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

I am of an age where I could probably buy proper candles sticks. Other than one given to me by the sublime @dewintonpaperco - I prefer bottles. I get the delightful duel memory of secrets spilled over good wine, coupled with those that came after dappled in flickering light. I don’t clean them. Each dribble of wax, a tiny moment saved, an evening of great company, even if it’s just my own. Having time off, being deliciously sloth-like gives me time to remember how lucky I am. It’s important to take time out, if only to refill that well. I wish I could find beeswax ones narrow enough to fit.
Now I know the original is ‘save the drama for your mama’ but that proves tricky for me and I rather like the idea of a drama loving llama. In a few short months I leave my 30’s, I’ve spent the year wondering what this means - how to grow and be the kind of person my younger person would of appreciated. There’s a certain restlessness that comes with a switch of decade. In short it makes a person think. I’m not scared or sad. I’m ready for it. After a rather sedate jaunt through most of my 20’s though 29 was ROUGH. 30 is when the whirlwind hit. I think I hit every major crisis and attempted large feats of what was either bravery or insanity. I lost bigger than I was prepared for, hurt deeper, cried for (if I was going to add it up) days, I’ve bought property, started businesses, loved, lost some more, faced mortality more times than a lot of peers. I’ve met my dearest friends and shed many skins. I’ve had the highest highs that follow the lowest lows. I’ve lived. I’m still here, in every way that implies. I know how to be damn grateful. I don’t know what I’d do differently because it all led me here to this. But what such a chaotic and cool decade has taught me, is that I might be used to the drama. I’m constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. I go hunting for it now,not in a drunken fight type way but like an animal unable to settle. I can be restless and questioning. It is tiring. In the last few weeks a dear friend told me in a rather exasperated way, after another panic, to “just be where you are”. I’ve spent the year reading insightful books and having the big conversations- I’ve bored people, I’m sure, trying to get things straight in my head. Turns out nothing has calmed me like the mantra “just be where you are” - it reminds me to chill, I can’t predict the future. After a decade of running, it’s a great reminder to stop, stop trying to change, stop trying to be the wing flap that brings the storm a thousand miles away. Just Be Where You Are and Save the Drama for the Llama. I’m also not over @hannahkbroadway beautiful mantras.
Today, this is everything. So I spent a bit of time today building a slightly crazy, beautiful little shrine type thing in the studio, with these brilliant mini mantra cards we’re now stocking; by the wonderful @hannahkbroadway (her work is the best AND she’s a mega human as well)
“If you be not mad, be gone. If you have reason, be brief. 'Tis not that time of moon with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue.” OLIVIA, Twelfth Night This is one of my favourite Shakespeare quotes. It blew me away that he was writing about periods way back when. Don’t ask me why, for some reason I want convinced he’d know much about 🤷🏻‍♀️ Olivia is also one of my favourite characters, she is so very human. With the solar eclipse and mercury forever in retrograde, it felt like a good time to chat about our new woman’s health massage. It aims to help women feel more at one with their bodies at the various stages of their lives and help to bring balance when the hormone sea is being a bit rough with us. I’m not saying it will totally stop you, that one day a month having to descend on the kitchen like a hoard of locusts and eat EVERYTHING, cry uncontrollably when a tomato plant doesn’t pull through, help you feel any less rage full when you can’t get your deodorant canister to work, smash it repeatedly on a table before crying again OR stop you from putting your keys absentmindedly in the fridge / leave them in door over night - cough, none of these things are based on my real experiences I hasten to add 😬 But it will give you time to decompress in a beautiful environment, with a treatment tailored to you and your brilliant body, with a wonderful therapist @whiteowltherapies
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..