Clearwater Spa and Massage

Tranquility Touch Spa & Wellness’s soothing oasis serves as a backdrop for relaxing massages, skin treatments, and group spa parties that incorporate Bella Earth’s natural products. Therapists employ gentle Swedish strokes or firm deep-tissue pressure to target stress, and both modalities can be augmented with the relaxing wafts of aromatherapy, tension-alleviating reflexology, or a hot-stone treatment that give disenfranchised skipping stones a chance to strategically warm physiques. The salon also offers a select menu of skin-refining treatments, unveiling radiant complexions with facials and exfoliating scrubs for the back and feet. Aestheticians also host BYOB massage parties, which combine home-brought libations with massages for the neck and shoulders, feet, and hands, sparking joyful dispositions within pampered attendees.

If The Foot Spa and Tea Bar’s the trickling water fountain, botanical art, and drifting herbal aromas don’t immediately mark it as a tranquil haven, its lengthy list of commendations will. Readers of Oakland Magazine named it the Best Spa in 2012 and the Best Place to Treat Your Feet in 2011, and the magazine's editors called it the Most Relaxing Place to Take a Load Off in 2010. The cozy, Asian-inspired spa has also been nominated in the Best Day Spa category on the San Francisco A-List.

Inside the spa’s lauded confines, skilled massage therapists and reflexologists perform treatments ranging from acupressure and shiatsu sessions to soothing aromatherapy massages with lavender, ginger, and peppermint essential oils. At the tea bar, guests sip complimentary loose-leaf varieties grown in the mountains of China while gargling responses to the nearby water fountain.

Housed inside Mehta Family Healthcare, The Weekend Spa's massage therapists soothe bodies with Swedish, sports, deep-tissue, and prenatal styles, as well as 30-minute foot massages. Before or after kneading sessions, guests can sprawl on a heated hydrojet therapy table to achieve a state of sloth-like calm. A resident event coordinator helps up to five guests plan indulgent spa parties to celebrate weddings, birthdays, or finally fitting 10 graham crackers in one’s mouth at once.

Backs: everyone has them, but not everyone has the benefit of one that functions perfectly. Working to both rehabilitate and prevent aches and injuries, the massage therapist of Healing Arts Medical Massage personalizes each session to keep backs and bodies at their best. The therapist not only massages clients—they teach them to massage each other during couples classes. These sessions impart the immediate benefits of a relaxing massage while showing clients techniques they can perform at home to assuage their partners’ sore shoulders until they agree to more piggy-back rides.

The team of stylists at Practically Frivolous subdue wayward strands with hair salves from Schwarzkopf Professional, Ouidad, and the Practically Frivolous line of products developed in cooperation with a California-based company specializing in health-conscious beauty. The salon's crew shapes locks of all textures, specializing in the Ouidad method of outsmarting wily curls and turning them into sculptured ringlets. Keratin-rich hair treatments, pomegranate enzymes to pamper the skin, and hot stones to aid in massage services arm the salon's aesthetes to enhance beauty across the entire body, avoiding the difficult task of keeping one's good side turned toward a carousel operator.

Erin Sheehan-Edwards—the owner of A Renewed Spirit Massage and a licensed massage therapist herself—heads up a team of therapists that goes the extra mile to ensure customer comfort. The staff offers one-hour Swedish, deep-tissue, and reflexology massages as well as hydrating paraffin treatments for the hands, feet, and back that nourish skin and help it better relate to the bedside candle. Groups of four or more can enjoy blissful camaraderie with a fondue massage party, which pairs cheese or chocolate fondue with Swedish massages.