How to Give a Relaxing Massage

How to Relax Your Partner's Body When Giving a Massage

Start by connecting with your partner. There may be specific ways you and your partner prefer to do this. If not, try kind words, soft gazing into each other's eyes, synchronized breathing, and/or caressing each others' faces or hands.

When both of you are ready, have your partner lie face down, naked, on the massage table. Start by quieting and focusing your mind while resting your hands on the receiving partner's upper and lower back. Then, perform a relaxing massage on the back, legs, and feet. Basic principles of relaxing massage include keeping your hands in contact with your partner, taking your time, being rhythmic yet sensitive, and proceeding from long gliding strokes to deeper ones. When giving a massage be sure to use good body mechanics: use your body weight rather than arm strength for deep strokes, during gliding strokes keep your knees slightly bent and fluid, and don't lean over the table.

After relaxing your partner's back, legs, and feet, have him or her turn over. Massage the chest, arms, and hands. Then glide down to the legs. It can feel good to brush the genitals when going down to the legs. After finishing the fronts of the legs and feet, glide back up and slowly brush over the genitals, teasing them. This teasing process can be drawn out by brushing the inner thighs near the genitals, very lightly touching the pubic region, etc. At this point erotic energy is often building, making it a natural time to start shifting the focus to more explicitly sexual activities.

Especially if this is your first massage with this partner, it's a good idea to look into your partner's eyes while cradling his or her genitals, and somehow ask his or her permission to go further. The rest of the massage will focus on the genitals, with periodic sweeps up and down the body to spread, balance, and integrate the sensations. One of the skills that comes with practice is being able to read the energy and arousal levels of your partner, and smoothly and gradually ramp up from relaxing massage to more arousing and sexual.