“Which one should I book?” is the message I get most, and the honest answer is: describe what hurts and let me choose. But since most people would like to understand the choice, here is how I actually make it — the same three questions I ask at the door.
One: can you point at it?
If you can put one finger on the problem — the knot under the left shoulder blade, the band across the lower back, the hip that catches on stairs — you want deep tissue. Something specific has stopped releasing on its own, and it needs slow, weighted, local work: forearms and elbows, a full minute on a single point, pressure that builds and stays.
If the answer is “everywhere” or “I don’t know, I’m just tired”, you want Swedish. The problem is the week, not a muscle, and what the week needs is long, rhythmic, whole-body strokes that talk to the nervous system rather than to one stubborn piece of tissue.
Two: do you want to be worked on, or to switch off?
These feel similar on a booking page and completely different on the table. Deep tissue is intense — never painful, but you are aware of it the whole time, and you will be tender tomorrow in the places we spent the most time. It is worked on. Swedish is the opposite: by the tenth minute your breathing has changed, by the fortieth you have lost the clock, and the last fifteen minutes are something close to being held. It is switching off.
Some people want both. That is a legitimate answer, and it fits into ninety minutes: deep work on the back and shoulders, then the rest of the body kept slow and gentle. Say so when you book.
Three: is it actually tight, or is it injured?
This is the one people skip. Tightness responds to pressure. Injury — a fresh strain, a disc problem, anything with numbness or shooting pain — does not, and pressing hard on it is how a massage makes things worse. If what you describe sounds like the second kind, I will say so and suggest a physio before me. It happens a few times a month, and nobody has ever been sorry to hear it.
Why “firm Swedish” is not deep tissue
A note on a common misunderstanding. Swedish massage done with more pressure is still Swedish: broad, rhythmic, moving. Deep tissue is not about pressure so much as speed and specificity — it is slow, it is local, it waits. You can have a very firm Swedish massage that never touches the knot, and a deep tissue session that uses less force than you expected but stays on the right spot until it lets go. If you have booked “firm” before and left with the same shoulder, that is probably why.
When neither is right
If the body is fine and the head is not — anxious, overloaded, not sleeping — I would steer you to aromatherapy: a Swedish framework carried by an oil blended for the week you had. And if you have just flown in and everything aches at once, full body, ninety minutes, nothing skipped.
The short version
Point at it: deep tissue. The whole week: Swedish. Both: ninety minutes, and say so. Injured: physio first, me after.
Or just describe what hurts and let me choose. It is what I am for.