding hands with my friends, it was natural, easy. It’s not something we do much as adults. I believe our bodies miss it, which is what makes massage such a brilliant and soothing resource. My final thoughts? In life, find someone who’s touch gives you goosebumps - brains rationalise, hearts can confuse but bodies can’t lie.
TASTE By the end of Chemo, my tastebuds were shot. Have you ever licked a battery? I’m talking AA not anything industrial, and I’m certainly not advocating it, but I was rather intrigued as a kid and a bit of a weirdo, so I’ve licked a fair few batteries. Anyway that metallic taste is pretty similar to how chemo mouth feels all the time. I missed not having a real sense of taste for a bit, it made it harder to muster up interest in cooking. Don’t worry, I still managed to eat a fair bit! I just put lemon on pretty much everything. That was probably as close as I’ve ever come to a ‘Food is Fuel’ sort of person and while I respect those who see food in this way. I can’t understand it. I love how things taste, trying to pin down the flavours in a meal, reading a recipe and being able to imagine how it might be to eat.  Sharing a meal and locking eyes when you discover that whatever you just popped in you mouth is possible the most beautiful morsel ever. The eye roll that signifies pleasure. Nothing bonds like food. How someone can say “this tastes like the meal I had in this tiny place down by the sea, near my uncle’s house” and with that you become closer, their memory can, is now locked in your shared experiences too. You understand them better. I love how different things taste to different people and the fun that can ensue. When I was little, I used to think that coriander tasted like “duck” (I really don’t know why) and while my Mum and Brother liked this “Duck”; my dad and I did not. We’d be eating something and just say with a knowing look “duck”. Or I’d ask suspiciously if this had “duck in it”. My Grandma, Mimi, was a big one for “duck” in everything from sauces, to soup, to mash - my grandmother’s cooking is a story in itself. For a while my whole family called coriander “duck”. That’s incredibly confusing for outsiders. I’m over my distaste for “duck” these days. The one thing every allotment owner is going to bore you with is how much better vegetables taste fresh from the bush, tree or ground. I imagine it’s pretty galling to have to listen to but it’s the truth. This cucumber looks like a lemon, when cut looks like a flower, has the sweetest taste.
I thought I’d write a series of mini essays this summer, I’m starting with the senses. S M E L L About a week ago I was waiting for my Dad to meet me for a cup of tea. I was reading or scribbling, not paying attention either way;  I became aware that in the air about me, was a familiar and very comforting smell. I knew without looking  that my dad had walked in and was now standing, watching me. I feel like I belong somewhere, when this happens.  I take ownership of the smells of those I love. I’m sure I’m not alone. I recognise my friends and loved ones their signature scent. Not necessarily a perfume per ce, a mix of the smells that make up their life; their skin, the soap they use, the food they cook, where they work, where they live - it all imprints to makeup their own private ID. I can tell if I’m compatible with a person by their scent alone. I’ve been frozen in place by a long lost smell, of a long since lost love, I’ve been brought to tears by a teasing breeze carrying on it a whisper of my departed ma, I’ve been soothed a hundred times by a hug enveloping in a fog that means I’m safe. The smell of rubbing alcohol will make me run and I hide from the hospital pungency of it, the fear and the loss it encircles me with.  I’ll never get over the smell of greenness from the Polytunnel, how tomato plants bring summer on unfurling leaves.  Or babies with their sweet smell, rubbing chubby open palmed hands across your face.  That slight muzzy, delicious  warm air, bringing with it the sense of someone who can make your heart skip even before they’re in view; the anticipation it ignites or the ache it leaves when you realise they’ve been there just before.  The point when you’re falling in love when in the smell of their morning breath is still adorable and precious.  The crime scene cut-out of a scent left behind when someone leaves during a fight, with words yet to say. I love how excitement smells slightly sour, happiness is sweet, how the cold has it’s own wonderful frosty crispness to it, like a green apple. Most of all I’m intrigued that your own smell, to you, is a mystery; a secret you keep from yourself but give out to those who know you best. Cont..
O V E R W H E L M Can a person ever just be whelmed? A happy midway point, the balance between over and under, where all emotions are in check and a person can be still. I looked it up, ‘whelmed’ does not mean this at all, it is the past tense of whelm and means; “engulf, submerge, bury or to well up or flow”. So it’s a word that can mean the exact opposite of each other; which is either so completely out of kilter or incredibly balanced. I had to remind myself to laugh last week. I was feeling on the overwhelmed side of things, I was frozen with indecision and cranky because I felt put up on, I had to find time for several lovely things and it was feeling a bit much. The cheek of me! A few deep breaths, a little inward gratitude and a good giggle at my absurdity helped to sort me out. Actually, writing lists helps. I sometimes think, I’m too busy to even write a list. The overlapping, tumbling over themselves, thoughts in my head convince me that behaving like a scatter gun, swooping from project to project will serve me so much better. It never does. Inevitably the food gets burnt, a body part is glued to a table or dyed a weird colour, or some thing gets broken in a series of preposterous events. If you ever get that feeling, you know what you need to do? Write the damn list. I soon realised that when written in a list, nothing was insurmountable. When I’ve feeling overwhelmed, I tend to find that I’ll play games I don’t like playing. The “I am SOOOOO busy” game, or the one I like even less, the “I am far busier than you game”. I have observed that nobody wins in a game like that. More often than not, the person proclaiming it, isn’t really that busy at all. Perhaps a little worried that others are judging their lives or judging themselves a little, which is sad. Truly busy people never proclaim to others, at length, that they are busy, they’ve got s*&t to do. I wish for the hazy days of July to be ‘whelmed’ days. My definition, not the dictionaries. Days of balance and pleasure and doing the to do list even the boring and the scary ones. I’m biased but maybe put ‘get a massage’ on your list, somewhere near the top.
This sky truly took my breath the other night. It was like I’d forgotten what the sky could do and then it showed me. All I could think was- why can’t skies be like this all the time, so glowing and impressive. Then I remembered that we humans have a great capacity to take things for granted and we’d forget to appreciate such things.
The time has come in the season to remind you all to wear sunscreen - this annual event is punctuated by a picture of me enjoying being in my skin and also some skin facts: Millions of bacteria live on the skin. The skin's surface is home to surprisingly diverse communities of bacteria, collectively known as the skin microbiota. The harmless bacteria that thrive on the skin can help immune cells fight disease-causing microbes. There are countless free nerve endings in the skin that gauge pain and temperature. Plus 4 different receptors that perceive touch. Skin occupies approximately 1.73 square meters [or more than 18.5 square feet] to cover our flesh and bones. So you need to look after it! Always practice sun safety by limiting time in the sun, especially between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm. Wear a hat and protective clothing, and choose a broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher. I’d say higher!
Don't forget, drink water and get some sunlight because you're basically a house plant with more complicated emotions Not sure who said it originally but it’s awesome. I think humans need more physical contact than plants, yes for survival. Did you know, that the optimum length of hug should be 20 seconds, though most people only hug for 3. We don’t get any of the benefits until 20 - all that good oxytocin going to waste. I like long hugs, house plants, on the whole do not - or so I’ve found. Fond of poetry though and some gentle rock music. I know it’s not drinking water but being in water helps me so maybe I’m some sort of moss or duck weed 🤷🏻‍♀️