Nuru After a Long Flight: Timing the Session to Your Arrival
A long-haul arrival leaves the body chilled, stiff and on the wrong clock. Nuru answers the first two, and good timing makes the third easier to manage.
A great many first bookings come from people who landed that same day. They have spent eight or twelve hours in a narrow seat in cool, dry cabin air, crossed several time zones, taken the train into the city and checked into a room that looks unfamiliar in the late afternoon light. What they want is not complicated. They want to be warm, to be unfolded, and to stop feeling like luggage. A nuru session suits all of that, provided the timing is right.
When to book
The most common mistake is booking too early, straight from the arrivals hall. A session at four in the afternoon for someone whose body believes it is the middle of the night is lovely while it lasts and is followed by a heavy sleep that throws the next two days out of shape. The better plan, if you land in the morning or early afternoon, is to stay up, walk a little in daylight, eat something light and book for the early evening, local time. By then the session becomes a bridge to a proper night's sleep rather than a nap in the wrong place.
If you arrive late in the evening, book on arrival and sleep straight afterwards. That is the easiest case of all, and the one where an eight-hour overnight at €1,250 sometimes makes more sense than it first sounds, since the night then holds both the session and the sleep that follows it.
What the body brings in
Travellers usually arrive chilled in a way they do not notice until they lie down. Cabin air is kept cool, and hours of sitting still leave hands and feet cold. That makes the preparation at the start of a nuru session more important than usual: a room turned up to properly warm, a longer hot shower before the gel, and gel warmed a little more thoroughly. Tell the therapist you have just flown in and she will adjust all three without needing to be asked twice.
Stiffness is the other passenger. Hips folded for a day, a lower back pressed into a seat, shoulders drawn forward over a screen. The gel does not dig into any of that the way a thumb can. What it does is lay broad, even weight along the whole length of the body, and for many people that is exactly the right answer to a day of being cramped, since nothing is forced and everything is lengthened.
How long
An hour is tight after a flight. The opening warm-up takes longer than usual, and a traveller's body often needs more time before it stops bracing. Ninety minutes is the comfortable minimum, and two hours is not excessive. There is more on why the gel rewards longer bookings in the note on session length, and every duration is listed on the prices page, starting from €180 for the hour.
A few practical notes
- Drink water before she arrives. A long flight dries you out, and a hot shower followed by a warm room adds to it.
- Eat something, but not a large meal. Nobody enjoys lying on their front straight after a big dinner.
- Put the suitcase away. Arrival rooms are always chaotic, and an open case on the floor gets in the way of the sheet.
- If you fall asleep during the session, that is fine. It happens often after a flight, and nobody will wake you abruptly.
- Keep a robe or soft clothes by the bed for afterwards, since the warmth lingers and you may not want to move.
Staying at the airport
Not everyone makes it into the city. Some travellers have a single night between connections and a hotel beside the terminal. Schiphol airport hotels can be arranged, though not at the short notice the city allows, so mention the hotel area and your flight times when you write, and we will say what can be done. For those staying in the business district after a long-haul arrival, the Zuidas page covers the rooms and showers of the towers south of the ring.
Whichever room you land in, a nuru massage on the first evening is one of the better ways to persuade a travelling body that it has arrived. The gel does the warming. The clock you will have to manage yourself.