Temperature, in nuru, means the warmth of gel, skin and room together, the one condition the technique cannot do without and the one a guest can prepare in advance.
Temperature is the practical condition on which a nuru session rests. It concerns three things at once, the gel, the body and the room, and the evening goes well only when all three are warm together. Gel that cools on the skin stiffens and loses its glide; a chilled body cannot settle; and a room that draws heat away undoes the work of the other two.
Before she begins, the therapist brings the gel up to just past the warmth of skin, so that it feels like warmth when it meets the body, and nothing like a cold pour. It keeps that warmth only briefly. Being mostly water, and lying on the skin as a thin layer, it gives its heat to the surrounding air much faster than oil would, so she renews it with warm water as the session goes on. The fuller account is in the guide to nuru gel.
This is the part the guest controls, and it matters more than most people expect. Amsterdam hotel rooms are often kept cool, and rooms in older canal houses can take a long while to warm, in winter especially or if a window has been left ajar. The simplest step is to raise the thermostat within minutes of the thread confirming, so that the arrival window is spent warming the room and not waiting in a cold one. A room that feels a little too warm to someone fully dressed is about right for nuru.
The two showers complete the picture. The first warms the skin before any gel is used; the last carries the gel away, and a stream that turns cold at that moment spoils what came before. Letting the hot tap run briefly in advance shows how quickly an old building sends heat up its pipes, and the guide on showering and dressing the bed for nuru covers the bathroom in more detail.