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Bring every part of youback to yourself.Emotional Release Therapy with Pat Jackman — hands-on inner child work through the body. Practitioner training, retreats and workshops, taught from Sebastopol, California to students across the US and Canada.

Emotional Release Therapy is gentle, hands-on inner child work through the body — a way to meet the parts of you that got left behind, and welcome every one of them home.

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What's Next

Groups stay small on purpose. Tap any of them to read the full description.

One-Day Workshop New

A Day of Emotional Release

Saturday, October 3, 2026 Sebastopol, California · 10am–5pm

One day, hands-on. Inner child work through the body — you learn a few of the foundational points and work on each other. The simplest way to find out what this actually is.

Read the full day → Next Retreat Open

Opening the Heart — Inner Child

September 26–30, 2026 Gore, Virginia · Live-in retreat

A four-day live-in retreat with eight to twelve people. Guided ERT bodywork, inner child process, and time to let it settle.

Read the full retreat → Next School Enrolling

ERT Practitioner Training

First module Sep 10–13, 2026 Sebastopol, California · Enrolling now

About a year of training in a cohort of eight. A session, workshop, or retreat comes first, then registration and a deposit hold your place.

Read the full program →

Looking for a one-on-one session? Find a practitioner near you →

What is ERT, really?

Emotional Release Therapy is a type of hands-on bodywork — a creative synthesis of specific bodywork and inner child work. Points on the body are activated, and trapped emotions like fear, anger, or grief, held back because they were not safe or allowed, are given an opportunity to express.

The body has hundreds of points, or doorways, that have become "clogged" over the years. With breath, opening, and inner child work, the channels of the body are invited to clear that stagnant energy — memories can resurface, emotions can move, and we learn to embrace the wounded parts of ourselves, so we can be who we are meant to be: peaceful, loving beings.

Learn more about ERT →

Feel

Meet the emotion your body has been holding — fear, grief, anger, even joy — and let yourself feel it fully.

Express

Give it somewhere to go. Through the body, what was held back finally gets to move and be voiced.

Be witnessed

None of it is done alone. You're met with warmth and held without judgment — seen exactly as you are.

Integrate

The parts you set aside come home, and you walk back into your life more whole — more yourself.

How it works

You might not call it trauma. Maybe it's a tightness in the chest that never fully leaves, anger that rises faster than it should, the same relationships playing out no matter how well you understand them, exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, or pain with no clear cause. ERT is hands-on somatic work for people who have done the talking — and still feel stuck.

Unprocessed emotion doesn't disappear — it gets stored, and what the body has stored, it can also release. When something overwhelms the nervous system, it braces to protect you: muscles tense, breath shortens. When the threat never fully resolves, that bracing can lock in — chronic tension, restricted breathing, unexplained pain, and a low sense that something isn't quite right. Modern trauma and nervous-system research describes it well: trauma lives in the body, and the nervous system has to feel safe before it can let go.

That's why every session begins at the heart — with presence and safety, because the body won't open what it's been guarding until it trusts that it's safe to. At the center of ERT is a map of points on the muscles and bones, called doorways, where held emotion has compressed into the tissue: grief that was never cried, anger never voiced, fear never discharged. With pressure, breath, and awareness, what's stored is brought to the surface — and you're guided not to analyze it, but to feel it fully and let it move through and out. Not analysis. Completion.

Well suited for

People often come to this work carrying:

  • Chronic pain and tension that scans and treatments haven't fully explained
  • Old injuries that never quite healed
  • Recurring headaches, or jaw, neck, shoulder, and back tension
  • Mysterious aches that come and go with no clear structural cause
  • Gut and digestive tension that flares with stress
  • Anxiety and the sense of always bracing for impact
  • Grief, anger, or depression that's settled into the body
  • A feeling of having hit a ceiling in talk therapy

What people often notice

Everyone's body is different and nothing here is promised — but these are the shifts people describe most often:

  • Tension and pain the body's been holding can begin to ease
  • Muscles and fascia letting go — less bracing, more mobility
  • Fewer tension headaches, and a looser jaw, neck, and shoulders
  • Breathing that feels deeper and fuller
  • Better sleep and steadier energy
  • A sense of releasing stored fear, grief, anger, or shame
  • Less anxiety and reactivity — a calmer nervous system
  • Feeling more alive, safer, and more at home in the body

ERT is not medical or psychological treatment, and it doesn't diagnose, cure, or treat any condition. If you're dealing with pain or a health concern, keep working with your doctor — this work sits alongside that care, meeting the emotional and held-tension layer, not replacing it.

Start here

About ERT

Inner child work, done through the body

Emotional Release Therapy starts from a simple idea: the body remembers. Inside it are rooms where feelings were tucked away — sadness that was never seen, fear that was never heard, joy that was never safe to show.

ERT is hands-on. Points on the body are activated, and the emotion held there is given somewhere to go. Nothing is forced. You stay clothed, you stay in charge, and the pace is set by your own nervous system.

What happens

  • Hands-on work at the points where emotion is stored
  • Guided support as feeling comes up
  • Real expression, not analysis

What tends to shift

  • Less tension from old patterns
  • A clearer read on your triggers
  • More room to stay present instead of shutting down

Where it fits

ERT sits alongside talk therapy rather than replacing it. Nothing here is diagnosis or treatment — it is a way back into the feeling body. Results vary from person to person.

The One-Day Workshop

A Day of Emotional Release

One Saturday, a small group, and your first real taste of the work.

This is the shortest way in. In a single day you will learn a handful of the foundational ERT release points, put your hands on another person, and have another person’s hands on you. It is not a lecture about the body — it is a day spent inside it.

All of it is inner child work. That is not one segment of the day — it is what ERT is. The points are simply how you get there: emotion parks itself in tissue, and the younger self who was never allowed to feel it is reached through the body rather than talked about from a chair.

The morning is teaching and gentle work — where the primary points sit, and how to touch someone in a way that invites rather than forces. By the afternoon you are working in pairs, taking turns, with Pat moving between you the whole time. People are often surprised how quickly something surfaces once the body has been opened and the room has gone quiet.

No experience is needed, and nothing is required of you beyond willingness. Come for your own healing, or come to find out whether the retreat or the practitioner school is your next step. Both are good reasons.

See how the day runs, what you leave with, and what to expect →

The Retreat

Opening the Heart — Inner Child

Four days, eight to twelve people, and enough time for something to actually move.

This is a live-in retreat built around Emotional Release Therapy. Through guided sessions, hands-on bodywork, movement, breath, and shared witness, you meet the parts of yourself that got put away — and give them somewhere to go.

Each day builds on the one before it. That matters: release tends to arrive after the nervous system decides it is safe, and safety takes time. Meals and lodging are handled so nothing pulls you out of your own process.

People come for their own healing, and some come because the retreat is the first step toward practitioner training. Either reason is a good one.

How the four days run

  1. Arrival and settlingIntroductions, ground rules, and the first gentle work. Nothing heavy on day one.
  2. Opening the doorsHands-on ERT with a partner. You learn a few of the foundational points and feel what they do.
  3. The deep dayThe longest sessions, and usually the biggest movement. Held by the whole group.
  4. Integration and closingMaking sense of it, and building something you can take home.

What people leave with

  • Relief from tension that had been sitting in the body a long time
  • A clearer read on their own triggers and responses
  • Simple tools for keeping the work going at home
  • A group of people who watched them do a hard thing

The School

Become an ERT Practitioner

Not a certificate you collect. A year of learning to hold the room for someone else.

The training teaches you the full ERT modality — the points, the process, and the presence it takes to work with someone in the middle of a release. It is body-based work, so it is taught in person, with real people, over a long enough stretch that it settles into your hands.

Plenty of people feel drawn to this. Fewer find it is their path, and that is fine. That first experience — a session, workshop, or retreat — exists partly so you can find out before you commit.

How you get in

  1. Experience the workHave a session, a one-day workshop, or a retreat. You experience the modality from the inside and learn a few foundational points.
  2. Register and place a $600 depositRegistration includes a short letter of intent, and the deposit reserves your seat in the next cohort.

What the year looks like

  • Five four-day in-person modules
  • Twenty-five practicum sessions completed before you certify
  • A cohort of no more than eight, start to finish

Dates are chosen by the group once it forms, because students travel a long way to attend. The whole program usually runs about a year or less.

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In their words

“This week has been beyond what I could have expected — the intensity of meeting all the parts of myself, the memories and aspects of the self that live in our bodies and never forget. I saw my inner children who all wanted to shout, scream, shiver, cry, and release all they held inside — and they were met with all they were lacking. The kindness, warmth, and vulnerability I was met with was beyond what I thought possible. Pure bliss and freedom comes from admitting our most honest truths and having pure love reflected back to you. I found reverence for this work, and sat wide-eyed as I witnessed its magic.” ♥ — Laura Woolf, workshop participant
Healing grows faster in safe soil, especially when tended with love. Pat Jackman

Get in touch

Questions about a retreat, the school, or finding a practitioner near you — this reaches Pat directly.

The best way to reach Pat is a quick text or email.

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