Breathing Progress Isn’t Linear — and That’s Normal

Assess your breathing fitness! How many of these 25 symptoms and behaviors associated with problematic breathing do you have?

Breathing Progress Isn’t Linear — and That’s Normal

Your breathing practice will rarely improve in a perfect, straight upward line.

Especially now, life can change fast. A month can bring family stress, difficult news, financial pressure, health concerns, work uncertainty, travel, poor sleep, or simple overload. In real life, your breathing practice will not always hold the same intensity.

Sometimes you have the energy for a fuller practice. Sometimes life is busy and you shift into maintenance mode. Sometimes all you can do is the minimum. And sometimes you may stop for a while.

That does not mean you are back at zero.

Too many people keep “starting over” with breathing habits as if everything they learned disappeared the moment they got off track. But that is not how behavior change works. You are not returning empty-handed. You are returning with more awareness of what throws you off, what helps you come back, what kind of practice fits this season, and what “too much” looks like for your life and nervous system when you are overwhelmed for very real reasons.

That is valuable information.

This is one reason the Stages of Change model is so helpful. It reminds us that change is not usually linear. We move forward, stall, slip back, regroup, and begin again. A lapse or relapse is not necessarily a sign of failure. Often, it is a normal part of the process.

That matters because all-or-nothing thinking creates so much shame. If you believe every interruption means failure, you are more likely to quit. But if you understand that changing intensity, losing rhythm, and returning again are all part of real change, it becomes easier to respond with less judgment and more skill.

This is why I like thinking in terms of full practice, maintenance practice, and minimum practice. Not every season of life can hold the same level of effort. A sustainable breathing practice has to flex with real life. What would each of these variations look like for you? Let me know if you need help or a sounding board to work this out.

And here’s something else to consider:

What if you tracked your comebacks as seriously as your streaks?

Progress is not only about how long you stay on track. It is also about how you return.

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Breathing Retraining Center offers individual and group training and coaching on self-management techniques to identify and correct poor-breathing habits. Breathing Retraining Center’s educational products, courses and coaching are designed to improve breathing skills for people whose issues may be related to habits that have the potential to be improved, as a self-care/wellness activity. Breathing difficulty may be a warning sign of a life-threatening heart or lung condition, infection or other illness. Always check with your doctor about your own situation.

The Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies we teach are an alternative approach and are not the practice of medicine, psychology or a form of psychotherapy, nor are they a substitute for seeking medical or psychological advice from an appropriate professional health-care provider. We want to make the important distinction between using the Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies for health and well-being and the practice of medicine, psychology or any other licensed health-care profession.

Breathing classes, coaching and other services from Breathing Retraining Center are offered by teachers who are not licensed by the State of California as physicians or other healing-arts practitioners unless so noted. We offer alternative non-medical/non-psychological techniques and our services are considered to be alternative or complementary to the healing arts that are licensed by the State of California.

In January 2024, Breathing Retraining Center LLC was renamed Wellness Journey Company LLC to reflect our interest in expanding to a wider area of wellness interest. Breathing Retraining Center was founded in 2012.