Emotional Release
Most of us have been taught to manage our emotions — to think them through, talk them out, push them down, get on with it. That works, until it doesn’t. Eventually the body keeps a list of everything we never let move.
I work with NEO Emotional Release, a body-based therapeutic methodology that helps move what’s been stored — anger, grief, fear, the things that haven’t had anywhere to go.
What NEO Emotional Release Is
NEO Emotional Release (NER) is a defined therapeutic method that integrates several modalities into one body-based practice: psychosomatic bodywork, breathwork, somatic experiencing, Internal Family Systems (IFS), inner child work, and trauma-informed presence.
Unlike talk therapy — which works mostly through the mind — NER works through the body. The premise is simple: emotions aren’t just thoughts. They’re physiological events stored in tissue, breath patterns, muscle tension, the nervous system. When emotion gets suppressed instead of expressed, the body doesn’t forget. It holds.
NER’s job is to give those held emotions a way out. Through guided breath, bodywork, sound, presence, and sometimes movement — we work directly with where the emotion lives, not around it.
I’m certified in NEO Emotional Release through the Emotional Release Institute.
Stress and Emotional Suppression Are the Same Thing
Most of what we call “stress” is actually emotion we haven’t allowed to move.
The body has a brilliant system for managing what it can’t process: it tightens. The jaw clenches to mute what wants to be said. The neck stiffens around the words we swallow. The chest constricts to hold back the cry. The hips lock down on grief, fear, anger, and history. Each tightening is the body protecting us from something it didn’t have permission or space to release.
It works. Until it doesn’t. The chronic tension we live with, the exhaustion that doesn’t lift with rest, the anxiety that has no clear cause — these are often the cost of the body holding what we never let move.
NER works with this directly. Rather than analyzing what you feel or where it came from, the work is to release the physical patterns that have been holding it in place — and let the emotion finally complete.
The Emotions This Work Addresses
Anger
The emotion most women have been most thoroughly taught not to feel. Anger gets called difficult, unfeminine, dramatic — and so it gets pushed down, until it shows up as anxiety, exhaustion, resentment, or chronic tension. Anger isn’t the problem. Unexpressed anger is.
In a session, we make space for anger to move — through breath, sound, movement, sometimes pushing or striking into something safe. It’s not pretty. It’s not supposed to be. It’s the part of yourself you’ve been holding in for years, finally allowed to take up space.
Grief
Grief lives in the body whether we name it or not. The grief of loss, of illness, of who we used to be, of what didn’t happen, of who didn’t show up. Most of us are walking around with old grief we never had time or space to feel.
Sessions for grief are slower, softer, and held with deep care. Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes there’s nothing visible — just the quiet work of the body finally being allowed to feel what it’s been carrying.
Fear and Anxiety
Fear is fast. It lives in the chest, the breath, the gut. When fear has been chronic — through illness, through prolonged stress, through life situations that asked us to stay alert for too long — it stops being an emotion and becomes a state. The body forgets how to be at rest.
Release work for fear is about teaching the nervous system that it’s safe to come down. Slow breath, grounded movement, and the presence of someone who isn’t afraid of your fear.
Everything Else
Most sessions don’t sort cleanly into one emotion. What surfaces is what surfaces — a layered mix of grief and anger and tenderness and exhaustion. The work is to follow what the body offers, not to plan it.
Where the Body Holds It
NER works with the specific places in the body where emotion gets stored. A few common ones:
The jaw — where unspoken words live. Where we mute what wanted to be said.
The neck — the bridge between head and heart. Often tight in people who feel unheard, unseen, or who’ve spent years holding back the truth of what they think.
The chest — where grief, longing, and the breath of fear all sit. The first place the body constricts when something hurts.
The hips and pelvis — where we hold history, fear, sexual experience, and a particular kind of feminine inheritance. Often the deepest holding place, and the hardest to release without help.
The gut — the seat of intuition and the place we feel danger before we can name it. Often holding chronic anxiety and unexpressed emotion that the upper body can’t reach.
In session, we work with where your body is actually holding — not where the textbook says it should be.
How Sessions Work
Sessions last 90 – 120 minutes. We start with a conversation — what you’re carrying, what’s been asking for space. Then we move into the body work: guided breathwork to access what’s underneath, hands-on or guided release work depending on what’s needed, space for sound and movement if that’s what wants to come, and a deep, regulated nervous system landing at the end.
You don’t need to know what you’re feeling before you arrive. Most people don’t. The body usually knows before the mind does.
Sessions are held one-to-one, in person in the Netherlands and online.
A Note on Safety and Boundaries
NEO Emotional Release is real therapeutic work. It can bring up strong physical and emotional sensations, and it can surface material you didn’t expect.
I work trauma-informed, which means I’ll never push you past where you are. You can stop at any point. Nothing has to come up. If something does, we work with it at the pace your body can hold.
This work isn’t a replacement for therapy. If you’re in active treatment for trauma, complex grief, or a mental health condition, please tell me before we start so we can work alongside what you’re already doing — not against it.
If you have a history of cardiovascular issues, pregnancy, or certain mental health conditions, the breathwork components may need to be adapted or skipped. We’ll talk through it before we begin.
Rates
1:1 NEO Emotional Release Session — €140 (90 min)
Package of 3 sessions — €390 (saves €30)
Free intro call — 20 minutes, no charge
Sliding scale available for women in recovery and people on limited income. Please reach out — we’ll find a way to make it work.
You don’t have to know what’s there.
You only have to be ready for it to move.
Book a 1:1 session, or book a free twenty-minute call if you want to talk it through first.