We need to talk about something: our obsession with “emotional release” on the massage table. You know what I’m talking about—that moment when a client tears up during bodywork and we nod knowingly, like we’ve just performed some mystical excavation of their deeply buried feelings.
Don’t get me wrong: People absolutely respond emotionally to massage therapy. They cry, they laugh, they suddenly remember their third-grade teacher or feel overwhelming gratitude or inexplicable sadness. These are real, valid, human experiences. But calling it “emotional release”—as if we’re puncturing some internal emotional abscess—is problematic in ways that go beyond just sounding a little woo-woo.
Don’t Make Your Job More Than It Is
Firstly, it creates an agenda where none should exist. When we frame emotional responses as something to actively seek out or “release,” we subtly shift from being present with our clients to hunting for a particular outcome. I’ve watched therapists practically salivate when they think they’ve found a spot that might “bring something up.” Suddenly, they’re not just working tissue—they’re emotional archaeologists, convinced they can excavate feelings with the right pressure and the perfect breathwork cue.
This agenda-driven approach puts clients in an uncomfortable position. Some clients feel pressured to produce an emotional response to validate the work or please their therapist. Others feel scrutinized, as if their body is being interrogated rather than cared for. And honestly, sometimes people cry during massage because they’re overwhelmed, uncomfortable, or simply because human beings are complex creatures who occasionally leak from their eyeballs for mysterious reasons.
When clients do have emotional responses, we can acknowledge them without immediately assigning meaning or trying to mine them for deeper significance.
Secondly, the “release” framework makes normal human emotional responses sound like pathology. It suggests we’re all walking around like emotional pressure cookers, desperately needing someone to find the right valve to let the steam out. This isn’t how feelings work. Emotions aren’t toxic substances that accumulate in our fascia, waiting to be purged through targeted bodywork. They’re ongoing, dynamic processes that don’t need to be fixed or released—they need to be felt, acknowledged, and integrated into our lived experience. Witnessing (with your simple, connected presence, not your words) is deeply therapeutic and solidly within your scope.
When we pathologize emotional responses, we also inflate our role as massage therapists. We’re not emotional surgeons. We’re not qualified to diagnose what needs “releasing” or to determine whether someone’s tears represent healthy catharsis or troubling overwhelm. We provide a deeply personal, supportive experience in a safe environment. Sometimes that creates space for people to feel things. That’s enough. And that’s actually beautiful in its simplicity. Stop making it weird, and stop making it about you.
Thirdly (and here’s where I can start to rant), the whole “emotional release” narrative often comes packaged with that breathy, mystical delivery that makes me want to hide under the massage table. You know the voice: “I can feel you holding something in your left hip. Can you breathe into that space for me? What’s coming up?”
Stop. Please, stop.
Not every tight spot is an emotional fortress. Sometimes your client’s hip flexors are cranky because they sit at a desk all day, not because they’re harboring unprocessed grief from 1987. And while breathwork can absolutely be helpful, turning every session into a guided journey through someone’s internal landscape isn’t massage therapy, it’s amateur psychology with a side of bodywork.
So, what do we do instead? We show up with skill, presence, and curiosity rather than agenda. We create space without demanding that it be filled with revelation. When clients do have emotional responses, we acknowledge them without immediately assigning meaning or trying to mine them for deeper significance.
If your client begins to tear up or their breathing changes in a way that signals to you that they’re in their feelings, a simple, “Would you like to pause, or are you comfortable with me continuing?” is all that’s needed. And sometimes, not even that is required. Resist the temptation to “do” something or to launch into breathwork coaching and ask, “What’s coming up?”
Respect Your Work for Its Merit
We can honor the reality that massage affects people emotionally without turning every session into an emotional forensics project. We can recognize that our work creates conditions where people might feel safe enough to experience their emotions without claiming we’re the ones causing or controlling those experiences.
Your job isn’t to release anyone’s emotions. Your job is to provide skilled, compassionate massage therapy. Sometimes that’s profound in a way that elicits visible signs of emotion. Sometimes it’s simply good bodywork. Both are valuable, and both are enough.
Let’s trust our clients to have their own experiences without us directing the show. Let’s trust our work to be meaningful without manufacturing meaning. And for the love of all that’s holy, let’s retire the mystical massage voice. Your clients—and your credibility—will thank you.
