How do you breathe in everyday life? Breathing, awareness and self-regulation

How do you breathe when you’re not thinking about it?

When I work with someone, I’m more interested in their everyday breathing patterns than in how well they perform a breathing technique.

A technique can be useful. It can help you recognise a sensation, explore a different rhythm or discover that you can influence how you feel. But then the practice ends, and you go back to your day. That’s where I’m interested in observing the breath: as you walk, work, concentrate, feel unsettled or rest.

The breath in everyday life

We breathe thousands of times a day, often around twenty thousand. I don’t believe there is a perfect way to take every one of those breaths, or that we need to control them all. I’m more interested in encouraging curiosity.

Do you breathe through your nose or your mouth when you’re resting? Do you hold your breath when you’re doing something difficult? Do you give yourself time to breathe out? How does your breathing change when you feel under pressure?

If you lose touch with your breathing throughout the day, those few minutes of exercises can become disconnected from the rest of your life. That’s why, before teaching a technique, I like to begin with observation.

A practice that has always been with me

For me, the breath was a form of meditation long before it became central to my work. It supported me through pregnancy and, in different ways, has been part of my life ever since.

In recent years, I felt the need to study it more deeply, including the science behind it. That learning didn’t diminish the value of my experience. It helped me understand it better and reconsider some ideas I had taken for granted.

I realised, for example, that some of my past breathing habits were intertwined with periods of quite intense anxiety. In many ways, my life is more complicated now than it was then. Yet I feel better able to navigate what happens, notice when my state shifts and find my way back to balance.

Self-regulation doesn’t mean being calm all the time

For me, self-regulation doesn’t mean living in a constant state of calm. It means being able to move between activity and rest, find energy when I need it, slow down when I can and recognise the moments when I feel depleted.

I’m not trying to be calm all the time: we also need energy and alertness. What matters to me is not getting stuck in a single state. Breathing doesn’t solve everything on its own, but it is one of the tools that helps me recognise how I’m feeling and what I need.

From learning to practice

Kasper van der Meulen has been my most influential mentor in the study of breathing. My training with him gave me knowledge, questions and tools that continue to inform everything I teach.

Since then, the breath has become the thread running through my work: through movement, Trapeze, yoga, breathwork and even the moments when I simply invite people to pause and notice what they feel.

Sometimes I suggest a rhythm, such as breathing in for a count of four and out for six. At other times, we explore nasal breathing, the movement of the diaphragm and ribs, or a pause in the breath. But a technique only makes sense if you understand why you’re using it, how it makes you feel and whether it suits you at that moment. There are no medals for holding your breath the longest or breathing the slowest.

Observing without immediately trying to change anything

Breathing happens automatically, but we can also change it consciously. That ability is valuable; it doesn’t mean we need to direct every breath.

Sometimes the practice is simply to notice what is happening. To feel an inhale, follow an exhale and let the body do its work. In this sense, pausing is an active practice too: it allows us to notice what we miss when we’re rushing.

I want people to leave my classes with tools they can use in everyday life. Perhaps the next time they feel overwhelmed or short of breath, they’ll notice that they’re holding their breath. Perhaps they’ll realise they can take their time breathing out. Or perhaps they’ll simply pause for a moment and ask themselves: how am I breathing right now?

For me, that’s where it begins.

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