What’s unique about massage in Vancouver?

What’s unique about massage in Vancouver?

Vancouver is a New Age mecca. Nowhere else on Earth can you find more and better marijuana, you can’t huck a stick here without hitting a hippy, and there are more alternative medicine clinics than gas stations. The population of RMTs alone is enormous, never mind all the unlicensed “body workers”: masseuses, rolfers, reflexologists, acupressurists, lomi lomi practitioners, hot stone massagers, and so on and on.

If you want a massage in Vancouver, you have a lot of options.

Vancouver is one of the only places in the world where you have well-trained medical massage therapists working next door to sex-trade workers offering happy endings. There are spas here that exclusively employ RMTs — most notably Absolute Spa(which started the trend), just up the street from me — resulting in what is quite likely the best spa massage experience in the world.

Vancouver massage is schizophrenic: on the one hand, the profession here is more progressive and medicalized than anywhere else in the world. On the other hand, it still attracts practitioners who take their horoscope seriously and offer a many therapies of dubious value … at some of the highest prices anywhere.

The most expensive massage I’ve ever paid for was $110 for a psychiatrists’ hour (50 minutes), and the practitioner had Scientology posters, crystals everywhere, and enough essential oils to give an ox a splitting headache. Sure, you can encounter something like that anywhere — but Vancouver has more than its fair share.