If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve probably seen them. Jaw release videos. Deep release techniques. Celebrities and wellness influencers encouraging us all to soften, surrender, and let it all go.
And for some people? Genuinely wonderful.
But as a holistic bodywork therapist working with women in Beckenham and across South London, this week I’ve been sitting with clients who need something quite different.
The language of wellness has a release obsession. Melt. Surrender. Let go. Soften. It sounds like freedom — and it’s been sold as universal.
It isn’t.
Here’s what that language forgets: for so many of us, the holding is the coping strategy. Bracing, gripping, tension — these aren’t failures of relaxation. They are intelligent, reasonable adaptations to long-term stress, chronic health conditions, or trauma.
Asking a body that has been holding things together — often for years, often quietly, often brilliantly — to simply release, is just another instruction it has to manage.
And total release was never really the goal anyway. You need tone, structure, a degree of holding. That’s just being alive in a body. The question was never how do I let go — it was always which holding is still serving me, and which has outlived its purpose?
This isn’t about dismissing deep release work. For the right person, in the right body, at the right moment in their life, it can be profoundly helpful.
But for women living with chronic pain, long-term stress, or trauma, release without adequate support can feel destabilising. The nervous system needs somewhere safe to land first.
Think of it less as either/or, and more as a spectrum. Some women need slow, steady softening. Some need support, containment, and trust built in the body before release becomes available to them. And for many, release comes naturally, almost as a by-product, once they finally feel held enough.
When a new client comes to see me, I don’t start with a technique. I start with three questions:
Who you are. What has happened to you. What you need now.
Every woman brings something completely different: her history, her nervous system, her relationship with her own body. Even when she comes in saying “I just want to let go”, that’s where our conversation starts, not ends. Because sometimes what she really needs is to finally feel held.
For some clients we begin with connection, slowing down enough to check in with what’s underlying how they feel, before we ask anything of the body. For others, particularly those with chronic pain or a history of trauma, we start by building comfort and new, supportive sensations.
This is what holistic bodywork actually means, not a one-size-fits-all protocol, but a genuinely responsive, individual approach to you as a whole person.
If you’ve tried massage, breathwork, or relaxation techniques and still feel wired, tense, or disconnected, it’s not that you’re doing it wrong. It might just be that nobody’s asked the right questions yet.
I work with women in Beckenham and the surrounding South London area, offering holistic bodywork that is trauma-informed, nervous-system aware, and completely tailored to you.
Get in touch or book a session at www.sarasmyth.co.uk
Sara Smyth is a holistic bodywork therapist based in Beckenham, South London, specialising in somatic healing, nervous system support, and trauma-informed bodywork for women.