What is a sensual massage? How I give mine, and why I love it

What is a sensual massage? Ask ten people and you’ll get ten guesses, most of them too coy or too graphic. Here’s mine, from the woman with the oil warming by the bed. A sensual massage is an erotic massage that takes its time: real touch on bare skin, given slowly enough that you feel every bit of it, in a room where the clock isn’t invited. I give mine at my flat in Earl’s Court, SW5, and I love it more than is sensible to admit in writing.

What is a sensual massage, really?

Strip away the euphemisms and it’s simple. Two people, very little clothing (and then none), warm oil, and an hour where the whole point is how things feel. A sports massage wants to fix you. A sensual massage wants you to notice you have a body at all, and to enjoy the noticing.

It is erotic, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Nudity, skin, closeness and desire are all in the room, and they’re meant to be. But it isn’t rushed, it isn’t a performance and it isn’t a checklist. My hands ask the questions and your breathing answers them, more honestly than you would out loud.

How my sensual massage begins

You’re fresh out of a hot shower, face down on clean linen, a towel somewhere around your hips. I tip warm oil into my palms and rub them together first, because cold oil on a warm back is a small act of cruelty and I don’t do those. The first touch is both hands laid flat between your shoulder blades, resting there a breath or two so your body knows where I am.

Then the long strokes: from the base of your spine to your shoulders, slow and firm, using my weight rather than my wrists. This first stretch is honest massage. Most people turn up carrying the week across their shoulders, and I’d rather take it off you than work around it.

All the while I’m listening. Not to anything you say, because most people stop talking by the third stroke, but to your breathing. It tells me everything: when you’re still braced, and when you’ve let go. When it drops low and stays there, you’re ready for the next part.

That’s when the pace changes. The strokes grow longer, lighter and a good deal less professional, drifting down your sides and over the backs of your thighs. My robe slides off around then. And the touch stops being hands alone and becomes skin: the warmth of my stomach along your back, the slow press of my thighs, the tickle of my hair somewhere you weren’t expecting it. When you turn over, neither of us can hide a smile.

Cut to: the lamp turned down another notch, and neither of us remembering what a shoulder is for.

What makes a sensual massage good: pressure, rhythm, warmth

Anyone can rub oil on a back. What makes a sensual massage worth booking is the unglamorous part nobody photographs, so here’s what I fuss over:

• Pressure. Firm enough to mean it, never so firm you grit your teeth.
• Rhythm. Long, unbroken strokes. A rhythm you can predict lets you stop bracing; then I change it, once, at exactly the right moment.
• Warmth. Warm oil, warm hands, a warm room. Goosebumps should come from me, not from a draught.
• Time. I never rush. The slow part isn’t the wait before the good part; it is the good part.
• The room. Fresh linen every time, low light, a hot shower before and after, and nobody else in the flat. Nothing to distract you but me.

None of it is clever. It’s attention: noticing that your left shoulder is tighter than your right, or that you laugh when I find the ticklish spot under your ribs. One hour of real attention beats three of going through the motions.

Sensual, body-to-body, nuru or tantric: which is yours?

“Sensual massage” is the family name. Under it sit a few different moods, and my job is pointing you to the right one.

My sensual naked massage is the one I’ve just described: hands first, then more and more of me. If erotic massage is new to you, or you simply want the classic, begin here.

Body-to-body gets past the polite part sooner. Oiled and naked, I use the whole length of me rather than my palms, which suits anyone who already knows they want closeness. Nuru is its slippery, giggly cousin: warm seaweed gel, a mat on the floor and almost no friction. Torn between them? I wrote a whole piece on nuru vs body-to-body.

Tantric is my slowest. I studied tantric massage in India, and it’s for anyone who’d like to be made to wait, deliciously, for a long time. And Lola Unwrapped, my striptease massage, starts with you doing the looking: you choose the colour of my lingerie, watch me take it off, and only then lie down.

All of them happen at my flat in Earl’s Court, a short stroll from the station, and only there. I don’t carry massage across London in a bag: the table, the warm towels, the shower and a room that’s been ready since before you set off are half of what makes it good. From Kensington or Chelsea, you’re about ten minutes from my door.

Why I love giving sensual massage

Now the heart of it, and a question I hear surprisingly often: do I actually enjoy this? Yes. Shamelessly.

Partly it’s that I’m good at it, which is a pleasure of its own. Partly it’s simpler: I’m a tactile person. I like warm oil, bare skin and the hush of a room with the lights down. I like being naked, and I like being looked at. I’d be fibbing if I told you the wanting in that room only ever travels in one direction.

But mostly it’s the change I get to watch. People arrive stuck in their heads: the meeting, the phone, the commute. Somewhere in the first ten minutes their shoulders come down from around their ears, their jaw unclenches, and they stop performing. They’re simply there, under my hands, feeling things. Being the reason for that is the best part of my week, most weeks.

And I love the honesty of it. No small talk you don’t mean, no pretending you came about your lower back. You wanted to be touched slowly by a woman who wants to do exactly that: a perfectly good thing to want, and an even better thing to give.

So, what is a sensual massage, when it’s mine? Warm oil, unhurried hands, then all of me, and an hour that belongs to nobody but you. Curious? A sensual massage in London with me is one WhatsApp, text or call away. Give me a couple of hours’ notice, any day between 8am and 10pm, and come to Earl’s Court; the oil will be warm by the time you reach my door. Sixty minutes is the length I’d pick for you; any less and we’re only just getting acquainted.