LoDo Massage Studio in the News
Featured in the Marijuana Business Daily for our Mile High Massage
Some businesses are targeting marijuana consumers – but not offering them the ability to get high.
Take LoDo Massage and Private Studio in Denver, which sells a "Mile High Massage."
For $65 per one-hour session, clients can get deep-tissue massages with a lotion that is infused with marijuana but doesn't have a psychoactive effect.
"It's mainly an anti-inflammatory," said Ed Rich, who owns the business and its parent company, LoDo Massage LLC. "You don't get high from it, you don"t get buzzed from it. It relaxes the muscles so it allows the therapist to get in deeper."
So far, the new massage is a huge hit, Rich said. Almost 80% of the clients the studio had between June and mid-August wanted the marijuana-infused lotion.
"When you come in and get a massage, you can really feel the difference. It's a really good product," Rich said. "We have a lot of repeat business because people feel that it works very, very well."
The business"s client base has an enormous range – Rich said he gets repeat customers in their 20s all the way up to elderly customers in their 80s.
And as far as he knows, Rich is the only proprietor offering this type of marijuana massage (though some dispensaries do offer basic massage services).
Rich's only regret at this point is that he can"t sell bottles of the lotion in his studio because he's not a licensed marijuana retailer. So he had to strike a bargain with a local recreational marijuana shop, and now he buys the lotion in bulk for about $275 ever two weeks.
But the success of the Mile High Massage has easily offset the cost of paying for the lotion.
"I'd have probably sold quite a bit of bottles by now if I could," Rich said.'
Read the full article at The Marijuana Business Daily
Featured by Fox 21 News for Our Cannabis Massage
DENVER -- Colorado is undoubtedly cashing in on the cannabis craze. Business is booming in dispensaries, and tourism has also seen a boost. Now, one Denver spa is getting a slice of the pie.
LoDo Massage and Yoga has tripled their business since they began offering the "Mile High Massage" on 4/20. Therapists use a cannabis-infused lotion created by Apothecanna during the 60 or 90 minute treatments.
"The cannabis acts as an anti-inflammatory in the lotion, so that allows the body to heal quicker," said Taylor Diller, a licensed massage therapist at LoDo.
Diller chose specifically to work at LoDo because of this massage. She claims nearly 100 percent of her clients opt for the marijuana-infused massage.
"It's the best massage I"ve ever had in my life and that's coming from an ex- massage therapist," said Judd Wylie, a regular client at Lodo.
Wylie has two bulging discs in his lower back and a degenerative disc disease in his neck. He says the cream warms and loosens his muscles, allowing the therapists to work deeper, alleviating his problem areas.
According to Apothocanna, to the manufacturer of the lotion, and Diller, the Mile High Massage will not get the client stoned or cause them to fail a drug test.
"It doesn't give you a high because you're not ingesting it," said Diller. "It's purely topical."
Diller said anyone suffering from chronic pain would benefit from the Mile High Massage, and now she hopes the older generation will jump on board.
"My grandpa, he's all about it and he's never smoked weed in his life," said Diller.
I Tried a Cannabis Massage and This is What Happened
BY MEIRAV DEVASH, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, JUNE 7, 2015
I know what you"re thinking: Did it get you high?
That"s all anyone asked me after I got a massage with cannabis cream in Denver, where marijuana is legal.
While I consider myself a connoisseur of spas and weed (only where it"s legal, of course), I still wasn"t entirely sure what to expect from the LoDo Massage Studio. I booked the studio"s signature Mile High Massage using Apothecanna"s Pain Cream, a massage lotion laced with cannabis (plus arnica, peppermint, and juniper"”but who cares, right?).
Topical cannabinoids are, according to doctors, antioxidants and anti-inflammatories with, according to The Dude Lebowski, pain-killing properties. I"m going to be honest here"”I"m suspicious of the never-ending health claims that position cannabis as a panacea: You can cook with it; it will cure a headache or help you sleep like a baby. It seems too good to be true.
But my massage was ridiculously good. I"m one of those “Harder! No, harder!" massage people. (Does this make me a masochist?) This one was intense even by my yardstick, but still I floated through it in a blissed-out blur. After the massage ended, I felt loosey-goosey relaxed and ready for a nap. Or an order of fries. Maybe someone could throw fries in my mouth while I napped? If I didn't always want fries and a nap, I'd think there might be something to this topical cannabis business.
THC-infused Lotion Takes Massage to the Next Level
As I walked out of LoDo Massage's RiNo studio near downtown Denver I felt centered and straightened, corrected and focused. The body tuneup I'd just received was like nothing I'd ever experienced.
Actually, I take that back.
This feeling, the physiological equivalent of a Washed Out jam or Sigur Ros ballad, was familiar. As I made my way to my car, I wasn't walking. I was floating. And I'd floated like this before "” after my first acupuncture treatment, which was so life-altering that I immediately wrote a short story about it in an attempt to capture the essence of a feeling I never knew existed outside of science fiction.
And somehow this otherworldly sensation was sensibly fitting, this subtle float to my car and back to the newsroom. I had just received a 60-minute Mile High Therapeutic Massage that used a THC- and CBD-infused lotion. Between the skilled therapist's focused work and the potently medicated lotion, it was one of the most gratifying therapeutic exercises I've ever experienced.
And now a few pre-emptive answers:
No, I wasn't high.
I didn't smoke or vaporize before or after the massage.
And no, the lotion didn't get me stoned. (That's not how topicals work.)
As I floated to my desk in the newsroom and looked around, I saw everything as it was: straight up and down, but with a gentle focus. The gentle focus part is always there after a solid massage, but rarely do I see linear structures and surroundings as straight up and down "” because rarely am I straight up and down.
I could tell you about my left shoulder blade for the next 30 minutes, but I won't. I told massage therapist Taylor Diller about the constant pain and discomfort I'd been feeling there before the massage, and she gently said, "Yeah, that makes sense," when she first felt the knot that permanently resides in my upper-left back.
And then she went to work. She favored my left shoulder but also intuitively paid careful attention to my calves and neck, which were also particularly sore that afternoon. At first, the lotion "” from the Colorado company Apothecanna "” worked like any other massage lotion. But about 20 minutes into the massage its unique ingredients warmed up and turned my skin into a particularly malleable canvas.
In the past six months of experimentation with infused topicals, I've learned that not all of these salves and lotions and balms are created equally. I have favorites, and there are also other brands I would never spend money on again. After a half-hour of this massage, Apothecanna was immediately at the top of my topicals list.
Again, infused topicals don't get you stoned. But the best topicals I've used have a way of opening up the skin's sensory profile, like a more nuanced Icy Hot. Rub the topical into the area that experiences pain or pressure. Give the topical time to take root. And then gently rub it in, taking time to work the surface skin and the muscles and tendons underneath.
When combined with the hands of a learned massage therapist, these topicals become even more powerful weapons against pain. This massage had an elevated quality to it, and I felt especially attuned to my shoulder knot as she worked and worked and worked on it. I noticed the lessening tension with each sweep Diller took, and by the time I floated on down the street to my car, I realized I was indeed walking straight up and down "” and without the tension that has occupied my shoulder for five or six years.
Each 8-ounce bottle of Apothecanna's Pain Cream sells for around $45 and includes 240 milligrams of cannabis extracts, "approximately 80 percent THC and 4 percent CBD," said Apothecanna founder James Kennedy.
Mind you, this THC-infused lotion is not a miracle potion. But it's superior to any other lotion or oil I've encountered in previous massages. It felt like it enabled my massage therapist to do the work she was trying to do. And I was so impressed with her work that I immediately rebooked.'
