My very first proper massage in the city..nay..the country! Of course with Toronto filled with all sorts of spas and places to get a massage it was overwhelming to decide on a spot. But obviously thanks to Yelp I was able to narrow it down and chose Bodyworks partly due to their location as well. In fact under "referred by" I did write "yelp.ca" :)
I had made a same day booking for an hour (they only had one slot left) and I was told to come a few minutes earlier to fill out the health form (I would say give yourself 10minutes before your apointment to do that) and after that met up with Sarah who took me to the room where we discussed what sort of work I needed done and where. I was not feeling too nervous or anything about the whole experience to start with and after chatting with Sarah she made me feel completely at ease as to what was going to happen etc and then she left me to undress to whatever level I was comfortable with and to even select a CD if I wanted (none of the CDs there meant anything to me so I just left them be).
After trying to figure out the best way to position my head facing down Sarah walked in and the only minor negative thing about the experience was that she did spend longer than required for me to get ready, digging in to my precious one hour time. I guess they just don't want you to feel rushed.
The massage was really well done some of the areas did involve some rough handling and pain but "good pain"? there was no chatting involved which was nice and I could feel the positive effects of it immediately after which was great. After that came time to pay, Sarah gave me some advice on stretches I could do etc and I paid using visa, which does not give you the option to tip. But I gave her a good tip anyway, was not sure what the standard was, but I gave her a slightly higher % than I usually tip.