Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2 July 2026

We only collect the information we genuinely need to provide our services, communicate with you, and meet our legal obligations. This page explains what we collect, why we collect it, and how we look after it. We have written it in plain terms rather than legal ones. If anything is unclear, please email us and we will explain.

Who we are

Gentle Release Therapy is run by Helen Robinson. She is the data controller for any personal information the site or the practice holds.

What information we hold, and why

We collect different information for different reasons. Each of these is separate, and giving us information for one purpose does not sign you up for any of the others.

If you sign up to our newsletter

We ask for your name and email address. We use this only to send you occasional newsletters, and you can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of any email we send.

If you enquire, book a treatment, or get in touch through a form on the site

We ask for enough information to reply to you and, if relevant, arrange a booking. Usually that is your name, email, phone number, and any details you choose to include in the message. If it is a booking form for treatment, we may also ask brief health-related questions so we can prepare for your session. We keep this information for as long as we are in contact with you, and delete it if you stop being an active client.

If you buy a course, workshop, or product

We hold the details you gave at checkout (name, email, postal address if it applies, and a record of what you bought) so we can provide the thing you paid for and support you afterwards. Payment details themselves are handled by Stripe, our payment provider, and we never see or store them.

If you enrol on our practitioner training

Because practitioner training involves teaching people to work with clients, we hold more information about students than we do about other customers, and for longer. We ask for your contact details, any learning requirements or health issues that may affect how you take part, and case studies you submit as part of certification, which usually include health-related information about the people you work with as case studies.

We keep this information for 7 years, because our professional bodies and insurers may require it if a query or claim is ever raised about your training. If you submit case studies about identifiable individuals, we ask you to have their signed consent on file, and to include a copy of that consent when you submit the case study.

If you visit our website

The website uses a small number of cookies, some strictly necessary and some optional, to help the site work and to understand which pages people find useful. The full detail is on our Cookie Policy page. You can accept, decline, or choose your own settings from the cookie banner or the cookie preferences link in the footer.

Special category data

Some of the information we hold, particularly for practitioner training students and treatment clients, is health-related. Under UK GDPR this counts as "special category data" and needs a specific legal basis.

For treatment clients, our basis is your explicit consent, which we ask for at the point of booking or enquiry.

For practitioner training students, our basis is your explicit consent combined with our legitimate interest in providing training safely and properly.

Lawful basis for holding your information

Beyond special category data, the general legal basis for how we use your information is:

• Consent, for the newsletter, the cookie categories you have opted into, and treatment-related health information. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Contract, for anything we do to provide a course, workshop, or booking you have paid for.
• Legitimate interest, for keeping records that professional bodies and insurers may need us to keep.
• Legal obligation, for anything HMRC, the ICO, or other regulators require us to retain.

Who we share your information with

We do not sell your information to anyone, ever. We share it only in these specific situations:

• With our website platform, Kajabi, who host the site and process bookings and payments on our behalf.
• With Stripe, our payment provider, when you buy something from us.
• With JotForm, who process the booking and enquiry forms on our behalf.
• With Kajabi's built-in email service, which sends our newsletters and course communications on our behalf if you have signed up for them.
• With appointed course tutors, if you are on a practitioner training that involves more than one tutor and a specific question needs to be answered.
• With our professional bodies (the Association of Reflexologists, the Federation of Holistic Therapists, Thinktree, the Complementary Therapists Association, and the Complementary Medical Association), if a formal complaint or query is raised about our practice or training.
• With HMRC or other UK authorities, if the law requires it.

Some of these companies (Kajabi and Stripe in particular) are based in the United States, and information about you may be stored on their servers there. Where information is transferred outside the UK, we rely on appropriate UK GDPR safeguards (such as contractual safeguards) to make sure it is protected to UK standards.

How long we keep your information

• Newsletter: until you unsubscribe.
• Enquiry and booking records: for as long as you are an active client, and up to two years after your last contact with us. Longer if a specific reason (an unresolved complaint, an insurance query) applies.
• Course and product purchases: 7 years, to meet HMRC record-keeping requirements.
• Practitioner training records and case studies: 7 years, as required by our professional bodies and insurers.
• Cookies: each cookie has its own lifetime, listed on the Cookie Policy page.

At the end of a retention period, we either delete your information completely or, where useful, keep it in an anonymised form that cannot be linked back to you.

Keeping your information safe

We take reasonable steps to protect your information. Our website platform stores your data on secure servers with encryption in transit. Access is limited to Helen and any assistants under confidentiality agreement. Physical records, where we hold any, are kept in a locked place with restricted access.

No online system can ever be completely risk-free, but these measures are in place to keep the likelihood as low as we reasonably can. If a data breach were ever likely to affect your rights or freedoms, we would inform both you and the ICO where required.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the following rights over the information we hold about you:

• The right to be informed about how we use your information (this policy).
• The right of access, to see what we hold about you.
• The right to rectification, to correct anything that is wrong.
• The right to erasure ("the right to be forgotten"), to have your information deleted, where the law allows.
• The right to restrict processing, to ask us to hold your information but not use it in certain ways.
• The right to data portability, to receive a copy of your information in a common format so you can move it elsewhere.
• The right to object to how we use your information.
• Rights around automated decision-making, though we do not use automated decision-making that would meaningfully affect you.
• The right to withdraw consent, at any time, for anything you have consented to.

To exercise any of these rights, please email us at hello@gentlereleasetherapy.com and we will respond within one month.

Complaints to the ICO

If you are not happy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would ask you to come to us first if you can, but the right to complain to the ICO is yours regardless.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make a substantial change, we will update the date at the top and, if the change materially affects how we hold your information, we will let people on our newsletter know by email. You can always request an earlier version by emailing us.