Not all breathwork is the same. Neither is all breathwork training. And sometimes, we need to talk about the person holding the space.
“I tried breathwork once. It wasn’t for me.”
I’ve heard versions of that sentence many times.
And I understand it.
Maybe your first experience was intense. Maybe you were asked to breathe deeply for a long period of time. Maybe emotions came up that you weren’t expecting.
Or perhaps the opposite happened.
Nothing happened, and you wondered what all the fuss was about.
But imagine someone going to a Pilates class for the first time, not enjoying it, and deciding:
“Exercise isn’t for me.”
We’d probably tell that person that Pilates is only one form of exercise. They could walk. Swim. Lift weights. Cycle. Run. Stretch. Dance.
Breathwork is no different.
There Isn’t One Breathwork
There are ways of breathing that can help us slow down and settle.
There are practices designed around sleep, focus and performance.
There are breath holds.
There is functional breathing.
There are deeply immersive practices such as Conscious Connected Breathwork.
Some practices take two minutes.
Others can take two hours.
Some involve deliberately slowing the breath. Others involve changing its rhythm or depth. Some use breath holds. Others use continuous connected breathing.
They aren’t interchangeable.
And the most powerful technique isn’t necessarily the most appropriate one.
This is something I’ve come to appreciate more and more because my work takes me into very different rooms.
One day I might be helping a footballer who can’t sleep before an important match.
Another day I might be sitting with someone experiencing grief.
I might be talking to a room full of school principals about their nervous systems, working with people attending a cancer support centre, facilitating a men’s circle, or welcoming someone into a Conscious Connected Breathwork session.
The person changes.
The room changes.
The reason they are there changes.
So why wouldn’t the breath change too?
The Right Breath at the Right Time
If someone comes to me unable to sleep because they’re anxious about playing in a final, I’m not automatically going to give them the same breathing practice I might use during a longer Conscious Connected Breathwork session.
Likewise, somebody who needs to become alert and focused doesn’t necessarily need the same breathing pattern as somebody preparing for sleep.
Sometimes we want to regulate.
Sometimes we want to energise.
Sometimes we’re working with breathing mechanics and efficiency.
Sometimes we’re creating space for a much deeper experience.
And sometimes the best thing we can do is simply allow somebody to notice their breathing without trying to change it at all.
Context matters.
The individual matters.
And this brings me to another part of the breathwork world that I think we need to be willing to talk about.
Not All Breathwork Training Is the Same Either
Breathwork remains a largely unregulated field.
That means the words “breathwork facilitator” can represent vastly different levels of training and experience.
One person may have spent hundreds of hours training, studying physiology, practising facilitation, learning about contraindications, receiving supervision, facilitating real people and continuing their professional development.
Another person may complete a short course over a weekend and get a free “Breathwork Facilitator” T-shirt which they wear on Monday morning. So technically they are both the same title.
To someone searching for help, those two practitioners can appear equivalent.
They aren’t.
I don’t say that to dismiss people starting their journey.
Every experienced practitioner was inexperienced once.
A weekend course might be a brilliant introduction. It might change someone’s life. It could spark an interest that leads to years of study, practice and development.
But an introduction and professional formation are not the same thing.
And I believe we need to be able to say that.
We’re Working With People, Not Just Breathing Patterns
Breathwork isn’t simply learning a sequence of inhales and exhales and then teaching that sequence to somebody else.
When you facilitate breathwork, you may find yourself sitting opposite grief.
Trauma.
Anxiety.
Illness.
Fear.
Loss.
Or a nervous system that simply doesn’t respond the way your training manual suggested it would.
That’s when the job becomes about far more than remembering a breathing technique.
Sometimes the most important skill isn’t knowing what breathing practice to introduce.
It’s knowing when NOT to introduce one.
It’s knowing when to slow things down.
When to stop.
When something is outside your scope.
When somebody needs support that you are not qualified to provide.
That requires education.
It requires experience.
But perhaps most importantly, it requires holding the space that’s needed.
My own journey into breathwork has involved hundreds of hours of training in Conscious Connected Breathwork, followed by further extensive study in functional breathing through Oxygen Advantage. I am very lucky to have two amazing teachers in Pat Divilly and Patrick McKeown. (Two great Galway men)
And something interesting has happened along the way.
The more I’ve learned about breathing, the less inclined I’ve become to prescribe one type of breathing to everyone.
Because there isn’t one perfect breathwork technique.
There isn’t one breathing pattern everybody should be doing.
And there certainly isn’t one type of breathwork session that will suit everybody.
The question is:
What does this person need right now?
That question is much more interesting to me than:
What’s my favourite breathwork technique?
And Then There Is the Ego of the Facilitator
There is one other thing I believe we need to talk about if breathwork is going to continue to grow responsibly.
The facilitator’s ego.
I’ve been in breathwork spaces where there seems to be an expectation that something dramatic needs to happen.
Someone needs to cry.
Someone needs to shake.
Someone needs to scream.
There needs to be a breakthrough, a release, a moment that tells everyone in the room:
“This is working.”
My friend attended a men’s circle where they had a guest breathwork facilitator attend. The session began where the facilitator opened by telling the group:
“I’m going to fuck yous all up.”
It was said with bravado, almost as a promise of what he was going to make happen. This was a circle of men, many who had trauma and were just there to connect and talk. Some had never done breathwork before.
That has stayed with me.
Because whose session is it?
Is it about what the facilitator can produce?
Or is it about the person lying on the mat?
There can be something very seductive for a facilitator about creating a big emotional response.
When somebody sobs, shakes or experiences an enormous release, it can feel as though we’ve done something powerful.
But we need to be careful with that.
A participant’s emotional intensity is not a measure of a facilitator’s ability.
And catharsis should never become a performance metric.
The person lying in front of us may have spent years developing ways of protecting themselves.
We don’t necessarily know everything that sits underneath those protections.
We don’t get to decide that today is the day they should break through them because we want them to have a profound experience.
Our job isn’t to force a release.
Our job is to create a space where the person can listen to themselves.
That might mean going deeper.
It might mean slowing down.
It might mean stopping.
It might mean opening their eyes, changing their breathing or simply lying quietly for a while.
And sometimes they may leave without crying, shaking, screaming or having the life-changing breakthrough that looks great in a testimonial.
That doesn’t mean nothing happened.
Perhaps one of the most important things we can tell somebody at the beginning of a session is:
This is your breath. This is your experience. Go at your own pace. You are always in control.
Because the facilitator shouldn’t be the most powerful person in the room.
The person breathing should be.
For me, good facilitation isn’t about how deeply I can take somebody.
It’s about whether they can trust me enough to decide for themselves how deeply they want to go.
Maybe Breathwork Wasn’t the Problem
So when somebody tells me:
“I tried breathwork. It wasn’t for me.”
I don’t try to convince them that they’re wrong.
I’m curious.
What did you try?
How long did you do it for?
What were you hoping it would help with?
How did you feel during it?
Who facilitated it?
What training did that person have?
Were contraindications discussed?
Did you feel safe?
Did you feel you could stop?
Was that particular practice appropriate for you, in that moment?
Because perhaps that person didn’t discover that breathwork wasn’t for them.
Perhaps they experienced the wrong breath, in the wrong setting, at the wrong time.
And perhaps, occasionally, with the wrong person facilitating it.
Protecting Something We Believe In
I believe breathwork has an extraordinary future.
More people are becoming curious about their breathing.
Athletes are using it.
Schools are talking about it.
Workplaces are introducing it.
People are discovering breathing practices for sleep, stress, performance, wellbeing and personal exploration.
That’s exciting.
But growth brings responsibility.
If we want the wider public to take breathwork seriously, those of us working within the field have a responsibility to take our own standards seriously too.
That doesn’t mean creating an exclusive club or deciding that there is only one legitimate school, method or approach.
There should be room for different philosophies.
There should be room for innovation.
And there absolutely should be room for beginners.
But there also needs to be honesty about experience, training, scope of practice and limitations.
And there needs to be humility.
Because when somebody comes to a breathwork session, they’re doing something remarkably trusting.
They may lie down.
They may close their eyes.
They may allow their usual defences to soften.
They may experience emotions they weren’t expecting.
And they are trusting the person sitting beside them to know what they are doing.
That deserves more than a T-shirt and a certificate from a weekend course.
It deserves respect for the practice.
Respect for our own limitations.
And, above everything else, respect for the person who has trusted us enough to breathe.
So perhaps the conversation shouldn’t simply be:
“Does breathwork work?”
Perhaps we need to ask better questions.
What kind of breathwork?
For whom?
For what purpose?
At what moment?
And who is holding the space?
Because breathwork isn’t one thing.
And maybe that’s not its weakness.
Maybe that’s one of its greatest strengths.
