Nuru, in your Amsterdam hotel room
From €180/hr · In-room at your hotel · 24/7
Nuru is Japanese, and it comes from the bathhouses of Kawasaki, where the gel was first drawn from seaweed and warmed before use. The word means slippery; the gel is clear, odourless, heavier than oil, and once it is spread across two bodies friction is more or less abolished. What is left in its absence is what the technique is actually about — warmth, weight, and a stroke that never has to break.
What to expect
The gel is warmed first and the room is warmed with it, because the whole hour turns on temperature and nothing spoils it faster than a cold floor. A waterproof sheet goes down before anything is opened. From there the work is continuous: the therapist uses her forearms, her back and the length of her body rather than her hands alone, and because nothing catches, one movement runs into the next without a seam. It finishes under the shower — the gel is water-soluble and comes away clean.
Who it suits
It suits a guest who already knows what ordinary massage feels like and wants something built on the opposite principle, and it suits an unhurried evening rather than a gap between appointments. Ninety minutes or longer, in a room that can be made warm.
What it leaves you with
You leave slack through the shoulders and the lower back in a way that hand pressure alone seldom reaches, and unusually quiet in the head. The sense of continuous warm contact tends to outlast the session by some hours.
Origin
The gel came first and the technique followed it. Nori seaweed had been used in Japanese bathing long before it was used in any massage room, and it was kept for a property no oil has — it holds water and it holds warmth, and it will not soak into skin, so it stays on the surface and goes on working. The format that was built around that material in the Kawasaki bathhouses has travelled outward with very little altered, because there is very little in it to alter.
The technique itself
The gel is warmed to a little above body heat before anything begins, and warmed again during the hour, since it cools faster than oil and the entire effect depends on it not doing so. It is poured rather than rubbed in, and spread by contact — the therapist lowers a forearm or her side onto it and lets it find its own way across the skin. Because there is nothing to grip, pressure is made with weight rather than with the hand, and weight is applied by leaning rather than by pushing. The stroke is long and unbroken, and it is the absence of any stopping point that does the work.
Related techniques
If you are choosing between formats, these sit closest to Nuru Massage on our menu: Body-to-Body Massage · Soapy Massage · Sensual Massage.
Does the gel go on cold?
No. It is warmed to a little above body heat before the session starts and warmed again as the hour goes on, because it loses heat faster than oil does and a cooling gel undoes the technique. She arrives with it warm and keeps it that way.
Can nuru be booked for two people, or with two therapists?
Both. A couple can be worked on in turn or alongside each other, and two therapists come at €360 an hour — €720 for two hours, €1,080 for three. An overnight with two is quoted on enquiry rather than set out as a figure.
Can I book it at four in the morning?
Yes. We work through the night and through the weekend, and nothing is added to the rate for either. Send the message whenever you are actually free; a name and an arrival window come back in about ten minutes.
Banks
24
Beatrice
26
Betsy
23
Blair
27
Bonnie
25
Brielle
22
Britanny
28
Brooklyn
24
Caroline
29
Cassandra
26
Celeste
23
Celia
25Tell us the hour. She will be there before it.
Outcall to your hotel room or apartment across Amsterdam, twenty to thirty minutes in the centre, confirmed in about ten.