Gentle Release Therapy for Neurodivergent People | Autism & ADHD

Neurodiversity

Gentle Release Therapy supporting Neurodiversity

Gentle Release Therapy is a gentle, hands-on therapy that helps the nervous system settle without pressure, force, or the need to talk. It is often a good fit for neurodivergent people, whether you are autistic, ADHD, or both and looking for something for yourself, or a parent or carer looking for something gentle for someone you love.

The sensory experience is gentle, and nothing is asked of you while you receive it. Sessions can happen in person or at distance, with touch or without touch, and parts of the work can also be learned and used at home.

A gentle, steady pace Gentle touch, or no touch at all No requirement to talk or explain In person or at distance For adults and for children Can be learned and used at home

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Why it often helps

Why Gentle Release Therapy often suits neurodivergent people

So much support asks something of you before it can even begin. To sit still, to make eye contact, to talk about how you are feeling, often in a bright room with someone you have only just met. For a lot of neurodivergent people, that part is hard, sometimes harder than the thing that brought you there in the first place.

Gentle Release Therapy does not work that way. There is nothing to perform and nothing to get right. You do not have to talk, hold still, or explain yourself. The touch is light, or held at a distance with no touch at all. The pace stays gentle and steady the whole way through.

Neurodivergent covers a lot of ground. Autism, ADHD, sensory processing differences, dyspraxia, dyslexia, Tourette's, PDA, and often more than one of them at once. The work is not specific to any single one. And for anyone whose nervous system pushes back hard against demands and expectations, the kind of demand avoidance that often comes with PDA, it can be a particular relief, because there is nothing here to resist and nothing being asked of you at all.

What I see, again and again, is that when nothing is being asked of the body, it can settle of its own accord.

We make it safe enough, and the body does the rest.

What it comes alongside

What it can come alongside

People come carrying all sorts of things, and often they are the very things that are hardest to put into words.

Sensory overload, when the world has come in faster than the body can take it. Dysregulation, and those spikes that are so hard to come down from. Burnout, in grown-ups and children alike, when the masking and the managing and the carrying on have quietly used everything up. Meltdowns and shutdowns, and the long flat recovery afterwards. Anxiety that sits in the body and will not shift. Trouble winding down, and broken sleep.

I often picture it as a bucket. We all have one, and a neurodivergent person's can fill more quickly, with sensory input, with feeling, with the sheer effort of getting through an ordinary day. When the bucket is already that full-up, the smallest thing, the last straw, can be enough to tip it over the edge. Gentle Release does not stop the bucket filling. What it seems to do is help empty it, often quite a lot, so there is more room again, more capacity to cope with life, and with new emotions and situations as they come.

None of this is about treating or fixing how anyone's brain works. Being autistic, being ADHD, taking the world in differently, these are not problems to be solved. The work simply comes alongside the nervous system underneath, so that a too-full day is a little easier to come back from.

Two ways in

Two ways people come to this work

For yourself

For yourself, as a neurodivergent adult

Some of the people who come are autistic and ADHD adults, looking for something for themselves. Often they arrive tired in a particular way, worn out by holding it all together in a world that was not really built with them in mind.

This work does not ask you to explain any of that. You can come and simply receive it. Distance sessions mean you do not have to leave home or sit in an unfamiliar room if that is too much, and that matters to a lot of people. You stay in control of how it goes, the whole way through.

For someone you love

For someone you care for

Others come for someone they love. A parent for a child. An adult son or daughter for an ageing parent. Someone caring for a relative who is going through burnout. The work suits this well, because the person receiving it does not have to do anything at all. They do not need to follow instructions, or sit still, or find any words for it.

For a child, a parent stays in the room throughout, and the child can be doing whatever helps them feel safe. For an adult relative, you can either bring them to a practitioner or, if you would rather, learn a few of the points and offer them yourself at home.

A therapist's hands held softly at the head during a gentle release

In a session

What a session looks like

Because sensory comfort makes such a difference, many practitioners will happily adjust the room to suit you, the lighting, any scent, the sound or music, the fabrics and blankets. You are welcome to bring your own comfort items, your own headphones or a weighted blanket, to ask for breaks, and to agree beforehand how the session will end, perhaps a quiet word or a small signal, so you know what to expect. It is always worth asking. A good practitioner will want to know what helps you feel safe.

For an adult

In person, a session takes place in the practitioner's clinic room, or for some practitioners in your own home. You can lie on a treatment couch fully clothed, sit in a chair, or settle wherever feels comfortable. Some people talk, some sit quietly, some close their eyes. The practitioner rests their hands lightly at different points on the head, neck, abdomen or back, pausing where the body seems to need time.

There is no undressing, no pressure to keep still, and no expectation that you describe what you are feeling. You can stop at any point.

For a child, with a parent in the room

A parent stays with the child throughout. The child does not have to lie still or sit in any particular way. They can play, snack, watch something, scroll on a phone, or curl up before sleep while the practitioner works quietly alongside them. The touch is light, and for a child who finds touch too much, the whole session can be given at distance instead.

Practitioners are trained to read what a child is showing through their body and to work with where the tension is sitting, rather than asking the child to find words for it.

At distance

Distance sessions are offered for anyone who does not want physical touch, who finds clinic environments overwhelming, who is unwell, or who cannot easily travel. You stay at home in whatever position feels comfortable while the practitioner works from their own space, through energy rather than physical touch, in a similar way to Reiki. Many people doze through a distance session. Others simply carry on with what they were already doing.

How long, how often

Sessions are usually somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour, depending on age and on what is going on. Some people come once. Others come for a stretch, or return during harder periods, when the bucket is filling faster than it can empty.

In your own hands

Learning to use it at home

One of the things that makes this work practical for neurodivergent families is that you do not have to rely on booking a session every time. Parts of it can be learned and used at home, by a neurodivergent adult for themselves, by a parent for their child, or by a carer for a relative.

The Introduction to Gentle Release Therapy course is the place to begin. It teaches a number of gentle points and how to use them, on yourself and on the person in your care. These are the points that help empty the bucket, letting emotions, tension and stress clear and move through. Once some of that has cleared, it is often good to move to the vagus nerve points next, to help calm and settle the nervous system. This is why we suggest beginning with Gentle Release first, and going to the vagus work from there.

Many neurodivergent families come to value the first four points of the Gentle Release Vagus Nerve work in particular. These are gentle holds at the back of the head, the neck and the ears, often especially steadying through dysregulation, sensory overload and burnout. They ask nothing of the person receiving them, and they can be offered at home, in the moment, when the bucket is filling and getting to a practitioner is not possible. The Introduction to the Vagus Nerve course teaches these four points in full, and tends to be most useful taken after the Introduction to Gentle Release Therapy.

If you would rather have someone else do the work, you can find a practitioner instead. Many work both in person and at distance, so where you live does not necessarily limit what is possible.

Introduction to Gentle Release Therapy → Introduction to the Vagus Nerve → Find a practitioner →

In their words

Two families' experiences

The two stories below are shared with permission. Names and identifying details have been kept private to protect the people involved.

A family's experience

Helen's daughter, aged seven

Some time ago, my daughter really started to struggle. The build-up to Christmas at school seemed to be the final straw, and after weeks of trying to be a perfect sitter in rehearsals for the nativity, she was no longer able to manage within her usual boundaries. Getting her into school each morning became harder and harder, and things at home were difficult too. At first I thought it was anxiety. Then a GP suggested autism, and as I read everything I could find about autism in girls, the pieces began to fit together with what we had seen since she came into the world.

The NHS were not able to refer us, and we were fortunate to be able to arrange a private diagnosis. A diagnosis is not a magic pill, but it helped us understand her, and it told us where she needed support.

She was carrying a great deal. Very high anxiety, mostly around school, where she felt least safe. A sensitivity to clothes that could tip her over the edge. Low self-esteem, to the point of calling herself a bad girl, which she never was. A sensitivity to noise, to crowds, to a friend's offhand remark, to being told off, even to being looked at the wrong way. By Christmas she could not sit with the family for a meal, the meltdowns could last for hours, and she could not manage a full day at school. When she ran out of energy to mask, she would hide her face so no one could see it.

I already knew Gentle Release had helped her with the clothing sensitivity before, so it felt worth trying. From the difficult place we were in, it took a number of sessions. At the start she was having maybe four short sessions a week for a few weeks. Sometimes a session was followed by an outburst that made no obvious sense, but it always settled quickly, and it felt to me like pent-up energy finding its way out.

With her extra sensitivities, that bucket fills quickly, and when she is full-up it can feel to her as though there is no way out, everything to process at once, feelings and physical sensations together. Gentle Release seems to help empty it a little, so she has more room to cope, with the day, and with whatever new comes her way.

Her school have put a great deal in place to support her, and she is back almost full time now. The mornings that were once so hard are a memory. She is steadier at home, and the meltdowns happen far less often than they did, and pass more quickly when they do. I keep a careful eye on that bucket, and we build in a session when it looks like things are starting to mount up. As she gets older, I want her to feel that her way of experiencing the world is part of who she is, not something to be ashamed of, and I want to help her learn to notice the signs herself, so she can ask for a session, or one day do Gentle Release for herself.

There is a longer piece on the blog about the months when even a single sock could tip her over the edge, and how Gentle Release came alongside us through it. Worth a read if you recognise your own child here.

Read the fuller story →

A family's experience

A mother, using the first four points with her adult daughter

Neurodivergence does not stop at childhood. Here is how one mother has been using the first four points to support her adult daughter through autistic and ADHD burnout.

"My adult daughter reached a point of complete burnout, autistic and ADHD burnout, and through her recovery she has had frequent meltdowns and a lot of spiralling, as her nervous system has struggled to settle. Helen suggested working on the vagus nerve.

I use the first four points. The two holds at the back of the head and the neck seem to reassure her, and the holds at the ears are the ones that settle her most. She comes down more gently than she did, and finds her way back to steadier ground.

It has become a steady part of her toolkit. It gives her more confidence, and takes some of the fear out of becoming dysregulated."

If you would like to learn these four points yourself, the Introduction to the Vagus Nerve course teaches exactly what this mother is using. You can also read more about how Gentle Release works with the vagus nerve in our fuller piece.

A gentle next step

If you would like to find a practitioner, for yourself or for someone you care for, you can search our directory. Many practitioners work both in person and at distance, so where you live does not necessarily limit what is possible.

If you would rather learn parts of the work yourself, the Introduction to Gentle Release Therapy course is the gentle first step, with the Introduction to the Vagus Nerve course there when you are ready to go further.

And if you are not sure where to begin, or would prefer to talk it through first, you are very welcome to get in touch through the contact page. I am happy to talk it over with you.

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