What is Emotional Release Therapy?

Emotional Release Therapy (ERT) is a hands-on somatic modality in which specific points on the muscles and bones — called doorways — are opened with pressure, breath and guided attention, so that emotion the body has been holding can be felt and expressed rather than analysed. It is inner child work carried out through the body. The modality was developed by Pat Jackman, who has taught and practised it since 1995.

That is the short answer. The longer one is worth reading, because “emotional release” is a phrase a lot of different practices use, and the letters ERT get borrowed for several unrelated things. What follows is an account of this modality specifically — where it came from, what happens in a room, what it feels like, what it does not do, and who should not do it.

What ERT actually is

Emotional Release Therapy is a creative synthesis of two things that are usually kept apart: precise bodywork, and inner child work.

The bodywork half is a map. Over the years, points throughout the body become clogged — grief that was never cried, anger never voiced, fear never discharged. Those points are the doorways. A practitioner knows where they sit and how to open them: not by pushing through the body, but by meeting it steadily enough that it agrees to let go.

The inner child half is the reason for the first half. This is not a segment of a session, or a conversation bolted on at the end. It is what the whole thing is. Behind held emotion there is almost always a younger self who was not allowed to feel it at the time — who learned early that the feeling was too much, too loud, too inconvenient, or too dangerous. ERT reaches that younger self through the body rather than talking about her from a chair. The points are simply how you get there.

You stay clothed. You stay in charge. Nothing is forced, and the pace is set by your own nervous system rather than by the clock.

Where it came from

Pat Jackman, M.A., CMT, CHT, began as a counselor and social worker in 1977 and spent more than two decades in that field — two decades of sitting across from people who understood their own histories in detail and were still carrying them.

In 1995 she turned to bodywork and trained in Amanae, a hands-on modality that works with the body's connective tissue to release held emotion. Over the years that followed she evolved what she had learned through her own inner child work, and what emerged was different enough to need its own name. Emotional Release Therapy is that modality: the doorways from her bodywork training, and the inner child process from everything before it, taught as one practice rather than two.

She has been teaching it ever since. The ERT practitioner school has trained small cohorts who now work across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and every practitioner in the directory learned the work directly from her.

Why working through the body does something talking cannot

Most people who find this work have already done the talking. They can narrate their childhood accurately, name their patterns, explain exactly why they react the way they do — and still find themselves reacting that way. Understanding a thing and being free of it turn out to be two different achievements.

The reason is not mysterious. When something overwhelms the nervous system, the body braces to protect you: muscles tense, breath shortens, attention narrows. If the threat resolves, the bracing releases. If it never fully resolves — and for a child in an unsafe or unwelcoming situation it often does not — the bracing can lock in and stay. What was once a response becomes a posture, and then a personality. Chronic tension, restricted breathing, pain with no structural cause, a low hum that something is not quite right.

This is broadly what contemporary trauma and nervous-system literature describes, and it is the part of the picture that talk alone has trouble reaching: an insight arrives in language, and the holding is not in language. Unprocessed emotion does not evaporate. It gets stored — and what the body has stored, the body can also release.

So ERT does not start with the story. It starts at the heart, with presence and safety, because a body will not open what it has been guarding until it trusts that opening is safe. Then it goes to the tissue, where the holding actually lives.

What happens in a session

1. You talk first, briefly. What brought you, what you are carrying, anything your practitioner should know. This is orientation, not assessment — nobody is building a case file.
2. The work begins at the heart. Presence, contact, breath. The point is to let your system register that it is safe here before anything else is asked of it.
3. Doorways are opened. Your practitioner works with pressure, breath and attention at specific points. Some will feel like nothing. One will feel like something.
4. Feeling surfaces — and is allowed to move. Grief, anger, fear, sometimes laughter, sometimes a memory arriving whole. You are guided to feel it fully and let it out, not to interpret it. Sound is welcome. Shaking is welcome. Tears are welcome.
5. The younger self is met. Whoever was holding this gets what she did not get at the time: attention, warmth, and someone staying in the room.
6. You are settled before you leave. Time to come back, breathe, and land. Nobody is sent out into the parking lot wide open.

A session usually runs between an hour and ninety minutes, though retreat and workshop work is structured differently.

What it actually feels like

Descriptions of this kind of work tend to skip straight to the aftermath, which is not much help if you are deciding whether to book something. So, honestly:

• The pressure at a doorway can be intense. Not injuring — intense. There is often a distinct moment where the sensation stops being physical and becomes emotional, and that shift can be abrupt.
• It is frequently loud. People shout, sob, swear, and make sounds they did not know they could make. This is not a failure of composure; it is the work.
• Emotion tends to arrive out of order and out of proportion. Rage about something small. Grief with no name attached. A memory you had not thought about in thirty years turning up during a point on your ribs.
• Some sessions produce nothing much. That is normal and not a wasted hour — bodies open on their own schedule.
• Afterwards most people are tired, unusually hungry, or oddly quiet. Some feel light immediately. Some feel tender for a day or two, the way you do after crying properly.
• Being witnessed is often the part that lands hardest. Not the release — the fact that someone stayed.

Who comes to this work

People arrive carrying different things, and many of them would not use the word trauma about themselves at all:

• Chronic pain and tension that scans and treatments have not fully explained
• Old injuries that never quite healed
• Recurring headaches, or jaw, neck, shoulder and back tension
• Gut and digestive tension that flares with stress
• Anxiety, and the sense of always bracing for impact
• Grief, anger or depression that has settled into the body
• Relationships that keep playing out the same way no matter how well they are understood
• A feeling of having hit a ceiling in talk therapy
• Bodyworkers, therapists and helpers who want this in their own hands

What people often notice

Everyone's body is different and nothing here is promised. These are simply the shifts people describe most often:

• Tension and pain the body has been holding beginning to ease
• Muscles and fascia letting go — less bracing, more mobility
• Breathing that feels deeper and fuller
• Better sleep and steadier energy
• A sense of having released stored fear, grief, anger or shame
• Less reactivity — a calmer nervous system
• Feeling more alive, safer, and more at home in the body

Results vary from person to person.

How ERT differs from other body-based work

People usually arrive having tried at least one of these, so it is worth being specific about what is different.

Is it safe?

For most people, yes. It is non-invasive, you stay fully clothed, and you remain in control the whole time — you can slow it down or stop it at any point, and a good practitioner will check. The practitioners in the directory have completed the full training and twenty-five supervised practicum sessions before certifying.

What is worth knowing honestly: strong emotion is the point of this work, and strong emotion has an aftermath. People are sometimes tender, tired or emotionally close to the surface for a day or two. Occasionally something surfaces that you were not expecting and would rather have more support around — which is why the contraindications above matter, and why it is a good idea not to schedule anything demanding directly afterwards.

What it costs

Private session fees are set by each practitioner, so ask when you book — most in the directory are in the range you would expect for a ninety-minute bodywork session in their area. Pat's own group programs are priced as follows:

The school is paid module by module, before each of the five begins, with food and lodging included. The $600 deposit reserves a seat and comes off the first module rather than adding to it. Deposits for retreats and training are non-refundable.

Three ways to find out for yourself

Reading about this modality has a low ceiling. It is a felt practice, and the honest way to know whether it is for you is to be in a room where it is happening.

If you already know you want to train in the modality, the practitioner school takes a cohort of eight, and one of the three experiences above is the prerequisite.

Questions people ask first

Emotional Release Therapy is not a substitute for medical or psychological treatment, and does not diagnose, cure or treat any condition. Results vary from person to person. If you are in crisis, please contact a licensed professional or, in the US, call or text 988.